Wonderful - you owe it to yourself to see it

trpdean

I'm not a fan of musicals in general - but this is So funny, so imaginative, so captivating.

Among many things, I love the slang given for comic effect to French aristocrats - as in the song, "the son of a gun is nothing but a tailor". It's just extraordinarily funny.

I watched this back to back with the sweet, innocent and lovely State Fair last night. To think that Richard Rodgers did the music for such different kinds of projects is amazing.

And even to think that Hollywood turned out both movies within a fairly short interval shows the astonishing breadth of Hollywood at the time. From Stagecoach to It Happened One Night, from Little Caesar to The Philadelphia Story, from 42nd Street to Citizen Kane, The Wizard of Oz to Gone with the Wind, Casablanca to Curly Top - all produced within a decade of each other.


Just geniuses at work - and a diversity of talent that is simply astonishing: a place that showcased the incredibly varied appeal of both Roy Rogers and Fred Astaire, a Myrna Loy, a Jean Harlow and a Johnny Weismuller, a Marlene Dietrich and a Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and George Raft, Robert Benchley and Charles Boyer, a Greta Garbo and a Marjorie Main. What a place!

This movie is very much a masterpiece.

score 10/10

trpdean 5 April 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0009317/