Warner Brothers must have pumped a lot of cash into this production. It's splashy, moves quickly, and has beaucoup musical numbers. I wish it had somehow all paid off.
Cary Grant was at his peak here in 1946, but he looks too old to be a Yalie. He doesn't look OLD. He never looked old, even when he was old, just as he never looked boyish. He seemed to just reach middle adulthood and stay there for fifty years.
That wouldn't necessarily be a problem but he's not only the central figure but he's in every scene except the musical numbers, and he's in some of them too with his faux tenor, his vibrato making the walls tremble. Nobody else is of much significance. Monty Wooley should be funny, and perhaps he was in 1946, when beards were oddities. Alexis Smith looks glorious in glorious Technicolor.
The film itself is almost a musical review, with episodes from somebody's fantasy of Cole Porter's escapades stuck in between. It's kind of an interesting problem. Porter wrote both music and lyrics, and some of them are playful ("You're the Top") and others blue-hued in their melancholy ("In the Still of the Night"). So why doesn't it play? What's the difference between this and, say, "Singin' in the Rain," given that this film has a more dramatic element. For one thing, there's no dancing to speak of here. One number, "I've Got You Under My Skin" is clumsily choreographed, the dancer seeming to practice her yoga mudrahs, a kind of manual of hands. It's okay when a musical lacks believability. Who believed any of Fred and Ginger's plots? What it lacks is exuberance.
Porter's involvement in World War I (that's 1914 to 1918, kids) is romanticized. He gets the idea of "Begin the Beguine" from listening to shell bursts or something -- well, listening to what appear to be Morroccan troops humming in the gloomy night like darkies anyway. Somehow the film links his later, disabling riding accident to his wounds in the war and presents it in the most sentimentalized of ways. I mean, the guy is like FDR struggling to the stage to make his first speech. His homosexuality of course isn't even hinted at. But the writing is pretty careless throughout. The audience loses track of what the year is or what the name of the play is.
Well, not to put the production down too much. The songs we hear are Porter's most popular and sophisticated, and they're popular for good reason. Porter was one of a dozen or so marvelous composers and lyricists who made the American stage blossom in the 30 years from 1925 to 1955. What a gang! Irving Berlin, another outstanding composer/lyricist of the period, couldn't even read music or play the piano except in one key! The music alone makes the movie worth watching once. Will someone explain to me what's happened to American vernacular music?
Cary Grant was at his peak here in 1946, but he looks too old to be a Yalie. He doesn't look OLD. He never looked old, even when he was old, just as he never looked boyish. He seemed to just reach middle adulthood and stay there for fifty years.
That wouldn't necessarily be a problem but he's not only the central figure but he's in every scene except the musical numbers, and he's in some of them too with his faux tenor, his vibrato making the walls tremble. Nobody else is of much significance. Monty Wooley should be funny, and perhaps he was in 1946, when beards were oddities. Alexis Smith looks glorious in glorious Technicolor.
The film itself is almost a musical review, with episodes from somebody's fantasy of Cole Porter's escapades stuck in between. It's kind of an interesting problem. Porter wrote both music and lyrics, and some of them are playful ("You're the Top") and others blue-hued in their melancholy ("In the Still of the Night"). So why doesn't it play? What's the difference between this and, say, "Singin' in the Rain," given that this film has a more dramatic element. For one thing, there's no dancing to speak of here. One number, "I've Got You Under My Skin" is clumsily choreographed, the dancer seeming to practice her yoga mudrahs, a kind of manual of hands. It's okay when a musical lacks believability. Who believed any of Fred and Ginger's plots? What it lacks is exuberance.
Porter's involvement in World War I (that's 1914 to 1918, kids) is romanticized. He gets the idea of "Begin the Beguine" from listening to shell bursts or something -- well, listening to what appear to be Morroccan troops humming in the gloomy night like darkies anyway. Somehow the film links his later, disabling riding accident to his wounds in the war and presents it in the most sentimentalized of ways. I mean, the guy is like FDR struggling to the stage to make his first speech. His homosexuality of course isn't even hinted at. But the writing is pretty careless throughout. The audience loses track of what the year is or what the name of the play is.
Well, not to put the production down too much. The songs we hear are Porter's most popular and sophisticated, and they're popular for good reason. Porter was one of a dozen or so marvelous composers and lyricists who made the American stage blossom in the 30 years from 1925 to 1955. What a gang! Irving Berlin, another outstanding composer/lyricist of the period, couldn't even read music or play the piano except in one key! The music alone makes the movie worth watching once. Will someone explain to me what's happened to American vernacular music?