Betty Comden and Adolph Green\u2019s script (based on their stage musical) centers on what was then the height of personal communication technology: the answering service. Minnelli opens with a clever fake commercial, in which pretty models use the service to get messages for dates, jobs, and marriage proposals; \u201cOn New York\u2019s smart East Side,\u201d the narrator intones, \u201cthe smartest East Siders use Susanswerphone.\u201d The real thing is a good deal less glamorous; the Susanswerphone switchboard operators work out of a dumpy basement apartment, and most of their clients are dullards, dentists and doctors and such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best of those operators is Ella Peterson, played by Holliday in a tour-de-force performance; we first meet her working the switchboard, shifting voices and identities to suit each of the clients whose calls she\u2019s catching. (One of those voices, a high-pitched Brooklyn wail, is a clear wink to her breakthrough role in Born Yesterday<\/em>.) She loves her work, and the way it allows her to be anyone \u2013 anyone, of course, but herself. She\u2019s great hidden behind a telephone line, but painfully shy and clumsy around, y\u2019know, other, real people. (I hear ya, sister.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has, of course, a favorite: Jeffrey Moss, played by Dean Martin as a perfect mixture of easygoing and disheveled. It is, she sings, \u201ca perfect relationship\u201d because \u201cI\u2019ll never meet him \/ and he\u2019ll never meet me.\u201d Jeffrey is a playwright, and \u2013 like most writers \u2013 easily distracted and discouraged, so she takes on a motherly character for his occasional wake-up calls and reminders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the service is under investigation by an overzealous vice squad detective who\u2019s convinced it\u2019s a front for an escort service, mostly based on one hilarious scene of overheard misunderstandings and double endtendres. (Holliday\u2019s realization and reaction line – \u201cOh<\/em> have you got a dirty mind!\u201d \u2013 is one of her best moments.) Warned not to get too personal on the phone, and unable to get through anyway, Ella shows up at Jeffery\u2019s apartment to wake him (itself, perhaps<\/em> a breach of professional protocol?), and ends up giving him the kick in the ass he so desperately needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s most wonderful about Comden and Green\u2019s work \u2013 all of it, but particularly here \u2013 is how well they blend in their songs. There\u2019s never a sense that it\u2019s time to stop for a musical number, and they wield the songs not only to express emotions that might be clumsily stated otherwise (as most good musicals do), but to convey thematic concerns. That skill is particularly keen in the song \u201cBetter Than a Dream,\u201d which not only dramatizes the intellectual and psychological headspace of the two leads, but is constructed and combined in a way that matches their pairing; it\u2019s two songs that become a duet, just as these two characters will become a couple. And, of course, they do; their first kiss is one of the most satisfying in all of moviedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A great romance and a great musical, \u201cBells Are Ringing\u201d is also a great New York movie \u2013 one of the best that wasn\u2019t actually shot here. It dates back to the era of New York backlots, when shooting on location was far too difficult a proposition, both in terms of cost and logistics (the 1949 film of Comden and Green\u2019s On the Town<\/em> was a rare exception \u2013 and even then, only the opening sequence was shot in Gotham). But it has the New York spirit<\/em>, which is what matters \u2013 Comden and Green were both natives (of Brooklyn and the Bronx, respectively), and like so many NYC movies from NYC writers that were shot across the country, it presents us with a romanticized vision of the city. \u201cIt was a feeling that started with the most common of emotions, homesickness,\u201d James Sanders writes in his book Celluloid Skyline<\/em>, \u201cfor the way of life the writers had left behind, and for the city that had made it possible. It was burnished by the effect that distance so often has on an absent love\u2014as flaws are forgotten and desire enhanced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so the wonderful scene on the street corner, in which Ella disproves Jeffery\u2019s theory that there is a \u201cland of cutthroats\u201d by striking up conversations with strangers (\u201cEverybody wants to be friendly but everyone\u2019s afraid to make the first move\u201d) is informed by that feeling; in reality, even in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jeffrey\u2019s description was probably more accurate. And when she and Jeffrey dance on a promenade with the Brooklyn Bridge twinkling in the background, it feels like the kind of perfect New York movie moment that could only<\/em> be created on a stage \u2013 it has a sense of perfection, with which the messy reality of city living can\u2019t compete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Real or recreated, this city (and the version of it that Jeffrey offers her an entry to) gives Ella pause. \u201cI don\u2019t know any of those famous people,\u201d she worries, when he takes her to a fancy party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen you\u2019ll meet \u2018em,\u201d he replies, with a shrug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t wanna,\u201d she replies, and she means it. And that\u2019s what\u2019s ultimately surprising about Bells Are Ringing<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s a frothy love story, but one about a character who suffers from social anxiety or maybe even agoraphobia, as well as the more common curse of self-identity issues. \u201cI\u2019ve spent my whole life tuning in on other\u2019s people\u2019s lives, playing all sorts of imaginary characters,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt became even more real to me than I was.\u201d She begins to work her way out of it in song, and it\u2019s somewhat inspiring: \u201cWho am I? \/ I gotta find out \/ or at least I gotta try.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Admittedly, I\u2019m probably reading more into this than the film\u2019s makers intended, particularly when they created these characters and situations more than half a century ago. But it is remarkable, and a little poignant, to find yourself inadvertently watching a movie about trying to get yourself together enough to go out into public in New York right now<\/em>, as the city is \u201copening back up,\u201d but tenuously and nervously. I\u2019ve gone out in public some; I\u2019ve been to the movies, and gone to Central Park, and ridden on the subway again, and each time I feel like a little bit of a failure, because I\u2019m not overcome with emotion about it. And I should have those feelings, I\u2019m certain, because other, \u201cnormal\u201d people seem to be having them, and sharing them on social media and in conversations. So I must be doing it wrong, because it all still feels strange and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does any of this have to do with Bells Are Ringing<\/em>, you may ask, not unreasonably? Not much, perhaps \u2013 but it\u2019s a testament to the extent that musicals have a direct line to our emotions, and how they can affect us, decades on, in ways unintended or even imagined. “Bells Are Ringing” is now streaming on the Criterion Channel.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/bells2-1024x771.jpg\")
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