Les Girls

On the one hand, it has Gene Kelly and direction by George Cukor and the smart, smooth music of Cole Porter. But the structure of the plot is a bit bumpy, and most of this bumpiness stems from the RASHOMON-like tale starting, stopping, and starting again over two hours. A lot of people seem to think that the Porter score was sub-par; I wholeheartedly disagree. An especially lovely sequence is a rowboat scene between Kelly and Taina Elg which segues into the love song "Ca C'est L'amour." Also clever are the burlesque turn of "Ladies In Waiting" and the vaudeville-like "You're Just Too, Too" which pairs Kelly with the rapturous Kay Kendall. Kendall is, in many ways, the real star of LG with her deft comedy (drunkenly singing opera for five straight minutes!) and her cool, elegant beauty. Knowing that she died shortly after completing this film- and so young- makes one miss her charms all the more and also wish that the film had a larger following. (It's particularly enigmatic nowadays when compared to Kelly's bigger and better known hits: 'Singin' In The Rain,' 'An American In Paris,' 'Anchors Aweigh,' etc.) Still, Mitzi Gaynor is a dish, dancing with Kelly in a sexy black dress (in a weird Marlon-Brando-a'la-THE-WILD-ONE-send up). Thank goodness it's on widescreen DVD where it belongs.