It was about here that I recalled I don’t actually like musicals much.
If you know the name Jerome Kern, but haven’t seen Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), you may want to see it. A “fictionalized biopic,” it follows the life of theater composer Jerome Kern, as he bounces from unknown, to his first success and, concurrently, the love of his life, endures the loss of a producer in the sinking of the S. S. Lusitania, and endures other incidents, fictional and not, all to the accompaniment of the many theater songs he composed over the decades.
It’s softly lit, references conflict, loss, and setbacks, but without making them the center of the film. As a tribute film, this makes sense; the decision to fictionalize it makes less. The result is a collection of sweetly sentimental songs which may require an injection or two of insulin, and a question in the back of the mind: what was true and what was not?
But it was still enjoyable.
