moonspinner55

Graham Greene adapted his own novel about a British vacuum cleaner salesman and single father in pre-Revolution Cuba who is recruited as an agent into the British Secret Service. He takes the assignment for the money--so his daughter can have a horse and ride at the country club--but what is it the Secret Service wants him to do? His drinking buddy, a disillusioned doctor, gives the salesman the idea that making up contacts and situations wouldn't be immoral--after all, the Secret Service does nothing but take taxpayer's money--but the deception quickly backfires. Comedy-drama has a good cast--including Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Burl Ives, Noël Coward, and Ernie Kovacs (quite sexy as a "vulgar" captain)--but Alec Guinness is disappointing in the lead. Guinness does an amusing pantomime bit early in the movie (and an even funnier Coward impression), but he's so fey he practically evaporates on the screen. Director Carol Reed understands the irreverence of the spy scenario and that it needs a dryly reserved touch in order to work; however, his approach is so low-keyed that it ultimately makes one drowsy. ** from ****

Writer-director Jacques Demy's homage to 1950s Hollywood musicals, in French with English subtitles, suffers from the same fate as many of the splashy, starry-eyed movies he hoped to emulate: the singing, the dancing, the costumes and the settings are all marvelous, though the characters aren't particularly magical or memorable and their romantic predicaments and match-ups are cookie-cutter by design. Demy, affecting a nautical visual theme (!), tells a rather underwhelming romantic story for a film that runs over two hours. Carnival workers arrive in the French town of Rochefort to set the stage for an upcoming fair, meet and attempt to woo local twin sisters who teach piano and ballet. The lovely siblings have a mother who runs the local café; she's still pining for the one man who slipped through her hands (he isn't far), while an excitable American composer comes to town and has a meet-cute with one of the sisters (she drops her brother's school supplies, leaving behind the sheet music to a song she's composed; he plays it at the piano until she returns). There's also a sailor looking for Miss Right and a kindly old gentleman who, as it turns out, is a wanted murderer (his crime of passion is blithely brought up and forgotten). The film's color palette is really something to see: lemon-yellows and fuchsia pinks blended with aqua-blues and electric-oranges (and that's just the beginning!). The choreography by Norman Maen is just passable and the dancing is often unpolished (except for Gene Kelly's numbers), but the high spirits of the film are tangible, carrying the picture through its first hour. The opening number on a transporter bridge perfectly sets the mood of "Rochefort", and may well have inspired 2016's "La La Land". Unfortunately, the second hour tends to drag its feet, even with a fairground sequence where real-life sisters (but not twins) Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac strut their stuff in red sequins (though not very proficiently). The film wants to be a bubbly bash but doesn't quite have the talent needed to get it there. Kelly gives things a boost (his quick dance with two sailors and then some schoolchildren is the highlight), but musical-comedy doesn't appear to be Deneuve's forte. ** from ****

Stranger rides into saloon town and arouses the women folk; turns out he's after the man who killed his brother...but when he finds him, he decides he kind of likes him. Still, when a duel is announced, it has to be fulfilled (that's the Code of the West!). Rootin'-tootin' musical western from Paramount, originally shot in 3D but finally released in 2D after sitting on the shelf for close to a year. The Technicolor cinematography by Arthur E. Arling is eye-popping, as are Edith Head's imaginative costumes. The stylized sets constructed on Paramount sound stages were designed to make the movie look like a Broadway show, but audiences were apparently put off by the concept. The weak link instead is Michael Fessier's screenplay (with uncredited help from Frank Tashlin), which isn't much more than an outline (with stock characters to match). Rosemary Clooney and Guy Mitchell share a sassy duet played directly to the camera that sounds like a spoof of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better", and rubber-legs Buddy Ebsen gets to dance with the saloon gals, but the male-female romantic match-ups are rote. Still, not bad, and Clooney has at least one other good number about heroes and cowards from the song score by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. One Oscar nomination: for Best Art Direction-Color. ** from ****