Un jour à New-York

Another Comden-Green triumph! Although it may not be as good as "Singin' In The Rain", it's truly a masterpiece that no home should be with out!

Jules Munshin is energetic in the role of Ozzie! Gene Kelly plays the part of the lovesick Gabey absolutely perfect! And although I am a die hard Kelly fan, I must say that the best male performance given in this film was from Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Mr. Frank Sinatra! In the role of Chip, he brings a certain innocence as well as that sailor spunk and vitality! And the three of them crooning songs such as "New York, New York", "Let's Go To My Place" and "On The Town" is absolutely wonderful (especially Kelly and Sinatra)!

Ann Miller is fantastic as the leggy anthropologist, Claire! She brings a lot of zest to her role! (It's hilarious to hear her refer to Ozzie as "Specimen"!) Vera-Ellen also is WONDERFUL in the role of Ivy, or "Miss Turnstiles"! She is a highly underrated actress... and her dancing is truly DIVINE! However, another highly underated actress is Betty Garrett, who portrays the female cabbie, Hildie! She makes the role zippy and sassy... and she and Chip singing "Let's Go To My Place" is an absolute knee-slapper that will have you laughing and singing with it every time! Alice Pearce is also rather funny as Hildie's roomate, Lucy Shmeeler.

I recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of musicals, especially the older ones, such as "An American In Paris", "Singin' In The Rain" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." This carefree frolic of a film will leave you laughing and singing for days!

I've rewatched both these movie musicals in the space of a week, and ON THE TOWN is no SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. I mean, what is? By 1952, the sheer technical mastery of Gene Kelly had melded perfectly with an entire soundtrack of classics and a clever, satirical plotline with some of the best film characters ever created (Lina Lamont, anybody?).

Having got *that* out of the way, however, there is simply no denying that ON THE TOWN is essential viewing in the Kelly oeuvre. It tells the story of three lonely sailors who finally get shore leave in New York for 24 hours. Of course, they're on the prowl to paint the town red, preferably with girls on their arms. (Though for a brief while Sinatra does charmingly play a skinny little geek bent on seeing the sights of New York, flinging facts from his guide book and appearing unaffected by Betty Garrett's streetwise cabbie flinging herself at him.) Gabey (Gene Kelly) falls for 'Miss Turnstiles' or Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), and spends the day trying to track her down from information on the poster. Chip (Frank Sinatra) meets cabbie Hildy (Garrett) who teaches him how to have a little fun while they romp gaily through two great duets together ('Come Up To My Place' and 'You're Awful'). Ozzie (Jules Munshin), in the meantime, gets entangled with the Claire Huddesen (an absolutely delightful Ann Miller), who likes how much he resembles her ideal 'Prehistoric Man'. They dance and sing their way through a series of misunderstandings between Gabey and Ivy, but all comes right in the end as the girls bid their fellows farewell from the dock.

So what's so good about ON THE TOWN, you ask? Well, first of all, it's brilliant fun and very amusing--from the dancing to the singing to the snappy dialogue. It takes a while to get used to the *very* forward New York women (played with marvellous wit and charm by Garrett and Miller), but once you get over their throwing themselves at Chip and 'Specimen' respectively, you really appreciate ON THE TOWN for what it is: pure, unadulterated, and unpretentious entertainment.

Granted: The songs aren't as catchy as in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. But there are definitely some minor classics to be heard here--'You're Awful', Frankie's serenading of Betty, and 'Count On Me' being among them. I thought it was a really nice touch to have Bern Hoffman singing a lazy-morning song, 'I'm Feeling Like I'm Not Out Of Bed' to bookend the film beginning and end, to give the sense of a full day having passed.

It should probably also be granted that there isn't quite enough dancing, especially not from Gene Kelly (who is always a delight to watch, even when mostly playing the bystander as he was in the 'Count On Me' number) and Ann Miller, who got the chance to show off her amazing tap-dancing skills and gorgeous gams in the wildly energetic 'Prehistoric Man'. (It only whetted my appetite to see *more* of her dancing and singing! I'd have liked it if Miller's role was expanded, period. She gave her character an indescribable life and vivacity in the limited screen time she had and overshadowed Vera-Ellen easily.). I'd have loved it if Kelly had danced properly with Miller too, the latter being one of the best female tap-dancers in the business. All the same, the sweet ballad 'Main Street' that Gabey sings to Ivy is accompanied by a beautiful dance routine that shades naturally and easily from dancing to walking and back again--a perfect example of Gene Kelly's ability as both dancer and choreographer to present and capture movie magic with no special effects. I actually much prefer the 'New York Ballet' in this film to the one in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, mostly because it fits the plot beautifully, and is smaller and more intimate and more focused on Gene Kelly the dancer rather than Gene Kelly the choreographer. It gives Kelly the opportunity to shine as both dancer *and* actor: the scenes when he dances with the Miss Turnstiles poster are achingly believable in the way they could only be if Kelly were dancing in them. The shadow sequence at the ballet barre with Vera-Ellen is also something incredible to behold and perfectly-staged.

ON THE TOWN is a great night at the movies, and is time well-spent with a few characters you really get to know, an excellent cast (Alice Pearce practically steals the entire show as Lucy Schmeeler, for example--not an easy task considering who she was playing against!), and a great soundtrack. It's probably one of the best precursors you could have to Kelly's much more ambitious musical undertakings in the form of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. But on its merits, it is definitely worth watching. Perhaps again and again. 8/10.

This film has a very simple plot. Three sailors have 24 hours shore leave in New York. They met three attractive girls, and three romances blossom. And that's about it. The characterisation is really no more advanced than the plot development. The sailors and their sweethearts are each given their own idiosyncrasies, but none of them really emerges as a rounded individual. Fortunately, however, a complex plot and well-developed characters are not always essential to the musical genre, and "On the Town" manages to succeed reasonably well without these elements.

The film's most important quality is the energy and vivacity of its song-and-dance numbers. It was shot on location in New York itself, and the city is portrayed as a vibrant, exciting place, a new world as far as the sailors, who are all country boys, are concerned. There is also plenty of humour, such as the scene where Frank Sinatra wants to go sight-seeing, unlike his new-found girlfriend, a man-hungry female cab driver, who would rather take him back to "my place", Gene Kelly's search for "Miss Turnstiles", whom he imagines to be a glamorous and famous beauty queen, and the scene where the three men manage to demolish a dinosaur skeleton in the city's Museum of Anthropology. (Jules Munshin's girlfriend is described as a lady anthropologist, although the scriptwriters seem to have blurred the difference between anthropology and palaeontology). The songs are tuneful, although with the possible exception of "New York, New York" none of them are particularly memorable. Some have criticised the more formal balletic sequence near the end, but as far as I was concerned this was one of the best parts of the movie. After all, if you are going to make a film starring a dancer as talented as Gene Kelly, you might as well use his talents to the full.

This is not really my favourite musical. It lacks, for example, the indefinable magic of "Singin' in the Rain", which also starred Kelly, or the depth and social comment of "West Side Story", Leonard Bernstein's other New York musical made twelve years later. (The contrast between these two films shows just how far the genre had progressed in just over a decade). Nevertheless, it is enjoyable enough for anyone in the mood for soft-centred escapist entertainment. 7/10

Grand, sure-fire musical entertainment courtesy of MGM, "On the Town" brings euphoric life to the 'Big Apple' like no other piece of celluloid, comedy or drama, before or since. More than just a breath of fresh air, this breezy souffle of a movie is like taking a huge whiff of pure oxygen, leaving you so exhilarated you'd swear you were on some kind of substance-induced high. Drenched in old-fashioned innocence and loaded with dazzling footwork, it gave a tremendous boost to the careers of all involved and helped to create a whole new style of musical film.

Three swabbies on a 24-hour shore pass during WWII bask in the sights and delights of NYC while running into new lady loves in the interim. That's all there is to it. The first musical to actually shoot on location, the viewer has the surreal-like thrill of a first-time vacationer as the movie juxtaposes every tourist trap imaginable, plus some, while capturing the pulse and heart of the City to endless effect.

Briskly co-directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the movie would initially appear to have everything going AGAINST it. The plot is so thin and flaky it almost evaporates into thin air. Moreover, the directors made the seemingly unwise choice of dumping nearly all of the charming Leonard Bernstein score and Betty Comden/Adolph Green libretto for newer, untried songs by Roger Edens. Well, in good reliable hands, this not only works, it dances circles around the original!

There's so much going for this movie in the name of talent that its hard to know where to begin. Gene Kelly prepped his choreographic talents here for the later landmark musicals "An American in Paris" and "Singin' in the Rain." He is sheer delight as the lovelorn sailor who pines for "Miss Turnstiles," a billboard fantasy. Jules Munshin unleashes pure Ed Wynn buffoonery as the sailor with the least animal magnetism. Even Frank Sinatra, allows himself to get caught up in all the fun.

And the girls are irresistible too. Betty Garrett shoots with both barrels as the man-chasing cabbie and proves she is quite capable of stepping up to the plate in the dance department. Lithe and lovely Vera-Ellen, who never won the attention she fully deserved, is poetry in motion as Kelly's dream come true. In particular, her adagios with Kelly are imbued with such unsullied passion that it can't help but tug at the ol' nostalgic heart-strings. Peppy Ann Miller is, as always, a revelation as the toe-tapping anthropologist, taking full advantage of the zingy score's newer songs and embellishing them with now-classic dance routines.

As a special treat, my favorite character actress, Alice Pearce, offers side-splitting comedy relief as Kelly's impromptu blind date managing to steal one song from the star ensemble while finding a touching moment of pathos in her final scene. The homely comedienne went on to play nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz in the "Bewitched" TV series to Emmy-winning acclaim. Florence Bates also makes the most of her patented huff and scowl as a tipsy ballet mistress, and see if you can scout out an unbilled Bea Benadaret (Kate in "Petticoat Junction") as a subway tootsie.

Still the highlight, and there are many highlights, is the infectious title tune atop the Empire State Building with Kelly & Company. Nowhere in the history of filmed musicals will you find such barn-storming talent and exuberant fun packed into one simple little tune. That sequence is a natural tape-rewinder.

You know the old saying, "They don't make 'em like this anymore?" Oh, they are so right.

It is surprising how many people don't seem to realise (or don't care) that a large fraction of Leonard Bernstein's music score, written for the original stage musical of 1944, was dropped when this film was made. Only four of the original numbers were retained. The replacement music, credited in the titles to Roger Edens, is serviceable enough but simpler and decidedly more brash, and as such it detracts somewhat from the character of the original. In particular the absence of such numbers as 'What's more I can cook' and 'Some other time' is highly regrettable. It seems odd to me that that having done the maestro such a disservice the film was still awarded a music Oscar in 1950. Nevertheless it remains a highly entertaining romp – how could it fail with a cast that includes Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller and Vera-Ellen. It's just that it could have been even better.

For anyone who wants to find out what Bernstein's original score was like, there is a live recording of a semi-staged performance of the musical made in London in 1992 with the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas and a magnificent cast of singers including Thomas Hampson and Frederica von Stade. The only thing you don't get is the dancing! It is available on CD and hopefully a few copies of the video may be knocking around. Unfortunately it seems that no DVD was ever released.