Imagine a mainstream contemporary film that features a pianist playing Rachmaninoff and Chopin; imagine that same film featuring a Mariachi Band that can play Hungarian folk melodies at the snap of a finger. The same film even features a talking Chihuahua (long before Taco Bell). Now toss in a tale centering on a love-sick teenage soprano who falls in love with a man old enough to be her grandfather-and add another lovesick girl, just for fun, that does exactly the same, only with the first girl's father. It sounds a bit incestuous, but with MGM it's all good, clean, if occasionally draggy, fun.
Unlikely fare for the 2020's, but a huge hit for MGM in postwar America, 1946, Holiday in Mexico is set in several mythical South of the Border homes, brilliantly unreal but presented in irresistible Technicolor (with lots of those wonderful period lime-green pastels and electric pinks). If you are in the mood for absolute escapism and willing to suspect disbelief entirely, this immersion in teen angst features the first MGM appearance of young absolutely ravishing blue-eyed Jane Powell warbling a little bit of everything from opera to Ave Maria, sometimes accompanying her love object, Jose Iturbi, a popular semi-classical pianist, whose truncated version of Rachmaninoff's Concerto #3 may put your teeth on edge. But the man does have incredible power and technique, and like Liberace, it's up the keyboard, down the keyboard, bang, bang, bang! And Jose's actual grandchildren appear in the movie and hide under his piano in mouse masks!
This all hints at only a few treats available to those able to cheerfully immerse themselves in another fairly empty-headed but richly lavish presentation from MGM. Jane's Dad is played by a suave Walter Pidgeon, who gives some fatherly advice to Jane's awkward thwarted swain, Roddy McDowell, a few years removed from his superb sentimental triumphs in Lassie and How Green Was My Valley, here having some post-pubescent problem. Contributing to the Mexican Atmosphere is a glorious glittering production number with Xavier Cugat and as a guest star from Hungary (interesting how the script digs her into the plot) the radiantly glowing Ilona Massey (rhymes with "Lassie"), who only is allowed to radiate her continental charm with a single song. In short, 127 minutes of teen angst alleviated with ample music and the riches of MGM at its peak is on offer here; Singin' In The Rain it ain't, but what else is?
Unlikely fare for the 2020's, but a huge hit for MGM in postwar America, 1946, Holiday in Mexico is set in several mythical South of the Border homes, brilliantly unreal but presented in irresistible Technicolor (with lots of those wonderful period lime-green pastels and electric pinks). If you are in the mood for absolute escapism and willing to suspect disbelief entirely, this immersion in teen angst features the first MGM appearance of young absolutely ravishing blue-eyed Jane Powell warbling a little bit of everything from opera to Ave Maria, sometimes accompanying her love object, Jose Iturbi, a popular semi-classical pianist, whose truncated version of Rachmaninoff's Concerto #3 may put your teeth on edge. But the man does have incredible power and technique, and like Liberace, it's up the keyboard, down the keyboard, bang, bang, bang! And Jose's actual grandchildren appear in the movie and hide under his piano in mouse masks!
This all hints at only a few treats available to those able to cheerfully immerse themselves in another fairly empty-headed but richly lavish presentation from MGM. Jane's Dad is played by a suave Walter Pidgeon, who gives some fatherly advice to Jane's awkward thwarted swain, Roddy McDowell, a few years removed from his superb sentimental triumphs in Lassie and How Green Was My Valley, here having some post-pubescent problem. Contributing to the Mexican Atmosphere is a glorious glittering production number with Xavier Cugat and as a guest star from Hungary (interesting how the script digs her into the plot) the radiantly glowing Ilona Massey (rhymes with "Lassie"), who only is allowed to radiate her continental charm with a single song. In short, 127 minutes of teen angst alleviated with ample music and the riches of MGM at its peak is on offer here; Singin' In The Rain it ain't, but what else is?