Hellzapoppin'

Olsen and Johnson want to turn their stage show into a film. The film starts; it opens with a scene in hell and immediately reveals that this is a film set. The two comedians talk to the camera, argue with the writer, and call out to the editor to run the film backwards. There is a story in between: a musical is being prepared and a young couple are in love. But the story keeps being interrupted. Images bleed onto the screen, a member of the audience gets inside the film, and the projectionist puts on the wrong reel. H. C. Potter directs. Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Martha Raye and Hugh Herbert are in the cast. The source is the Broadway show of the same name. The stage show ran for years on Broadway and was one of the longest running productions of its time. Its form is self reference; the film keeps reminding you it is a film, and the approach was unusual in those years. The Lindy Hop sequence holds a place of its own; the performance by Whitey's Lindy Hoppers is a recording often cited in the history of dance. The dancers are shown as service staff, an arrangement belonging to the practice of the period. The story strand is weak and the film says so itself. Its limit is structure; the jokes are fast and consecutive, some of them do not land, and the pace is scattered. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and games with form. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, the humour belongs to its period, and there is next to no story.