MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS (2005)

‘Truish’ and ‘Bluish,’ the story of a London Music Hall that stayed open (and topless) all thru the Second World War.  Bowdlerized, with little but the 'We Never Close' motif intact, it became a 1945 Rita Hayworth musical*, but this film, while still heavily fictionalized, comes within spitting distance of the facts.  And they’re just as interesting as the nude tableaux vivants that punctuate the final choruses on stage.  Judi Dench & Bob Hoskins are just about perfect as the recently widowed upper crust Lady and the dapper director she hires after buying a dilapidated London theater, as much hobby as investment.  But when Hoskins’ new idea for ‘Continuous Shows’ hits box-office fatigue, Dench decides to Go Blue with ‘tasteful’ nudity by the showgirls.  Can they find a way to get past the censor?  Will the bickering between Hoskins & Dench stop the show?  And will those nice British girls bare all for art & money?  Stephen Frears has a lot of fun staging the numbers and giving his leads plenty of room to chew the scenery.  Hoskins, who exec produced, unusually posh with a glam toupee.  Even finding touching moments for the girls & the stage-door-Johnny soldier boys.  And if the film is a bit too eager to please, like a puppy at the animal shelter, now & then it truly catches the mood of the times, as in a brief romantic sequence when the period score adds missing depth to the proceedings thanks to Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein’s ’All the Things You Are’ backing the action.  Longing, melancholy, wartime loss, suddenly we’re on another dramatic level.  (NOTE: A lot of nudity for one of our Family Friendly film labels!  So bare that in mind.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Back in 1919, Flo Ziegfeld’s FOLLIES used the same defense of still-life pulchritude to get past censors, to the tune of Irving Berlin’s ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: * More than flesh goes missing in TONIGHT AND EVERY NIGHT (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/12/asmidgen-of-truth-lurks-behind-this.html), the film mostly worth a look for a stupendous audition routine from Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo soloist Marc Platt.  Start at the 8" mark:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x4Z4uLQvtI