An old school Hollywood filmmaker, George Cukor dives right into the most profound questions of humanity in "Les Girls" (1957), an MGM musical from the golden days, with an arguably tongue-in-cheek mentality which is, however, too often and too quickly taken as a loss of ambition and artistic devotion. The film discovers its peculiar place in between of conventional romantic comedy and philosophical tragedy. It consists of three flashback sequences linked together by a trial concerning a defamation suit. While all of the testimonies try to tell about the same time, place, and events in Paris around springtime when three female dancers were working for an American dance producer, the things the camera witnesses in each of the stories are wholly different from one another. The grandiose mise-en-scène, the Cinemascope aspect ratio, and the mobile camera as well as the complex narrative give the story an almost epic quality, thus creating poetry out of pulp prose.
"Les Girls" is a very modern film. It has inter-textuality and its narrative shows signs of self- awareness. Although a concept laden with many meanings, modernism is often associated with something called perspectivism, meaning that all of events are filtered through the subjective perspectives of the characters which, in modern fiction, are juxtaposed with one another. "Les Girls" presents the spectator with three stories about the same time and place -- that is, they are intentionally directed to a same spatio-temporal point in the past -- but actually contain different events. This is due to the fact that all of the stories are, as all intentional experiences for that matter, about something from a perspective. "To see is to see from somewhere," wrote the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau- Ponty. Although the final testimony offered by the man involved at first seems to be the most plausible account and a certain final truth on the subject matter, it is very soon questioned by the third girl whose point of view was never heard. To see is always also to avert, and to uncover is always also to cover.
This theme of the subjectivity of truth, and the integral role of perspectival perception in understanding and knowledge, connects "Les Girls" to the masterpiece of modern cinema, Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) which also consists of different stories about the same event from different perspectives. All the characters have experienced things from their own point of view -- which is both physical and mental, one might add -- and give a different account of them to the judge and the jury. Understanding is further problematicized in one scene where a Spaniard in a train compartment cannot linguistically understand the English dialogue between the main characters; yet he, too, arguably has his own point of view to the events. Cukor even seems to joke about this in the title of his film (deriving from the musical act the girls and the man are performing), combining the French definite article with an English word in a satirical slur (which never takes itself that seriously, however) towards Hollywood films where French people cannot speak their mother tongue -- only English in a French accent.
In the end, as in "Rashomon", truth remains an issue. "Truth can make lovers of enemies, but lie can make enemies of lovers," one of the girls summarizes. Lie, in this sense, might be closer to primordial truth than truth itself; or, "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth," as Pablo Picasso once expressed. Truth remains a very concrete issue in the sense that the characters (quite literally) keep stumbling upon the immortal question "what is truth" carried around the courthouse by a man as if he was carrying a billboard for the latest scoop, an ironic comment on the capitalist modifications of truth, perhaps, working also as a certain chorus of Greek tragedy, making Cukor's "Les Girls", once again, a very modern film. The final beauty of the film lies, I suppose, in its brilliant courage to mix things, to throw outrageous comedy with poignant tragedy, menial stories with intelligent insight in the same pot of pondering humanity.
"Les Girls" is a very modern film. It has inter-textuality and its narrative shows signs of self- awareness. Although a concept laden with many meanings, modernism is often associated with something called perspectivism, meaning that all of events are filtered through the subjective perspectives of the characters which, in modern fiction, are juxtaposed with one another. "Les Girls" presents the spectator with three stories about the same time and place -- that is, they are intentionally directed to a same spatio-temporal point in the past -- but actually contain different events. This is due to the fact that all of the stories are, as all intentional experiences for that matter, about something from a perspective. "To see is to see from somewhere," wrote the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau- Ponty. Although the final testimony offered by the man involved at first seems to be the most plausible account and a certain final truth on the subject matter, it is very soon questioned by the third girl whose point of view was never heard. To see is always also to avert, and to uncover is always also to cover.
This theme of the subjectivity of truth, and the integral role of perspectival perception in understanding and knowledge, connects "Les Girls" to the masterpiece of modern cinema, Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) which also consists of different stories about the same event from different perspectives. All the characters have experienced things from their own point of view -- which is both physical and mental, one might add -- and give a different account of them to the judge and the jury. Understanding is further problematicized in one scene where a Spaniard in a train compartment cannot linguistically understand the English dialogue between the main characters; yet he, too, arguably has his own point of view to the events. Cukor even seems to joke about this in the title of his film (deriving from the musical act the girls and the man are performing), combining the French definite article with an English word in a satirical slur (which never takes itself that seriously, however) towards Hollywood films where French people cannot speak their mother tongue -- only English in a French accent.
In the end, as in "Rashomon", truth remains an issue. "Truth can make lovers of enemies, but lie can make enemies of lovers," one of the girls summarizes. Lie, in this sense, might be closer to primordial truth than truth itself; or, "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth," as Pablo Picasso once expressed. Truth remains a very concrete issue in the sense that the characters (quite literally) keep stumbling upon the immortal question "what is truth" carried around the courthouse by a man as if he was carrying a billboard for the latest scoop, an ironic comment on the capitalist modifications of truth, perhaps, working also as a certain chorus of Greek tragedy, making Cukor's "Les Girls", once again, a very modern film. The final beauty of the film lies, I suppose, in its brilliant courage to mix things, to throw outrageous comedy with poignant tragedy, menial stories with intelligent insight in the same pot of pondering humanity.