What first caught my eye was the fact that Berkeley was only responsible for the number sequences while there was another director for the narrative moments. This must really change the dynamic of things on set and how a film is structured. Shooting, actor and director interactions, even financial budgeting are all parts that would drastically be changed in this kind of format. I guess this is why his films were considered aggregated because of this obvious separation between actions in the narrative and number sequences that serve as spectacle. I did not think about the construction of time and space in terms of musicals and their departure from the narrative “world” before this reading. After watching 42nd street I definitely can see how this plays out in the world and that you don’t realize it until having watched about 4 minutes of the play being carried out on stage. Also, I don’t like talking about Mulvey often because we have discussed her in other classes and I tend to like going against her views (maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but hope it’s not for that reason). I am agreeing with her in the sense of the female performer being subjected to the males view especially in this movie because of many of the camera angles on women’s legs, which is just the nature of the movie, and camera shots throughout musical numbers. However, she’s bound to be right just in general with the nature of this film right? I mean, it’s a musical and there are a lot of women’s dancers and are supposed to be spectacle, so why does this have to be a negative thing? I don’t know, maybe Mulvey doesn’t see it as a negative thing and just another form of how a gender is represented.
I am a big fan of Broadway musicals and this reading reminded me of it naturally. Also, on a quick note the Choreographer’s name is Gene Kelly, and I kept thinking Grace Kelly, which reminded me of the song Grace Kelly by Mika.
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