Friday, January 4, 2019

'Steam Heat' from The Pajama Game

In a musical it's not uncommon for characters to spontaneously sing and dance in a sort of collective out-of-body experience, its how the audience can take in a musical number but still remain with the cinematic world of the film. But this scene from The Pajama Game is from a talent show where the other characters are present. For the movie-going audience it's just another musical number, but in the course of the story being told, this is altogether different. How do the other characters not notice that Gladys Hotchkiss has some serious fucking skills for a factory bookkeeper? This should bring the movie to a halt, shouldn't it? Whatever was going on should be utterly ignored now, everyone would be absolutely changed by this, wouldn't they? (Also this is really the only scene in the movie that makes you go, 'Oh yeah, Bob Fosse did this!')

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