I remember seeing this film when I was perhaps
eleven years old; I saw it with my mother.
And since bought the soundtrack album, I soon memorized the songs. That would be about fifty years ago!
I hadn’t seen the film since then. I found a few clips on YouTube, but the
reviewers were not kind and I figured it had never been put on DVD; then I
found it on Netflix.
It was enjoyable and entertaining. I did have quibbles with the
characterizations; Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra both seem to fall into
obvious traps in the course of the story; but the sets are beautiful, the
dancing is great (Hermes Pan was the choreographer), and I love being immersed
again in the Belle Époque 1890s of Paris/Montmartre. Toulouse-Lautrec walks past in the opening
sequence, and midway through the film Shirley MacLaine rips in half a sketch he
has left on his café table when he doesn’t have the money to pay his bill.
Consider that the book for this musical was a plea
against censorship, written during the McCarthy era. The film appeared in 1960. Nikita Khrushchev was allegedly offended
after watching the can-can on set.
Many people complained that they couldn’t imagine
Frank Sinatra playing a Frenchman; I wonder if they could imagine him as an
Italian! He’s paired with two definite
Frenchmen: Maurice Chevalier and Louis
Jourdan. Curiously, no one seemed to
complain that they couldn’t imagine Shirley MacLaine playing a French woman!
I did enjoy this film. I notice that when people were sworn in the
trial scenes, they did not say “So help me, God.” I noticed the various ways that Sinatra
pronounced his French.
It might surprise people to learn that censorship
actually was an issue in 1890’s Paris. Many groups worked for the “suppression of
Vice.” Maybe it wasn’t so different in
the United States of the mid-twentieth century.
This being a Cole Porter musical, however, you shouldn’t
be surprised to learn that the censors are won over by the art.
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