Can-Can (1960)

the leading man is my tpye

Excellent, a Must See

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film would have been more provocative had they shown more scenes regarding this forbidden dance raging in Paris circa 1900.The film was certainly not one of Shirley MacLaine's better performances. She does show a simpleness marked in her Oscar nominated performance in "Some Came Running."As always, Maurice Chevalier stars in an advisory capacity, as a magistrate, who still likes the swinging life along with attorney Frank Sinatra. Louis Jourdan is wonderful as the stiff magistrate who finds love with MacLaine.The film may also have suffered because it may very well have been compared to the Oscar winner-"Gigi."

A recent NYC concert version of CAN-CAN (w/ a superb Patti LaPone) revealed a reasonably sturdy book & an underrated late Cole Porter score. Where had it been hiding all these years? Perhaps the vanishing act can be blamed on this inept film version which mangles the plot, throws away two-thirds of the score (even 'I Love Paris' is stiffed) and has all the French flavor of a Burger King croissant. Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier show up to provide Gallic seasoning (Jourdan does his numbers charmingly and has far more rapport with Shirley MacLaine than his victorious rival, Frank Sinatra, while Chevalier's intro to 'Just One of Those Things' is the best thing in the film), but Minnelli's GIGI, Huston's MOULIN ROUGE and Renoir's FRENCH CAN CAN are each in their own way infinitely superior to this malarkey.NOTE: It takes a lot of chutzpah to include a DVD-extra tribute to writer Abe Burrows on a pic that utterly trashes his work on the original stage show.

... what have they done to your wonderful Broadway show? Answer; about what you'd expect from a Hollywood that had a congenital aversion to transposing Broadway musicals to the screen untampered with so that, for example, a family from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who went to NY on vacation and saw, for example, The Pajama Game, on Broadway could return home secure in the knowledge that the movie version they saw at their local movie theatre a couple of years later would NOT be the show they saw on Broadway.Frank Sinatra appeared in Five movie versions of Broadway musicals during his career and NONE of them was wholly satisfactory, mostly because of meaningless tampering. Higher and Higher, for example, retained only ONE number from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway show and that one, Disgustingly Rich, was a minor number; on the other hand the film did give Sinatra two 'hits' in A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening and I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night. On The Town also jettisoned a sizable portion of the Broadway score, including Lonely Town, and added stuff that was one step above total garbage. Guys and Dolls was by far the most faithful to the Broadway original but even then they jettisoned the 'big' ballad, I've Never Been In Love Before (as well as A Bushel And A Peck) but they DID prevail on the original composer, Frank Loesser, to supply new material (Adelaide, A Woman In Love); Pal Joey suffered a bad case of both jettisoning and interpolating disparate songs by the same writers (Rodgers and Hart) so that Happy Hunting Horn, Do It The Hard Way, In Our Little Den Of Iniquity, What Is A Man, Plant You Now, Dig You Later, all went out the window and were replaced - if that's the word - by There's A Small Hotel, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is A Tramp. Which brings us to Can-Can. Cole Porter went to great pains to replicate the Sound of Parisian Music Hall circa 1890 - a fact I mentioned in my review of the execrable Moulin Rouge, which made absolutely NO concession to its time frame - so it is ironic that Fox elected to discard such Porter gems as Allez-vous en, I Am In Love, Never Give Anything Away, Ev'ry Man Is A Stupid Man, Never, Never Be An Artist, all of which had the FEEL of the period, in favour of You Do Something To Me, Just One Of Those Things, Let's Do It, which are totally out of place in the context of the story and time. They also 'created' a part for Sinatra that didn't exist in the show and he was allowed to PLAY the Sinatra for which he is best known, hip, cool, ring-a-ding ding (at one point Louis Jourdan even SAYS ring-a-ding ding - in 1896, yet - when describing the Sinatra character to Shirley MacLaine). I write as a lifetime admirer of both Sinatra AND Cole Porter so I was doubly disappointed with this travesty. Ironically the BEST Screen musical in which Sinatra ever appeared was High Society, also the work of Cole Porter and DOUBLY ironically it was so successful that it became s Stage musical with - you've guessed it - several EXTRA Porter numbers interpolated. Can-Can had the potential to be an outstanding film musical instead it is little more than mediocre.

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.