Can-Can

Another Cole Porter Broadway show makes it Hollywood, but not intact. Can Can retained most of its score, but 20th Century Fox added some other Porter standards like Let's Do It. Just One of Those Things, You Do Something To Me. And of course the book was sanitized by the Hollywood censors.

Briefly the plot is a girl who's a Can Can dancer played by Shirley MacLaine has to choose between two men of the legal profession. Upright judge, Louis Jourdan and less than scrupulous attorney, Frank Sinatra. Maurice Chevalier is an older judge who knows all of them and presides over the film like an avuncular grandfather.

The performers all do justice to the Cole Porter score and the best musical moment is Frank Sinatra's singing of It's All Right With Me. He's singing it to Juliet Prowse who was his main squeeze at the time. It's one of Sinatra's best musical moments on film, a perfect mating of singer and song.

I'm sure glad neither Sinatra or MacLaine attempted any kind of phony French accent. Sinatra tried a Spanish one in The Pride and the Passion and the results were hilarious.

Shirley MacLaine before she came to Hollywood was in the chorus of Can-Can on Broadway so she was a perfect fit for her part as Simone Pistache the cabaret owner where the illegal Can-Can is performed.

For reasons I don't understand a duet with Frank Sinatra and Maurice Chevalier singing I Love Paris was cut, though it remained in the original cast album. Blockheads at Fox, what were they thinking?

It also would have been nice to have some Paris location shooting for this film, it was all done at 20th Century's backlot where Nikita Khruschev paid a historic visit and said this was an example of western immorality and decadence. You couldn't buy that kind of publicity.

Verdict on this film, well as Old Blue Eyes sang:

RING-A-DING DING DING, C'est Magnifique.

Strangely enough, the weakest aspect of this musical is the quality of the songs. Most of them are fairly mediocre, and fail to stay in the memory for long. But otherwise, "Can-Can" is a smashing entertainment. Lavishly produced and gorgeously photographed, this is one expensive movie where the money were spent with care and taste (unlike, for example, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" which, despite its big budget, looked cheap). The story may be a little thin, but it's suspenseful, too: you can never predict with absolute certainty if MacLaine will choose Sinatra (who is wonderful) or Louis Jourdan (who is as sly and charming as he was when he played the villain in "Octopussy"). But above everything else, this movie is a feast for the eyes!

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.

I was all set to dislike "Can-Can" for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is Frank Sinatra cast in a musical set in 1896 France...Frank Sinatra??), but the film is a lot of fun. Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine are in good spirits throughout this pleasing adaptation of the stage-success about a dance-hall proprietress who defends her right to perform the scandalous title-named dance, deemed lascivious in its day. It runs a little too long, and MacLaine is more comfortable in her love scenes with Ol' Blue Eyes than with Louis Jourdan (who doesn't match up well with Shirley at all--he looks puny next to her), but otherwise it's surprisingly enjoyable and Juliet Prowse gives her small part as a dancer a great deal of zest. **1/2 from ****

"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