This lavish but plodding showbiz biopic of songwriting legend Cole Porter forces Porter's life story into the typical glitzy Hollywood mode of the time period and never even attempts to provide any true insight into it's subject. The film has been considerably sanitized and whitewashed even beyond the norm that Hollywood was used to at the time. It is not surprising that no mention of Porter's homosexuality is made, but it is truly offensive that the filmmakers have the audacity to depict Porter as a wounded war veteran when he was never even in the military! It is almost as if director Michael Curtis and his team of writers have constructed a generic showbiz picture and grafted Porter's name and songs onto it as a marketing point.
The film should still have the potential to work as a fictionalized biography, however, if it was well-executed on its own terms, but, for the most part, it is not. The benign nature of the screenplay seems to confuse most of the actors, and the majority of the cast often seem indifferent or confused by the gutted characters they are portraying. Not unexpectedly, the film's biggest asset is Cary Grant, who is a somewhat surprisingly adept choice to play the film's idealized version of Porter. Grant's immense talent and innate charisma can go a long way to salvage even some of the worst films, but he is given so little to work with here that he eventually disappears into the bland void with everything else.
Even the music the one thing that could have saved the film is handled badly, with too many songs performed in generic arrangements and sung by tone deaf actors. Sadly, Monty Woolley, playing himself, is the worst offender in this regard, although Ginny Simms also sings far too many songs in an atrocious faux-opera style that really grates my nerves. Inexplicably, even when a number sonically works (as in Mary Martin's fabled rendition of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") the staging and editing often undermine it. Nearly all of the musical numbers are flatly filmed with garish costumes and set design and further hampered with awkward choreography.
Of note, this was Cary Grant's first film to be shot in Technicolor, and the actor photographed just as beautifully in color (if not more so) than he had in black-and-white (not all early movie stars would be so lucky). The film also has very impressive production values that strongly invoke the proper time and period. I wish that such time and attention were still lavished upon films today. Actually, I wish such time and attention had been lavished upon a better film in 1946!
The film should still have the potential to work as a fictionalized biography, however, if it was well-executed on its own terms, but, for the most part, it is not. The benign nature of the screenplay seems to confuse most of the actors, and the majority of the cast often seem indifferent or confused by the gutted characters they are portraying. Not unexpectedly, the film's biggest asset is Cary Grant, who is a somewhat surprisingly adept choice to play the film's idealized version of Porter. Grant's immense talent and innate charisma can go a long way to salvage even some of the worst films, but he is given so little to work with here that he eventually disappears into the bland void with everything else.
Even the music the one thing that could have saved the film is handled badly, with too many songs performed in generic arrangements and sung by tone deaf actors. Sadly, Monty Woolley, playing himself, is the worst offender in this regard, although Ginny Simms also sings far too many songs in an atrocious faux-opera style that really grates my nerves. Inexplicably, even when a number sonically works (as in Mary Martin's fabled rendition of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") the staging and editing often undermine it. Nearly all of the musical numbers are flatly filmed with garish costumes and set design and further hampered with awkward choreography.
Of note, this was Cary Grant's first film to be shot in Technicolor, and the actor photographed just as beautifully in color (if not more so) than he had in black-and-white (not all early movie stars would be so lucky). The film also has very impressive production values that strongly invoke the proper time and period. I wish that such time and attention were still lavished upon films today. Actually, I wish such time and attention had been lavished upon a better film in 1946!