Seeing a movie in Bryant Park can be one of the great NYC summer experiences. The screen is huge, the surrounding area of midtown is slightly shut out by the trees, and the chosen films are usually a pretty good selection. Of course, like anything in this city, having the best Bryant Park movie experience doesn’t come without sacrifice. If you’re not there at 5 PM when the ropes drop and everybody swarms the lawn, throwing out their blankets and claiming their territory, you’re going to have at best a pretty crappy seat. Still, if you have the time — or a friend who does (!) — it’s a lot of fun to go out there with a bunch of food and drink, kick back for a few hours until the film starts (at dusk — usually somewhere around 8:30ish), and that watch a good movie on a nice New York (hopefully not too humid) evening.
This summer’s calendar is especially strong, but for my money, there couldn’t be a better time to head to Whole Food’s/Zabar’s/Fairway, pick-up an assortment treats and get ready to battle for your spot on the lawn. Tonight is The Gay Divorcee, an utter delight featuring music by Cole Porter, brilliant straight comedy from two of the greatest of the era — Alice Brady and Edward Everett Horton — and of course the brilliantly graceful Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I say this is the best movie for Bryant Park not because The Gay Divorcee is the actual best movie on this summer’s schedule. That would be a difficult claim to make with Touch of Evil playing next week and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? coming in August. But as great as a night watching movies in Bryant Park can be, watching (and listening!) to anything outside at night is not really a great way to see a movie, especially one that is dialogue heavy. Plus, no matter how dark it gets, you’re still not watching the image under perfect conditions, which can be very important for a film like Orson Welles’ noir masterpiece.
But The Gay Divorcee is fun and frothy. It’s a great movie in its own right, with wonderful music and magnificent dancing, but it’s also a simple romantic comedy that isn’t going to be completely ruined by the distraction of the police helicopter flying overhead. And in its own way, it’s so light and fun and magical and romantic that with the right company and wine, it could be, just maybe the perfect evening.
Or at the very least, an antithesis to the final Bryant Park film of the summer — Jaws.
Out of Focus 