Product: Stormy Weather [VHS] (1980)
Rating: 4.0
"If you buy the premise..."
...as my mother used to say, "you buy the bit." Because movies of the 1940's featuring black artists playing actual characters and not specialty acts were still a rarity (America was still a segregated nation at the time, and southern theatres regularly omitted black performers from their screens), this production has found a kind of mythological status over the years- even though it is more review than story. Wonderful- brilliant- as Bill Robinson is, it's a little unnerving to see him cast as Lena Horne's love interest when there is a forty-five year age difference between them. But his performance still dazzles, especially his mind-boggling tap dance on an orchestra of bongo drums. The aforementioned songs from Calloway, Waller, Ada Brown, and so on- not to mention Horne's electrifying title number- are all marvelous. And the 'zoot-suit' finale with Calloway and the elegant Nicholas Brothers- in death-defying leaps and splits down a gleaming white spiral staircase- is the stuff musical dreams are made of.