Unknown Studio, Stills from “All’s Fair in Love and War” , choreographed by Busby Berkeley

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The divide between photographs of military and theatrical formations seems perilously slim. It is not surprising to discover that when Busby Berkeley, (1896 –1976), the master of this genre, was in his 20’s, he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, responsible for staging enormous parades.

A couple of decades later this experience manifests in the number “All’s Fair in Love and War” from “Gold Diggers of 1937.” An army of females in satin with white rifles and flags is pitted against an unlikely troop of men, staged in a mock battle on a huge sound stage marked “No Woman’s Land.” The women are victorious when they “gas” the males with perfume atomizers. The truce is sealed with a big kiss, with the women and men facing off in a tidy seemingly infinite line up. This is followed by a female musical victory parade with the ladies marching towards the camera in a big phallic like arrow formation. It is a delirious mash up of ideas, all serviced in precise patterns.

Most often there is a mind boggling number of people in these troops and troupes. There is pleasure in the sheer awesomeness on view, with spectacle, scale, and imagination, all tempered by order and discipline. The military and the theatrical groupings both behave like over-the-top fever dreams, choreographed to strict cadences. That these two genres are so alike is more than ironic.

Maybe there is something reassuring and organic about arranging people in exact rows and columns and parading them around. Photographing these – still and moving images – is a kind of “capturing the flag,” harnessing all these energies within the film frame. Actually the photographers seem able to show us more than we might as observers on a sidewalk or in bleachers. The camera range is limitless. The infinite is liberating. We are impressed. There is a surge of patriotism and jingoism in these military spectacles, and we feel the cathartic release with so many energies ordered together. It turns us on.

Unknown Studio, production still from “Shadow Waltz” in “Gold Diggers of 1937”, choreographed by Busby Berkeley

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The photos feel so American too. Other regimes have their epic martial groupings, like those shot by Leni Reifenstahl, but these here are fresher, rawer and more immediate.

This doesn’t even begin to account for the sweeping circular and organic, even orgasmic choreography kaleidoscope-ing on floors, ramps, towers, wings, even in the water. Singly or in waves of goofy chorus lines or sober line ups, these oddly related troops and troups have presence and impact.

Crazy.