In their more unguarded moments, these Berkeley routines seem to be about returning to the womb. Only in the ejaculatory “By A Waterfall” from Footlight Parade does Berkeley’s work seem sexy and paradisiacal there’s a love for women’s bodies in that number that is chillingly absent elsewhere. The women are all interchangeable, and when there is someone singled out as distinctive, such as Wini Shaw in the “Lullaby Of Broadway” sequence in Gold Diggers of 1935, she is killed off violently (during this number, the chorus boys seem to be doing the “Heil Hitler!” salute).
There’s something offensive and anti-humanist about Berkeley’s obsessive reduction of large groups of people into shifting patterns in a kaleidoscope. However, seen without the aid of hallucinogens, they raise some troubling thoughts.
These Berkeley musical numbers are indeed trippy. He was hugely successful in the ‘30s, forgotten after WWII, and finally reclaimed as camp by the ‘60s drug culture.
Musicals wore out their welcome fast right after the first talkies came in, but Berkeley reinvigorated the form with his numbers in 42nd Street, the first film in this generous DVD set. Florenz Ziegfeld “glorified the American girl” in his yearly theatrical Follies, and Berkeley took this idea to the next level and beyond. If it is a dream of most men to order hundreds of similar-looking women to spread their legs in unison, Busby Berkeley lived out that Fellini-style fantasy on a grand scale.
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