1969 - SWEET CHARITY another fricking 60's movie musical.

Universal spent 20 million bucks on Sweet Charity a film that made them 4 million dollars. They should have carefully thought through what they were getting mixed up with.

They hired the original Broadway director/choreographer Bob Fosse who was a talented guy but had never actually directed a movie before. Fosse fell in love with every weird camera angle he could think of. The film is loaded with slow motion shots, reversed film effects, still montages, hand held camera movements and just about any other faddish 60's camera technique he must have seen at his local foreign film art house. The constant zooming in and out and the bizarre film editing made the film an ordeal to sit through. Sweet Charity looks very dated now. The film was also shot in widescreen which means that when the camera moves in close on the dancers it cuts their legs off. Then of course if the camera pulls back. the the dancers look small. If you can't see dancers doing their dancing thing that kind of defeats the purpose of a musical.

Transferring a show like Sweet Charity from the stage into a movie is a lot trickier than you think. Bob Fosse clearly knew something about staging sexy bump and grind dance numbers, but in movies, long dance numbers can be a real killer to sit through. 150 minutes is a lot of time to watch people singing and dancing. Everyone dumps on The Sound of Music, but that movie is a lot more skillfully made than Sweet Charity.

Then there's the issue of the star Shirley MacClaine. Sweet Charity is the story of a dance hall hooker who is basically an innocent at heart. Shirley MacClaine was trained as a dancer and is certainly a professional. But her days of playing an innocent in the movies were pretty much over by 1969. She just wasn't the same likable actor when she first appeared in The Trouble With Harry. The intervening years had hardened her screen personality.

Fosse hops directs

Finally, who in their right mind ever thought people would want to go see a musical about a dance hall hooker. When Mommy and Daddy were looking for a film musical to take the kids too what were they going to pick, Mary Poppins or Sweet Charity?

149 minutes!