Cole Porter's CAN-CAN (2oth Century-Fox, 1960) Fox Home Video

The best thing about Can-Can: the movie is can-can, the dance; a flashy, fleshy, erotic display of France’s enduring contribution to the art of terpsichorean self-expression. With its lurid history, a pre-sold Broadway pedigree, a sparkling champagne cocktail of Cole Porter tunes (including such standards as ‘I Love Paris’, ‘It's All Right With Me’, and ‘C'est Magnifique’), and, a roster of formidable Hollywood headliners (Frank Sinatra, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan and Shirley MacLaine), director Walter Lang’s Can-Can (1960) had everything going for it - except that elusive ember of musical magic. Alas, it proved to be everything. The resultant film, produced by Suffolk-Cummings and distributed by 2oth Century-Fox, is stage-bound and stultifying. Worse, the Dorothy Kingsley/Charles Lederer screenplay remains a badly mangled affair, in no way to replicate the plot of the original stage hit. Herein, the old adage about ‘too many cooks spoiling the broth’ seems ungrudging to fit. Sinatra’s inclusion in the already cluttered cast is a misfire from which the movie never recovers, woefully miscast as a sort of lovable Damon Runyon-esque reprobate transplanted from of a revival of Guys and Dolls (a musical in which old blue eyes acquitted himself rather nicely) to the left bank of the Seine.

The megawatt pull of Sinatra’s stardom and ‘name above the title’ status necessitated a considerable rewrite of Porter’s central character, François Durnais; an attorney whose frequent patronage of a Bohemian café in the red light district of Monmatre leads to flawed flirtations with one of its dancers, Simone Pistache (Shirley MacLaine).  In the play, Durnais actually falls for another gal entirely – the chorus girl/prostitute Claudine, played with great heart, albeit in limited scenes in this movie by Juliet Prowse. Regrettably, Prowse was not yet a star – at least, by Hollywood’s standards. On the other hand, Shirley MacLaine’s box office clout had risen considerably. And so, her character became the de facto love interest here. Unable to leave well enough alone, Kingsley and Lederer further muddy the narrative trajectory of Porter’s stage show by reworking its plot to justify the inclusion of Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan – fresh from their significant co-starring contributions in MGM’s Gigi (1958). Herein, Chevalier is doing a cheap imitation of that grand boulevardier, Honoré Lachaille while Jourdan adds even more starch to his already brittle French aristocrat; too much, in fact, to make him loveable or even likeable.

Can-Can ought to have been a splashier spectacle, exotic, feisty and full of naughty verve and innuendo. That it ultimately became big, bloated and leaden to boot instead, with Lang’s direction lacking even the slightest hint of nimbleness, remains a genuine mystery…or perhaps a telling sign the director had quite simply lost control of his mammoth assignment mid-way through: just about the time visiting Russian dignitary, Nikita Krushchev was invited to 2oth Century-Fox as part of his American ‘goodwill’ tour.  Reportedly, the can-can was re-staged in a mock shoot for Krushchev’s benefit. Afterward, the wily diplomatist turned to one of his cohorts, muttering, “It won’t be long now, comrades” – implying the west’s decadence had eroded its moral foundations to their very core.  In retrospect, the Russian bear may have had something there, given Hollywood’s present laissez faire approach to telling stories that deify aberrant behaviors as the new collective norm. But this isn’t Can-Can’s dilemma or its concern. The film is hampered by too many garbled scenarios; also, Fox’s decision to shoot the entire spectacle on a sound stage. Only two years before, director Vincente Minnelli had given us Paris for real in the Oscar-winning Gigi. So, asking audiences to suspend their belief in Hollywood’s facsimile of France remains a bit of a slog. In fact, it doesn’t work; not even in lurid color by DeLuxe and expansive, crystal-clear 70mm projection, inadvertently to expose all those false fronts with their rickety plywood backing for what they truly are. In fact, Jack Martin Smith and Lyle R. Wheeler’s stylized art direction makes no attempt at anything genuine, yet does not go far enough into the artifice-enhancing backdrops afforded, say, Guys and Dolls that made ‘artistic’ sense of Manhattan’s iconic skyline through artful ‘sketch-like’ representations. What’s in Can-Can are some gaudy, but unflattering cardboard cutout Colorforms; Wheeler and Smith’s cut and paste approach to Paris, extending from the screenplay’s encumbered narrative to its fairly gaudy sets.

It still might have worked if the performances had been better. Regrettably, Cole Porter’s score – arguably his finest – does not receive its due. Sinatra – ensconced as the ‘chairman of the board’ in his mannerisms - warbles C’est Manifique as though it were part of his Vegas nightclub repertoire. I suspect either Sinatra, or the film’s producers believed his cache would be enough to buoy the production onto another gold star winner for the studio. But Sinatra seems mostly ill at ease here – or rather, simply going through the motions. Only when he sings does he elevate the material to his usual standards as a performer. For the rest, he sleep-walks through his performance – connecting the necessary dots to get us from points ‘A’ to ‘B’ but without any subtext or even a flicker of that old Sinatra savvy to make his involvement in the plot enjoyable. Maurice Chevalier, who usually ‘talked through’ a hit song, quickly finds Porter’s notes surpass his skills. His approach only superficially works in his duet with Louis Jourdan (Live and Let Live). But it is an atrocious ill fit for Porter’s sassy, It Was Just One of Those Things (more memorably performed by Lena Horne in 1942’s Panama Hattie). Shirley MacLaine makes mush of ‘Come Along With Me’ and spends the bulk of the Apache Dance being tossed about like a rag doll. The film’s other ‘big’ production number is The Garden Of Eden in which an underappreciated and underused Juliet Prowse slinks about in gold-sequined spandex through a nightmarish landscape that is anything but ‘heaven on earth’; utterly overpowered by its glitz, kitsch and super-glam. This leaves the picture’s instrumental title track to Juliet Prowse and her high-kicking cohorts. They electrify the screen in a mesmerizing display of footwork. It sells the moment with an exhilaration otherwise lacking here.

The plot, such as it is, begins in earnest with François Durnais (Sinatra); an attorney whose patronage of a particularly risqué nightclub results in a clash with the law. To prove his points – that the can-can is not a vulgar dance, and, that prostitutes are people too – Durnais invites his boulevardier buddy, the esteemed judge, Paul Barriere (Chevalier) to enjoy these decidedly decadent pleasures. Too bad the can-can is considered a notorious dance, banned under Parisian law for its lewd and lascivious exposure of the legs, garters and other undergarments. Unfortunate too, someone has tipped off the police. A raid is conducted on the establishment. By the skin of their teeth, Barriere and Durnais escape with their reputations intact. The question of self-expression regarding the can-can is now presented to the prudish underling magistrate, Philipe Forrestier (Louis Jourdan) to decipher. The rest of Can-Can’s lengthy turgidity is basically a comedy of errors as Forrestier attempts to entrap the rather simple-minded Simone into having her nightclub dancers perform the notorious dance, thus giving him a reason to have her jailed for breaking the law. The wrinkle? Forrestier has begun to favor Simone romantically – as has Durnais. In the meantime, Claudine makes a valiant attempt to seduce Durnais. It doesn’t work…and neither does it make sense, considering how precious little Juliet Prowse’s character is given to do. In the meantime, Simone, believing she has absolutely no chance with Durnais (whom she desperately loves) decides to get drunk and makes a public spectacle of herself. Barriere attempts to soften Forrestier’s heart, but to no avail. Hence, in the end the entire fate of the can-can (and Can-Can - the movie) is left for Claudine to reconcile with a spectacular display of legs.

Dancer extraordinaire, Juliet Prowse is supple and scrumptious as she champions her pack of amiable chorines to victory over Forrestier’s rather pedantic middle-class morality; her high-stepping and ecstatic squeals, both rhythmic and infectious. Forrestier seems to have come full circle in his appreciation of the can-can, much to Barriere’s relief. But only a few moments later Durnais is delayed by Forrestier and flung into the back of a paddy wagon, discovering his own life sentence will be with Simone, who is already awaiting him inside. Despite its pedigree and luxurious trappings, Can-Can is an ignominious mutt of a movie. It teases the audience with the promise of a really sublime movie musical about to break out. But then, we get into the score, rattled off without any sincerity or zeal, and suddenly realize Can-Can – the movie – is deigning to be more faithfully an homage to its Broadway roots than create its own stand-alone cinematic equivalent.  Regrettably, its’ tribute is laced with the faint whiff of embalming fluid, imperfectly preserving the enormity of Cole Porter’s contributions, while systematically flubbing virtually all of the particulars and squandering the show’s formidable assets. Even when director, Walter Lang gets the moments right the rest of the show deviates so far from its Broadway origins, so as to diffuse even these bright spots, untouched by all the tinkering, but left to molder in a sort of limbo-inducing artistic ennui.

The cast is more cordial than rambunctious, deflating the necessary air of lusty aplomb into coy, rather than playful debauching. It’s the elephantiasis in the exercise, minus the original stagecraft’s buoyancy that both reminds, yet deprives us of the decadence to be found outside of Porter’s delicious score. It just does not come off as it should and this is a pity, because Can-Can had both the pedigree and the potential to be a truly outstanding movie musical. That it never lives up to these advantages is depressing, given the amount of time, money and talent poured into its gestation. But from its Sem-inspired title cards to its casting of Chevalier and Jourdan, mimicking better work committed elsewhere, Can-Can is trying, just a little too hard, to recapture and bottle the magic of MGM’s Gigi, yet failing miserably, while ever-reminding the audience what an uber-chic, gay and gloriously tasteful musical Gigi was and, in fact, remains. Want to fall in love with Paris in the springtime? See Gigi. Skip Can-Can.        

Fox Home Video’s 2-disc DVD begins with a curious disclaimer; that this film has been restored from the best possible surviving elements. Odd indeed, since the transfer herein looks remarkably pristine and quite often lovely and vibrant. The DeLuxe color palette in expansive Todd A-O is fairly eye-popping. Occasionally, a bit of light bleeding seeps in around the peripheries of the screen, and with minor built-in flicker. But these are a minor quibbling. Much improved over anything Can-Can has looked like on home video before, contrast levels are nicely realized too. Blacks are deep and solid. Whites are generally clean. The audio is a 5.0 remastering of the original six-track stereo and delivers a potent kick. Occasionally, dialogue sounds slightly strident. Fox has also included an isolated orchestral only track. On Disc-2 we get three featurettes; on the making of the film, Cole Porter’s contributions, and finally, on Abe Burrow’s writing credits. There is also a restoration comparison, theatrical trailer and stills gallery to consider. Bottom line: Can-Can ought to make the leap to hi-def. Will it get the chance now that Disney owns Fox? Wait and see.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

3.5