On the Riviera

There is probably more remakes left in The Red Cat, the play on which Folies Bergere, That Night In Rio, and now On The Riviera is based. Danny Kaye in this film steps into the shoes of first Maurice Chevalier and Don Ameche and they fit well.

Like his predecessors Kaye plays dual roles, an American entertainer who includes impressions in his act and a French industrialist who was an air ace a World War ago. The entertainer has Corinne Calvet in his act as an assistant and the industrialist is married to Gene Tierney.

When the industrialist makes a secret trip to Great Britain for some financing his associates are left holding the bag with another French industrialist. They hire Kaye the entertainer to impersonate the industrialist and the results, especially with the interaction between the women are hilarious.

I'm surprised that Danny Kaye never thought to play the Dromios in a film version of A Comedy Of Errors. With his friend Laurence Olivier as Antipholus it would have been a classic.

On The Riviera got two Oscar nominations for Art&Set Direction and for musical scoring by Alfred Newman. Sylvia Fine also known as Mrs. Kaye wrote most of the score and Popo The Puppet got Kaye a lot of success with his children fans. But the hit was the oldtime ragtime song Ballin' The Jack revived for On The Riviera.

This film holds up well and one of these days Robin Williams will see this as a property for him. As it is three fine films have been made already.

Not all Danny Kaye films have lasted well. In my opinion the two that have are "The Court Jester" and "On The Riviera".

"On the Riviera" is a superbly mounted comedy, with gorgeous Riviera scenery, lavish sets, and some ravishingly beautiful women. The mistaken identity plot is an old one but there great scenes of confusion and some good and sometimes surprisingly suggestive dialogue, unusual for the time especially in a Danny Kaye movie.

Dance routines are imaginative and energetic with some statuesque and eager looking chorus girls. Gwen Verdon does a specialty number.

Thoroughly enjoyable, it stands up to repeat viewing.

"The Red Cat" was a Broadway play. It was back Darryl Zanuck and brought to the screen almost immediately as "Folies Bergère de Paris" and then, within a short time, remade it as "A Night in Rio" and now here in "On the Riviera"! And, if that isn't enough, the basic story idea of this script is very familiar--using one of Hollywood's oldest clichés--the 'identical stranger'. Like "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "The Prince and the Pauper", this movie hinges on the audience accepting that this is possible. In other words, if you can't accept this, the film will be rough sailing.

In this version, the lead is played by the talented Danny Kaye--who sings and dances up a storm. Now if you like singing and dancing, you're in luck. If you don't, then once again it will be rough sailing. My problems is that I am not a huge musical fan. There are, of course, exceptions. Kaye plays dual roles--a singer/dancer as well as a famous French aviator. The humor begins, such as it is, when the aviator is in London and he's needed in Paris--so, reluctantly, the actor/dancer is paid to pretend to be the aviator. The acting is quite good but the story is just too old and too familiar to make the story anything other than a time-passer.

By the way, while I wasn't all that impressed by this film, I must say that the special features on the DVD for the film are terrific--and actually make watching it worth while. I especially liked "The Rivera Story", as it showed side-by-side comparisons of the three films--and they were often word-for-word the same picture.

On the Riviera is the third film made from a stage play called The Red Cat, the other two being L'homme des Folies Bergère (1935) with Maurice Chevalier and That Night in Rio (1941) with Don Ameche. The plot is an example of a genre that goes right back to Plautus and Shakespeare: the comedy and confusion that result when two people who happen to look identical keep getting mistaken for each other. In this case, the two people (both played by Danny Kaye) are a famous French transatlantic aviator and an American entertainer playing a club on the French Riviera. This seems like a very obscure film: it's not found in any of the half-dozen standard film guides I happen to have, though it's in IMDb.

The film, directed by Hollywood workmanlike director Walter Lang (who made a number of other 50s musicals, like this one now mostly forgotten,) is a semi-musical; that is, there are plenty of song and dance numbers, but they are all stage performances. The most interesting aspect of the film is its display of Kaye's multiple talents as a singer, dancer, comic and impressionist -- he's the sort of performer popular in the thirties through early sixties, but now seems an almost extinct species.

The film is an interesting period piece for its sumptuous female fashions and as an early example of what would become mainstream American Hollywood musical entertainment, and if you are interested in those topics, or in Kaye, this will be worth watching. Others may find it only moderately entertaining. There is some impressive landscape photography of the Riviera, though Hitchcock did this better in To Catch a Thief.

The 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Blu-Ray DVD is of good audio and video quality.

When i was young i was a great fan of Danny Kaye.I even remember being taken to see him at the London Palladium.I saw all of his films and watched his TV shows when they were aired as BBC2s prime variety show when it opened in 1964.Now i look at films like these and wonder why.This is a tepid remake of Follies Bergere which starred Maurice Chevalier.The original was far funnier and had a couple of marvellous musical numbers.Unfortunately one has to say that one let alone two Kaye performances in this remake is too much.Lets be honest he just isn't funny.All of his routines we have already seen many times before this GE Walter Mitty.The musical numbers are long and drawn out and with more perspiration and inspiration.There must have been a reason why i liked him but i cant imagine why now.