Le bal du printemps

I've seen this Doris Day-Gordon Mc Rae film a number of times. Actually I first saw it as a little boy when it premiered in 1951. I thought it was a fairy tale then and I still do now. But it's a delightful fairy tale and last night I shared it with my twelve and a half year old son.

A combination of "Father Knows Best" and "Dennis the Menace" with music, "On Moonlight Bay" gave American audiences during a Cold War and a hot Korean conflict the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. All the characters are witty and caring and there's mischief without mayhem. The only violence is a snowball fight and the sole injury is a twisted ankle. The sweetness of the courting couple is what we all want for ourselves but rarely if ever experience. With the mad senator from Wisconsin searching for communists everywhere, the script allowed its male lead to express extravagantly immature ruminations about the evils of patriotism before he, of course, awakened to his duty. This film is from Warner Brothers, the same folks who gave us the Department of Defense funded "Red Nightmare" with Jack Webb.

I wasn't surprised that my son liked the movie a lot. Even at his age he needs and appreciates a good escape from a world less gorgeously delightful than the screen version. Doris Day is very good although her real age is hard to disguise as she acts the teenager.

They don't make musicals like this any more. They can't. Our sensibilities and experiences demand the exotica of films like "Moulin Rouge." "On Moonlight Bay" is a great trip back to an increasingly questioning and insecure America that could imagine a past as happy as that portrayed in the film. I'll see it again. And again.

Here's a nice little piece of cheerful entertainment from Warner Bros. with their number one sweetheart, DORIS DAY, doing her best to be a believable tomboy who turns to dresses when she spots the boy next door, GORDON MacRAE. With some perky period songs (it's from a Booth Tarkington story of small-town life in rural America), an ingratiating cast (Rosemary DeCamp and Leon Ames are perfect as the put upon parents), and Billy Gray as a bratty little brother, it's a nice bit of Americana spruced up by picture postcard technicolor.

Doris Day and Gordon MacRae are clearly too old for the roles they play but here it doesn't seem to matter--their courtship scenes are charming and both display their unique vocal abilities in a number of songs. Especially good is Jack C. Smith as Hubert, Doris' persistent suitor who won't take no for an answer. And Ellen Corby is a delight as a schoolteacher intent on straightening out the misbehaving Billy Gray, who all but walks off with the film as the kid brother from hell.

Very pleasant family film, very much in the tradition of others like MARGIE, LIFE WITH FATHER and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, with its own brand of charm. Good light entertainment, the kind of musical not made these days, unpretentious and sometimes wickedly funny. Mary Wickes, as a maid who is constantly dropping the silverware, gives zest to her role as a cook who can make her one-liners sound inspired.

This is a collection of warm, human and often humorous Booth Tarkington stories, strung together, of a perceived or recalled pre-WWI America. It had all happened half a century before this mid-20th Century production. It was, perhaps, the last clarion call of the sweet, sentimental ballad of the turn of the last Century as Rock and Roll was starting to impact as the popular music of the West.

The production values of this film are strictly 1950s studio. It was shot on tri-exposure Technicolor with the lighting a bit flat but, all in all, a loving tribute to the era complete with many of the top song hits of the time, some that are still celebrated today, in the 21st Century.

Its not often I give a film 10 of out of 10 but Doris Day movies consistently rate that high for me. If you are in a depressed or foul mood, her smiles, her singing, and the cast members around her always can lift you to another place. This is much like a Technicolor Judy Garland film in a lot of ways, with homespun family values and courting. At first, I had a problem with the leads, who seemed too old, playing teenagers. The actors grow on you, especially Doris. The actor playing her annoying kid brother is terrific. The parents are well portrayed and protective. The housekeeper is a wiley classic. Even the family dog gets in the act in several scenes. I recommend the film heartily especially if you want to smile and sing along. Doris Day is and has always been a national treasure. I am very glad I got a chance to spend the afternoon with her in this film.

Though it doesn't match the captivating staging of Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis as a nostalgic period musical, both this charmer and its sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon, based on Booth Tarkington's delightful Penrod stories, are very much in the same mold as the Minnelli classic; both films provide ideal vehicles for the multi-talented Doris Day, seen here at her most fetchingly tomboyish with her frequent on-screen partner at the time, Gordon MacRae. Their combined vocal talents bring genuine class to the turn of the (last) century tunes, providing a veritable cornucopia of some of the era's most recognizable standards. The pair create an easy chemistry mercifully free of the self-conscious projection so prevalent in many contemporary "feel-good" movies. Billy Gray, as Day's younger brother in his pre-Father Knows Best days was a likable and unspoiled child performer, who brought terrific comic timing in the delivery of his misplaced energies. Mary Wickes as the no-nonsense maid who acts as a kind of chorus to the action, is another notable scene-stealer, in a film which like so many of the early Doris Day musicals leaves this viewer with a warm glow.