The Gang's All Here

Busby Berkeley's 1943 film is among the first he shot in colour and the most extreme visually. A soldier falls for a chorus girl and is then posted to the Pacific; the plot exists largely to link the numbers. Berkeley uses the possibilities of Technicolor to their limit. Its most cited passage is The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat, in which Carmen Miranda dances with enormous bananas; the sequence is so extreme that even the censors of the day objected. That the numbers carry sexual implication is obvious, but the real matter is Berkeley turning the human body into abstract pattern. Miranda's representation of Latin America is a product of the good neighbour policy of the time and is contested now. Who it's for: viewers interested in classic Hollywood musicals and Busby Berkeley's visual design. Who it's not for: anyone troubled by clichés in the depiction of Latin America, or bothered that the plot is only a pretext between numbers.