Star of the month movie pick March 8, 2006

An American in Paris (1951)****

“It’s wonderful, it smarvelous”, but it’s also an average musical, though it does feature 44 (!) elaborate sets and did win six Oscars. It probably won Best Picture by benefiting from a split vote between A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and A Place in the Sun (1951). It does have a great, if long, dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. And, Oscar Levant and Nina Foch do provide excellent support. Director Vincente Minnelli received his first nomination (he later won for Gigi (1958), another questionable Best Picture winner). Added to the National Film Registry in 1993. #68 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies list. #39 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Love Stories list. “I Got Rhythm” is #32 on AFI’s 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time.

Kelly is a struggling American artist, working in Paris, until he finds a “sugar daddy” (er, “sugar mommy”?) in Foch. He pals around with his piano playing friend (Levant), dancing & singing “I Got Rhythm” with street kids. His friend knows a singer (Georges Guétary) that’s engaged to a pretty young thing (Caron). When Kelly meets her, he naturally falls in love. He then chases her, trying to “win” her away from her unawares fiance, much to the dismay of Foch and his friend Levant. But, when the two dance, “c’est la vie”!

classic film guide at www.classicfilmguide.com/

Did you know? March 8, 2006

Cher Once confess to playboy that she was one of Warren Beatty’s one night stands while he was involveed with Natalie Wood And she was an unknown sixteen year old . “ I did it because my girlfriend were just so crazy about him ansd so was my mother’” I saw warren and he picked me up and I did it” (was she a carrier women then??)

Star of the month "Leslie Caron" March 8, 2006

An endearing French leading lady with attractively unconventional “funny face” looks, Leslie Caron was a classically trained dancer who, after being discovered by Gene Kelly for “An American in Paris” (1951), starred successfully in other English-language movies over the next decades. She did make several other musicals in the early 50s, including a retelling of Cinderella, “The Glass Slipper” (1954), and “Daddy Long Legs” (1955), opposite Fred Astaire, but she seemed to prefer relying on her warmth and considerable talent as an actress, spending most of her career in straight comedy and drama.

…Early in her career Caron specialized in waif-like gamines, sometimes orphaned; probably her finest performance of the period came in the delightful children’s fantasy “Lili” (1953), for which she justly won an Oscar nomination. By the end of the 50s, Caron was getting too old to sustain the role, and many of her 60s starring films (i.e., “Father Goose” 1964, opposite Cary Grant) cast her in somewhat more standardized leading roles…. Though she acted infrequently during the 70s, her offbeat take on legendary stage and screen actress Nazimova was a highlight of Ken Russell’s typically bizarre biopic “Valentino” (1977).

…She played Sela Ward’s mother-in-law in “Passion’s Way”, a CBS movie airing during the 1997-98 season, and joined with Dame Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Olympia Dukakis and Cleo Laine for the charming HBO telepic “Last of the Blonde Bombsells” (2000), in which Dench’s character, now a senior citizen, attempts to reunite her WWII-era swing band.

…Still stunning and refined in her seventies, Caron tackeld one of her best, most enjoyable late-career roles in “Le Divorce” (2003), the sophisticated Merchant-Ivory adaptation of the Diane Johnson best-seller.