One of my 5 favorite films of all times. I spent years away from my home America, and first saw this film when I was 14. But each time I see it, I laugh, cry, and remember what all butterflies must feel as they leave their chrysalis to become the lovely free spirits we so admire---Such is Jeanne Crain's sentimental journey through her teen-age angst towards a young emancipated woman. In her earnest struggle to 'fit in', and be popular like her best friend the beautiful and racy Mirabelle, a.k.a. Barbara Lawrence and her boyfriend 'Johnnikins' (a young and dashing Conrad Janis), the high school heartthrob(Move over DiCaprio) for whom Margie carries a heavy torch with his Beaver Coat and Pork Pie hat, (and way cooler 'moves' than Brando ever had). Yet she is humiliated and passed over at every turn not in small part due to her proclivity for losing her bloomers at the most inopportune times, including in front of the 'yummy' new French School teacher (Glenn Langdon). But despite a series of wildly comedic misunderstandings, (what is youth for, if not confusion?) she finally finds her true footing and purpose when she delivers a spectacular political speech that is as relevant today as it was in 1946, or actually the Roaring Twenties (when this film was set), wherein she bravely fights her own need for acceptance, against her admiration but embarrassment over her grandmother's militant views, and the small town that confines her dreams to its mundane outlook. All this lovely romantic lunacy, plus Rudy Vallee's nostalgic, heart-warning songs, glorious, unmatched Technicolor, the masterful direction of one of the legends of Cinema, Henry King, the innocence of an era we ALL deserve to experience if only in our hearts, manage to coalesce in Margie's own nature, through Jeanne Crain ethereal but strong willed performance allowing her emergence as a true 'Belle of the Bal', not via today's facile, surface cinematic crutches, but more from an inner beauty, that transforms the shy, insecure Margie into a radiant star. A Cinderalla story with substance, heart and a debatably 'Happy ending', as I have always been drawn to more swashbuckling heroic types---still, I'll watch this joyful classic forever, and hope for it's arrival on D.V.D. Why can't they make movies like they use to?
