I Dood It (Vincente Minnelli, 1943)

I was even less taken with Minnelli's second film than I was his first. A project thrown at his feet when its original director was fired, I Dood It simply should have been canceled altogether. An unfunny, incomprehensible mess than nicks from Buster Keaton but has none of that comic's sense of order or timing. An excerpt of my piece:

I Dood It rapidly outpaces its thin material. Adapted, sometimes shot for shot, from Buster Keaton’s final silent, Spite Marriage, the film adds 25 minutes to Keaton’s 80, despite cutting some of the wandering the protagonist gets up to after being rejected by his reluctant bride. That leaves excessive longueurs that even Skelton’s considerable comic talent cannot fill, leaving him to mug at every possible moment to try and keep the audience entertained.

You can read the rest of my article here.

Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli, 1943)

Minnelli's first film has the theatricality he brought with him from Radio City and would be with him for his whole career, but it lacks much of the cinema. The movement, the actors' projection, the use of sets, it's all a bit too stiff. Furthermore, for all the promise of a film with an all-black cast, Cabin in the Sky eschews some stereotypes only to embrace others, and its morality tale relies on deeply dated misogyny. You can kind of see where Minnelli would go from here, but this is still a long way off even from the dynamics of his third film.

My full review is up at Spectrum Culture.