A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Les Girls (George Cukor, 1957)

Kay Kendall, Mitzi Gaynor, Gene Kelly, and Taina Elg in Les Girls
Cast: Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac, Leslie Phillips, Henry Daniell, Patrick Macnee. Screenplay: John Patrick, based on a story by Vera Caspary. Cinematography: Robert Surtees. Art direction: Gene Allen, William A. Horning. Film editing: Ferris Webster. Music: Cole Porter, Saul Chaplin.

It should have been better. It had Gene Kelly's dancing, George Cukor's direction, Cole Porter's song score, and a performance by the wonderful comedian Kay Kendall -- two years before her untimely death. I'm tempted to blame the failure of this musical on Mitzi Gaynor, a performer to whom I've never felt attracted, or to the now long-forgotten Taina Elg. According to one source, it was planned to star Leslie Caron, Cyd Charisse, Jean Simmons, and Carol Haney, each of whom might have given a lift to the movie, but Kelly seems cranky and tired -- it was his last film for MGM -- and the Porter songs are completely forgettable. Cukor's direction is workmanlike: Despite My Fair Lady (1964) and the Judy Garland A Star Is Born (1954), musicals were not his forte.
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