This is in essence the classic Hollywood paradigm of balance, imbalance, and balance again. The narratives first deflate or criticize the American Dream, then embrace and honor it, and finally reestablish the old order with slight revision. All of Minnelli’s comedies, as James Naremore has suggested, follow the same pattern.
On the surface, this cozy fantasy about marriage depicts American life on the road as fun. The film begins on a dark, rainy night, with Dazi Arnaz, wearing a trench coat and a snap-brim hat, narrating the events in a flashback to the manager of a trailer park. However, because of its star, Long, Long Trailer has a more anarchic tone and sharper satiric edge than the two Father movies.Īt this phase of his career, Minnelli was enamored of the flashback structure, which he had used to great advantage in Father of the Bride and The Bad and the Beautiful, and will continue to use in other comedies, such as Designing Woman. Like the Father of the Bride, Long, Long Trailer has a dark quality to it, dealing with middle-class anxieties, both material and emotional.
Screenwriters Goodrich and Hackett center the comedy on a housewife who almost drives her hubby crazy. Two years after Father’s Little Dividend, Minnelli was offered another Frances Goodrich-Alfred Hackett script, adapted from yet another book that satirized middle-class America. Minnelli was finishing up The Band Wagon, when producer Pandro Berman approached him with an idea for a new comedy, The Long, Long Trailer, starring Lucille Ball and Dasi Arnaz.
0 kommentar(er)
