Old Hollywood.
Mostly, FRED ASTAIRE.
If you like him and guavas, we are automatically best friends.
I post screencaps, artworks & rare stuff.
HMU if you wanna talk OH lore.
Fred Astaire in what seems to be a badly restored/coloured (by me) photograph from the 1940s.
I have been momentarily absent from here since someone else has been demanding my heart's attentions. However, now that I have indoctrinated that poor fella into the Astaire cult as well, I'm here with a heroic comeback.
Incoming exams overhead makes it all the more beautiful.
Also, I have an interesting piece of story to share.
So yesterday was my birthday, and I spent the precious early hours of it watching Swing time (1936) with a very special friend.
Although in my case I have lost count, it was my friend's first experience of that brilliant flight the movie sweeps us off to.
While he was at a loss of words as the ending score played, he managed to whisper with a sigh - "God, I wish I lived in the world of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers".
Here's a digital doodle I did while on an unecessarily long call.
It's just so sad that Fred wasn't available to receive the honour in person, and that too from our dear Ginger. Anyway, that would have been just too perfect to take in.
The way Ginger is thrilled as she hears Fred's voice, their immortal tracks being played in the background by the Orchestra and the serenading applause leaves me overwhelmed every time I watch that video.
No, not Garbo. Allow me not to address you as her, the plagued soul stifled by compelling glory and movie-going frivolity.
I refer to the demure Greta Gustafsson from Sweden, the one Maurice Stiller helmed into Hollywood. But once the camera began to roll, the petite Swedish girl ceased to exist. Garbo galloped to the fore, sweeping us passerbys to the faraway lands crafted in fairytales.
This passage was beset with perils for you; with every single movie a prolonged battle of attrition. Nonetheless, pairs of eyes all around the world have never been more grateful. While they were fixated in a trance, Garbo wrenched out of our hearts feelings we had barred into seclusion, making a seamless incision through any binds with one sharp flick of her eye.
I do not dare of a comparison. You were neither the svelte Dietrich, the coquettish Swanson nor you possessed the seething glamour of Jean Harlow. Garbo is Garbo, an unsurpassed entity all her own.
Your tread upon the silver screen, albeit a brief one still had your footprints etched into immortality. The performance of the enervated Lady of the Camellias must have rivalled that of Sarah Bernhardt herself. Whether it was the faded ballerina or Tolstoy's masterful allegory of pain, there has never been another single-handed display that showered justice upon these roles.
While immersive melancholia was the trademark of your oeuvre, little did we know it shrouded your reality as well. You shied away from public gaze, picked apart and hounded by the Press. We denied you the only wish you ever had - to be left alone. They made a legend out of your mystique, and branded you a snob when you refused to reveal even a single shred of your elusive life. Desperate bloodhounds in action, I'm glad that for all their sniffing they are anything but successful.
It has been almost a century now, and the legend of Garbo lives on . However, I remember you as our Comrade Ninotchka, laughing not only at Leon sprawled on the floor, but at the entire bizarre spectacle of life - of people taking things too seriously and never actually taking a moment to live.
I'll make a separate post just for Ginger's EXTREME beauty in this film.
Frankly, "Change Partners" kept this movie afloat. But we got to see Ginger in her prime, Ginger wielding a shotgun, Ginger obliterating civic property, Ginger being funky, Ginger kissing Fred and finally Ginger marrying Fred.
In a lot of ways, I felt this movie was more about Ginger. GOOD.