Xanadu (film)
Xanadu is a musical film directed by Robert Greenwald and released in 1980. It stars Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly and has music by ELO (or at least, Jeff Lynne, leader of ELO).
Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The movie tells the story of Sonny Malone (Beck), a talented artist who has failed to achieve independence and must return to his job painting larger versions of album covers for record store windows (commercial work with no artistic reward). Upon returning to this job, he finds an album cover with a beautiful woman on it (Newton-John) and in trying to track her down, comes into contact with a washed-up orchestra leader, Danny McGuire (Kelly). Danny lost his muse years ago, Sonny has not yet found his.
Things become complicated (as much as they do in movies of this sort) as Newton-John's Kira helps the two men realize their dream of opening a nightclub, while also falling in love with Sonny. Ultimately, she has to make a choice about how she feels about him to her parents, who happen to be gods....
Box office
Critics panned the film, and it had little success at the box office, but the soundtrack was somewhat successful and contained a few hits, especially the title track. The title song, "Xanadu," is catchy enough that multiple covers of it have appeared from time to time in dance compilations.
Trivia
This film is Gene Kelly's last starring role in a picture (he appeared in a film called Action U.S.A. 9 years later, but it was a minor appearance). Kelly was a world-class dancer in movies, most famous for his role in the film Singin' in the Rain, and the iconic image of his dancing in the title track adorns many movie houses and Hollywood retrospectives. Xanadu, a relatively minor film, is therefore blessed with his last dance on film.
The title of the film, Xanadu, is a reference to a poem, "Kubla Kahn, or A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment." by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (published in 1816). In the poem, Xanadu is the location of a "stately pleasure dome" built by Kubla Khan. Under the influence of drugs, Coleridge had begun work on this poem, intended to be of epic proportions, when he was interrupted by a man from Porlock. This person detained Coleridge long enough for him to lose his train of thought after returning to his desk, and the poem was never completed. That is, Coleridge had lost his muse.
This iconic reference is also used in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane as the name for the title characters' ostentatious estate.
