Sightlines · reception

How The Band Wagon was received

1953 · Vincente Minnelli · The Band Wagon on Sightlines

The arc

A critical hit in 1953 that reportedly still struggled to turn a profit thanks to its lavish budget, it has since climbed to the very top tier of the MGM musical canon — now routinely mentioned in the same breath as Singin' in the Rain.

What’s debated

The perennial cinephile debate: is this or Singin' in the Rain the greatest backstage musical — with Band Wagon partisans insisting it's the wittier, more melancholy, more grown-up of the two.

Its footprint

It gave the world 'That's Entertainment!' — the song that became MGM's unofficial anthem and titled the studio's whole nostalgia franchise — and the noir-parody Girl Hunt Ballet echoes down to Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' look.

Where it stands

A consensus classic of the Freed Unit era and a fixture of greatest-musicals lists — the Minnelli musical cinephiles cite when they want to look slightly more discerning than the Singin' in the Rain crowd.

Did you know? Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote themselves into the movie — the bickering married writing team played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray is a barely disguised self-portrait — while Fred Astaire's 'washed-up song-and-dance man from the movies' cut uncomfortably close to Astaire's own career anxieties at the time.