‘The Gang’s All Here’ — The Hallucinogenic Madness of Busby Berkeley.

Well I wanted technicolor bananas and boy, did I get technicolor bananas!

‘The Gang’s All Here’ is the first Busby Berkeley film I’ve seen and I was expecting nothing more than a extravagant, highly choreographed 1940s Hollywood musical, which it is… kinda. However, I wasn’t expecting to be sitting open-mouthed at the end of the movie thinking it reminded me of everything from Ken Russell’s ‘Altered States’, Scarface (the crane shots), Kenneth Anger, Pink Floyd and 2001: A Space Odyssey all combined. The only difference is that ‘The Gang’s All Here’ is even more bonkers than all that.

The story is stupid and flimsy as hell, but it’s not about that. It’s about the Berkeley set-pieces and this is where the film is in a world of its own. Numbers such as the incredible Carmen Miranda showcase ‘The Lady in The Tutti-Frutti Hat’ induce an almost illegal sense of giddy delirium. Watching it I found myself mouthing Palmer’s quote from ‘The Thing’ — “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding.” — as Carmen Miranda takes us on a musical trip of phallic, yellow insanity. And the closing number, ‘The Polka-Dot Polka’, has to be seen to be believed. This is not a typical Hollywood dance piece; this is experimental, avant-garde filmmaking. It’s more Gasper Noe than Gene Kelly.

‘The Gang’s All Here’ is far from perfect but combine all the above with a wonderful central performance by Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda being just glorious and what could be, quite frankly, the most impressive long-shot crane move ever in which a massive technicolor camera glides over and through the Benny Goodman Band with such lightness it’s hard to wrap your mind around and this film achieves something I love in a movie and that is being utterly unique. If you like musicals, design and colour and, especially, bananas then I urge you to check this out.

So after all that I was hoping for a little gritty realism although I’ve just remembered two of the films I’ve lined up for this week are ‘La La Land’ and the cult gay film ‘Pink Narcissus’. I think I might need to watch nothing but Carl Theodore Dryer films next week just to give my retinas a rest.