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MidWestGuy-2
Reviews
Great Performances: In Fashion (1974)
A very pleasant bit of fluff
A Broadway version of a musical originally developed at the Actors Theater of Louisville in Louisville, Ky. The musical numbers are light, pleasant, witty, and fit seamlessly into the play, but are not particularly memorable. Base on a play by Feydeau, the story is essentially a tangle of chance meetings, mistaken identities, "he/she must not know who I really am", lies, deceits, exits and entrances; in short, a farce, as you would expect of Feydeau.
Daniel Davis is a lot of fun as the lead, Dr. Moulineux, does have a wonderful singing voice. Charlotte Rae also is quite delightful, as usual. I also thought that Patrick Tovatt added a lot as the "imbecile" Bassinet. Outside of Ken Jenkins, at the time a Kentucky resident and Actor's Theater regular, the only other person in the cast I recognized was Max Wright, who apparently was making his acting debut in this play. The play moves from scene to scene so quickly that the three women playing wives and mistresses (Donna Curtis, Pamela Hall, and Susan Kaslow) don't really get a chance to establish a presence, though Pamela Hall does get the best comic song in the show and makes the most of it.
I use to usher at Actor's Theater (to see the plays for free, of course) beginning shortly after "In Fashion" closed on Broadway. I remember vaguely hearing about a show which Jon Jory had taken to Broadway. The rumor was that the whole thing had been such a headache, and the play had not done particularly well, that he had sworn never to do it again. Which is a pity for the rest of the world, since Actor's Theater developed at least one more musical that I am aware of, a musical version of "She Stoops to Conquer" entitled "A Lovely Affair", which I think was better than "In Fashion" and which did have some memorable musical number. Ah, but "rest of the world", you'll never know.
Les belles de nuit (1952)
Pure Delight From Start to Finish
I have been puzzled by some of the other comments so I am adding one of my own. I think your reaction to this movie comes down to two words: fantasy and charm. It is a fantasy, and it has a very great deal of charm. If those appeals to you, you will enjoy this movie immensely as I did. If they don't, well the movie is so good you will probably still like it anyway.
I rated this film a 10 because I couldn't find a thing not to like. Gerard Philipe is charming (that word again) and appealing. All the women are gorgeous. The supporting cast is excellent. And since Phillip's character Claude is an aspiring composer there is a great deal of beautiful music in his dreams.
What I noticed especially about the film was how Clair kept inventing ways to keep the idea fresh. You might think that a movie which basically shows a man's dreams would fun out of steam pretty fast but Clair is clever enough to keep it fresh and entertaining. For example, Claude constantly says that all he wants to do is sleep--and given his dreams, who wouldn't--and his friends interpret this as expressing a desire to commit suicide! So the efforts of his friends to prevent his "suicide" throws a new wrinkle into the story.
My only complaint with the VHS version I saw were the English subtitles. First, they were in white, so that anytime they were in front of a white background you didn't know what the speaker was saying. And second, even though I don's speak French I am sure that the English subtitles came nowhere near doing justice to the original French dialog.
This is a worthy candidate for a Criterion DVD. An unhesitant 10 out of 10.