Can-Can

This is another film which was often shown on TV (twice on the local channel alone!) but I hadn’t bothered with until now; it’s recently been released as a 2-Disc Set by Fox but, in view of its middling reputation, opted to acquire the film by itself.

To begin with, the DVD presentation had its good and bad points: the film was made available in its “Roadshow Version” – running 142 minutes against the “General Release Version” which eliminated 11 minutes of extraneous music (Overture, Intermission, Entr’ Acte and Exit Music); unfortunately, time seems to have taken its toll on the negative as there were several instances of color fluctuation throughout! As can be surmised, I decided to give the film a whirl as part of my ongoing marathon to commemorate the 10th anniversary from the passing of its male lead – Frank Sinatra; curiously enough, given his reputation as one of the foremost American singers, he appeared in few vintage musicals over the years…and it’s certainly a tribute to his acting talent that his non-musical work (often in hard-hitting, even groundbreaking films) has tended to overshadow this more familiar aspect of his personality – at least on the silver screen!

Anyway, to get back to the film proper: I found it quite engaging and its considerable length not overly taxing – and this, to a large degree, is thanks to the formidable star cast (which, apart from Sinatra, included Shirley MacLaine, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan). The first two had already appeared together – albeit in dramatic roles – in SOME CAME RUNNING (1958), while the others had been wonderfully teamed in the same genre and a similar ambiance in GIGI (1958). Ironically, both these films were helmed by a master stylist – Vincente Minnelli…so, perhaps, Fox should have struck a deal with MGM to acquire his services for CAN-CAN – but, given director Lang’s previous musical success with THE KING AND I (1956), they obviously thought he could do no wrong. The fact is that his handling is sterile and more accommodating to the Widescreen ratio than the necessities of the plot and characters – filming events from a distance and rarely cutting or even moving the camera; this lazy approach (which still landed him a nomination from the Directors' Guild Of America!) is doubly frustrating when viewed on a small screen!!

Apparently, the production went through a lot of script changes (Sinatra’s role, reportedly, wasn’t even in the stage original to begin with!), songs were dropped and replaced by other Cole Porter standards which don’t really fit in (such as Jourdan’s “You Do Something To Me”); the rest of the soundtrack isn’t particularly outstanding (unlike that of GIGI, for instance) but a number of tunes are cleverly reprised (sometimes with variations and by different characters) during the course of the film. It was nice, too, seeing two world-renowned singers with such different styles as Sinatra and Chevalier come together (and having fun with it); Chevalier and Jourdan’s roles, then, are virtual carbon copies of their GIGI characterizations – but it’s a formula that seems to work (even if it’s not as central to the main plot this time around, Jourdan having been relegated to The Other Man type).

MacLaine did few musicals as well but her vivaciousness (as a dancer and owner of an establishment which finds itself frequently in trouble with the law over the forbidden “Can-Can” dance, but who manages to charm the stuffy judge at the trial) ensures that her numbers emerge as the show’s highlights: the Apache Dance, the drunken recital of a vulgar song at her engagement party to Jourdan (at the instigation of lawyer Sinatra, who loves her but is unwilling to commit himself) and the “Garden Of Eden” sequence (intended to demonstrate that “Sin wasn’t invented in Montmartre – it was only perfected there”!). Two other important figures (though both severely underwritten) are those played by Juliet Prowse and Frenchman Marcel Dalio as the nervous but devoted manager of the “Bal De Paradis” (the latter was a versatile actor in his native land, but he was stuck with this kind of unrewarding role during his long tenure in Hollywood!); the former appears as a leading dancer at the club and MacLaine’s prospective rival – interestingly, the two actresses’ physiognomies are strikingly similar – for Sinatra’s attentions (a situation which is indirectly played upon during the afore-mentioned “Garden Of Eden” number, apart from which they’re teamed for the climactic Can-Can performance…to the predictable enthusiasm of the formerly disapproving head of a female Legion Of Decency-type group).

In the end, while this film can’t be considered a classic musical as such, it still seems to me to have been unfairly maligned – as some fantastic talent has been assembled in the service of a charming (albeit unsurprising) narrative to provide colorful (if uninspired) entertainment which the genre was capable of during its studio-system heyday…

The performers do not sing Cole Porter the way the best of singers can sing Cole Porter. Doris Day in "Lullaby of Broadway" sings "Just one of those things" wearing a tuxedo in a way that outshines Maurice Chevalier. Bob Hope singing "You do something to me" excels in a way that Louis Jordan cannot. Frank Sinatra and Shirley McClain singing "Let's do it" ends up as tepid as it gets as compared to almost anyone else's rendition. That these are all masters of the singer's craft makes for an astounding realization--the knack for singing a Cole Porter song is not for everyone or for every vehicle. One wonders how other singers handle interpretation of these songs in the same play. The movie was disappointing because the performances were disappointing.

What does an old musical set in France need? Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan, of course! And since there's also singing and a cute dancer who likes showing off her legs, what else does it need? Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine! Can-Can has Shirley, both French charmers, and Ol' Blue Eyes.

Set in the 1800s, when the can-can dance was forbidden in France because it was too risqué, Shirley MacLaine decides to buck the system and allows her and her nightclub dancers show off their legs. Lots of dancing from choreographer Hermes Pan, lots of pretty costumes, lots of Cole Porter songs, and a love triangle that will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time, Can-Can is definitely one to see if you like old musicals. I've seen them all, and while this one doesn't make it to the top shelf in my collection, I'm glad I saw it. Many famous songs come from this movie, including "I Love Paris", "Let's Do It", "Just One of Those Things", and "It's All Right With Me", so if you like any of those, rent it during your next musical-fest weekend.

Well, Can-Can is not a total loss, but it's not a 10-star gem of a movie either, but - it IS entertaining, but the biggest problem that I see with the film is that everyone looks like they're embarrassed to be in the movie with each other because no one is actually looking at each other when they're saying their lines. Look at the scene where Shirley McClain is making up the story as to how Louis Jourdan was trying to overcome her sexually and the scene goes something like this:

SHIRLEY: And I fought him and fought him and stuggled, but what could a person do? MAURICE: [embarrassed to say] Uh - submit - of course! SHIRLEY: [slightly glances at thim and them says loudly] SUBMIT?

The film just kinda lays there and doesn't do anything. Come on - it's not Gigi! It was really a re-uniting of Louie and Maurice because of their hit movie Gigi and that's about where the uniting ends, but there are some highlights to the film. Shirley McClaine's apache dance with the guys while Louis Jourdan looks on is a great number, and the Adam and Eve Ballet is quite good and Shirley's line before the ballet is wonderful when she says something like this: "Be it known that sin may have been invented in the Garden of Eden, but it was perfected in Monemart!"

It just seems like all they're doing in the film is walking through their dress rehearsal without putting any oomph into the acting, and at the same time the some of the costumes are so tacky that they look like we did as kids when we played dress-up as adults! And, look at the scene before Maurice and Louis sing "Live and Let Live". It looks like it was inserted on purpose so that they could have the opportunity to sing the song, and the scene in which Maurice sings "It Was Just One of Those Things". Even that looks like it was inserted on purpose just to give him a chance to sing a song, but the songs are great even though most of them were never in the original broadway play such as "You Do Something To Me", "Let's Do It", and "It Was Just One of Those Things", "It's Alright With Me" [which is slow and a very boring rendition], and oddly enough "I Love Paris" a duet between Frank Sinatra and Maurice Chevalier was deleted from the movie and only heard in the the original soundtrack album, and the Oveture and beginning Credits of the video, that is if you have the first video version of Can-Can in which you get the Oveture, Intermission Music, and Exit Music with all the musical numbers letter-boxed, and why they deleted "I Love Paris" from the movie is beyond me since it was the hit of the show. Again, Hollywood has been known to do some dumb stuff!

Juliet Prowse's big number "Maids From France" is quite good, but it's obvious why she's in the scene with Frank Sinatra when he sings "It's Alright With Me" because at that time they were having an affair, and I guess if it was alright with them it should be alright with us, but later he would marry Mia Farrow and since Frank was Italian it was only obvious that his kids would call her "Uh-Mama Mia"!

Anyway, I sure wish they would re-release the original video version of "Can-Can" or a whole widescreen version on D.V.D.. Other songs from the Broadway Show were deleted from the movie such as "Never Give Anything Away" "Al-e-Vou-Zon" [which is only used in Shirley McClains apache dance as a melody] "There Is No Trick To A Can Can" which is just used as a melody for the Can-Can at the end of the movie, and again even though they deleted a singing version of the hit of the play "I Love Paris", at least they use the melody of it in the Adam and Eve Ballet, but Shirley McClains drunken version of "Come Along With Me" is delightful, and here goes the insanity of Hollywood again, at the end of the film when the Paddy-Wagon is pulling away with Shirley and Frank in it - the chorus is singing the last lines of "I Love Paris"!

So - why didn't Louis get Shirley in the end? Well, it's obvious that she was in love with Frank Sinatra all the time, but more than that; "Once a Rat Packer; always a Rat Packer"!

"Can-Can" is a feeble and obvious attempt to match the wit and high professional gloss of "Gigi." The cast even included Maurice Chevalier, still enjoying the quiet pleasures of old age as a tolerant judge named Paul Barriere, and Louis Jourdan, cast here as an upright young judge named Philippe Forrestier… After Judge Forrestier becomes amorously involved with the café owner Simone Pistache (Shirley MacLaine), and legally involved with her shifty lawyer boyfriend (Frank Sinatra), he is no longer the same man…

"Can-Can" is a musical film that virtually embodies the reasons for the decline of the genre in the sixties… Except for its appropriately gaudy costumes and for the exuberant performance by dancer Juliet Prowse as a cancan girl, the musical is without joy or genuine style under Walter Lang's unfocused direction…

The Cole Porter score reveals the composer at his most ersatz Parisian… The two of the central roles are grotesquely miscast: Sinatra, who seems to have arrived to Paris by way of New Jersey, creates no discernible or even vaguely likable character in François… MacLaine does well in the musical portions, but her Pistache is simply shrill and unappealing… Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan work hard at injecting some life into the dull proceedings… Chevalier with his trademark shrugged-shoulders, laissez-faire attitude toward life and love, expressed to such songs as "Live and Let Live" and "Just One of Those Things," and Louis Jourdan with the French charm he displayed so prominently in "Gigi."

For all their efforts, however, Can-Can emerges as a flat soufflé