![]() ![]() The dream ballet genre achieved popularity when Agnes de Mille choreographed a celebrated sequence for the 1943 stage hit Oklahoma!. Astaire had already created an early dream dance on film with "I Used To Be Color Blind" in Carefree (1938), and had worked with Minnelli on a dream ballet insert for the "Limehouse Blues" number from Ziegfeld Follies (1945). The film features possibly the first example on film of the deliberate integration of color and visual pattern with dance-a theme which Minnelli explored on a larger scale and to such celebrated effect six years later with Gene Kelly in the dream ballet finale of An American in Paris. Tactfully, Astaire claimed he wanted to see what it would be like dancing to other choreographers' ideas, a move some critics have attributed to a putative temporary decline in Astaire's creative powers around this time, but it is equally possible that he found the artistic pretensions of the project somewhat off-putting. Key songs/dance routines Įugene Loring was responsible for most of the choreography, with Astaire for once taking a back seat and contributing only in parts. It was first previewed on Jin Glendale, California. ( February 2021)įilming began on January 15, 1945. It is a question, too, whether this picture has the basic material to satisfy the general audience, although in texture and trimmings it might be termed an event." Astaire himself concluded, "This verified my feeling that doing fantasy on the screen is an extra risk." In his autobiography, Astaire approvingly quotes Los Angeles Times critic Edwin Schallert: "'Not for realists' is a label that may be appropriately affixed to Yolanda and the Thief. Perhaps it also vindicated Astaire's own horror of "inventing up to the arty" -his phrase for the approach of those who would set out to create art, whereas he believed artistic value could only emerge as an accidental and unpremeditated by-product of a tireless search for perfection. Despite admirable production values, it ruined Bremer's career and discouraged Astaire, who decided to retire after his next film, Blue Skies. ![]() An attempt to create a whimsical fantasy, it ended up, in the words of critic John Mueller, as "egg-nog instead of the usual champagne". The film was a long-time pet project of Freed's to promote his lover Bremer's career, but fared disastrously at the box office. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Arthur Freed. It stars Fred Astaire, Lucille Bremer, Frank Morgan, and Mildred Natwick, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Arthur Freed. Yolanda and the Thief is a 1945 American Technicolor MGM musical- comedy film set in a fictional Latin American country.
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