Wonder Bar (1934)

Meine Damen und Herren- Mes dames et Messieurs- Ladies and Gentlemen….
He whips her with a whip! He whips her, he whips her, he whips her…
But she loves it!

Wonder Bar is a decadent nightclub somewhere in Paris hosted by Al Wonder a provocateur with biting wit and a stealthy influence over the wealthy and influential patrons who enter his club. Wonder’s lurid exhibitions of impossibly glamorous sado-masochistic performances seduce the curious customers where they become prey to beautiful gold diggers and continental gigolos. All the while the band plays sophisticated foxtrots and waltzes that veer into the psychedelic and surreal thanks to choreographer Busby Berekeley.

After a brief prologue that introduces some of the characters’ back stories, the film unfolds in a single night: a complex la ronde of inter-relationships and overlapping motives. Crooning bandleader Dick Powell pines for the exquisite Dolores del Rio. She loves badboy Ricardo Cortez her dancing partner, but he is ready to cash in on his affair with the wife of an important politician and disappear forever.

Unfortunately the wife has come to retrieve her love token, a diamond bracelet which Cortez is desperately trying to exchange for cash. Her husband reported it stolen and has involved detectives who are putting the heat on Cortez. Fearing his past will be exposed he must get away tonight but Del Rio refuses to let him go. Their relationship climaxes on stage as Cortez whips the face of del Rio, determined to make her despise him!

Meanwhile, Jolson realizes a scandal is imminent and the politician could close Wonder Bar in revenge. He begins to quietly manipulate the situation, paying off the troublesome Cortez and steering the lovesick del Rio to himself. But things go too far. Among the liaisons and affairs there is a murder, a suicide. Love is gained and lost. A crime is covered up and the guilty go free. It’s just another night at Wonder Bar….

“Don’t Say Goodnight”

But don’t worry about the plot. This love n-gon is barely sketched in before being steamrolled by the platinum-wigged Berkeley girls in a dizzying infinity mirror waltz “Don’t Say Goodnight”. Rows of identical chorines chime in with a verse and we have entered Berkeley time-space. They reveal a regiment of phallic columns which might be giant candle tapers dripping with dark wax at the tip. The columns gently glide away revealing more chorines in transparent white skirts. They wave their arms and meander through the columns, which again glide away to reveal men in white tuxedos and black masks.

Berkeley introduces a mirror in a shot where a single row of girls is doubled. We are so accustomed to seeing identical chorines in white wigs that the eye is fooled, but it doesn’t stop there. He introduces a second mirror and triples the image as the row of girls step onto a huge turntable and glide past the camera. The image is so complex that you believe there are three turntables in a huge studio. The placement of camera and mirrors allows the dancers to “exit” the stage by stepping behind what appears to be a single column in the center of the room.

A black curtain lifts revealing a wall of mirrors that doubles the room, then another curtain lifts behind the camera and in the mirror we can see another wall of mirrors giving the illusion of a long corridor filled with dancing couples. The effect is attractive, but easy to deduce the trick.

But suddenly in a breathtaking reveal, all the remaining black curtains are raised and the entire set has been walled with an octagon of mirrors to reflect an infinite space filled with infinite dancers. Turning, twirling, waltzing, the camera begins to spin, sometimes opposite to the turntable sometimes with, until you are completely disoriented. The camera looks down from above as the couples make mandalas and sunflower kaleidoscope patterns. By the time they bring in a forest of trees with silver foil leaves that blow around this infinite tinsel forest, your second martini should just have started to mellow out your cocaine buzz. Welcome to Wonder Bar.

“Goin to Heaven on a Mule”

Mixed into this dazzling beauty is a dark undercurrent. The flaunting of class separation and segregation. Those who come to watch the spectacle are bound to get dirty themselves; no one is immune, not even you. Wonder Bar is about to reveal another surprise: a pair of snarling fangs hidden behind the white gloves. To prove it, Berkeley will take Al Jolson’s blackface routine and drag it down to the depths of hell. You will be shocked and amused, horrified as you laugh. Corrupted. You are about to be assaulted with a gleeful racist display called “Goin to Heaven on a Mule”.

Speechless…. There is very little that can be said other than a careful catalog of grotesque imagery: dice that only roll sevens, watermelon tap dancing, instant fried chicken, an orchard where pork chops grow on trees that sprout from the backs of hogs, small children in blackface swung from wires, even a heavenly Harlem. At one point Jolson looks up from a Hebrew newspaper as a wink to the audience….

Berkeley always presents transgressive characters in compromising situations. His immoral charlatans and scantily clad gold diggers almost single-handedly brought the wraith of the Hayes code that would stunt Hollywood for the next 30 years, but this time he goes too far. Wonder Bar is a slice of Weimar Republic hedonism on the eve of Nazi take-over. Censors were stunned. Audiences were offended, yet came out in droves pushing Wonder Bar over a million dollars in depression era profits!

Although it’s script clunks, the jokes are never funny, and its gorgeous female stars couldn’t out-act Paris Hilton, Jolson’s snarling savoir-faire is a clear inspiration for both Humphrey Bogart’s cynical but sentimental Rick in Casablanca, and also Joel Grey’s Oscar-winning MC from Cabaret. Its decadence teases your senses and the memory of swelling romantic music haunts you. Like a beautiful prostitute with a vicious streak, or a love affair that threatened to overwhelm common sense… Like an intense champaigne hangover…. You will never forget the night you spent in Wonder Bar.

Don’t you remember,
The night we sat together at the Wonder Bar?
Don’t you remember,
We said we’d meet again someday and here we are!

Can we revive the spark that went out in the dark
the night that you had to say adieu, Dear?
But I always knew Dear,
You’d wander back into the Wonder Bar