'No fuss. No excitement. This is the Copa!'

When I was student we once watched a screening of Now Voyager (1942) directed by Irving Rapper and starring Bette Davis, Claude Rains and Paul Henreid. It tells the story of a woman traumatised by living with her mother who, on the advice of a psychiatrist, goes on a cruise and finds love. The woman is Davis and the love interest is Henreid. The line I remember, apart from the obvious ('Jerry, don't ask for the moon. We have the stars!'), is as the boat nears to Rio de Janeiro and Henreid looks over the side and declares: 'Copacabana - there's music in the word!' The audience, familiar with a certain Barry Manilow song, fell apart.

As well as that song (and Manilow's subsequent musical) and a place in Brazil, Copacabana is also a nightclub in New York where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis used to perform and the title of a 1947 film starring Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda. Groucho is the agent and sometime romantic partner of Miranda trying to get her a gig at a club called the...yes, you've guessed it! Eventually he comes up with a scheme where she has to pretend to be two performers - herself and Mademoiselle Fifi, a French singer with an Arabian Nights like veil on. It's all a bit half hearted really - Groucho has the lines, but seems lost without his brothers, while Miranda only livens up once that strange jewel encrusted fruit salad hat of hers is on and the music is playing.

What strikes you is that the film is about people desperate to get into show business, with song lyrics that mention Leo McCarey and Claudette Colbert and Groucho's comments on how a boss and his secretary are supposed to fall in love during a picture. It reminds you that self referentiality is as old as movies and certainly didn't begin with Tarantino. It's a pity Copacabana isn't better than it is; there is something about the word that makes you agree with Paul Henreid - music and possibly something of the magic of the cinema too.