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SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF DRAB Did director Walter Lang, cinematographer William H. Daniels, art directors Lyle R. Wheeler and Jack Martin Smith and costume designer Irene Sharaff deliberately set out to sabotage TODD AO when they made Cole Porter’s Can-Can? What other way is there to explain how everything ended up this claustrophobic and downright ugly? After the red velvet overdose of Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi, they apparently believed audiences needed an ultra-dreary Paris as leveler. The indictment is reinstated in the 2007 restoration, confirming the musical really isn’t so much widescreen as it is television, with confining sets, paltry appointments, moldy apparel and coma-inducing colors. Shirley MacLaine’s Café Le Bal Du Paradis is a dingy orange pink dump and her living quarters a pukey grayish green. When Louis Jourdan is in his magistrate’s office singing “You Do Something to Me,” we’re fighting off the choices of another revolting green on the walls and on windows yukky near-turquoise curtains; we’re in that hideous office so often we feel smack dab in the middle of suffocating drab. (Have handy your oxygen tank.) There aren’t but 3 bright spots in the entire debacle—the gay 90s Paris credits with their deep Toulouse-Lautrec color spectrum, Sharaff’s blue jobbie for MacLaine when she’s on the witness stand, and the lighting for the “Garden of Eden” sequence. Beyond cost of rights, where did the $6,000,000 budget go? Not for Frank Sinatra’s dance lessons; after his clumsiness during “Let’s Do it (Let’s Fall in Love),” Fox should have sued but it turns out Sinatra’s production company financed a substantial part, explaining his presence as his character never existed in the original material. Minus a hint of believable romance when starting to sing to Juliet Prowse, and later professing love to MacLaine, his “regrets” and “passions” are skinny; it’s like he’s playing to his sisters. Must have sensed we weren’t going to buy him as the French lawyer type because he slips on a fedora inside the café and the only thing missing from the album cover touch is the wink. (The stunt helped him win the Harvard Lampoon’s 1960 Worst Actor of the Year citation.) MacLaine is S.O.P., this time lifting, sans attribution, Judy Holliday’s banshee voice and Lucille Ball’s gift for mimicry. Making her another simpleton—she rips up a Toulouse sketch, calling it trash—is a dumbed-down miscalculation and extended to the embarrassing “Come Along With Me” number, in which she wears a golden yellow gown with a train designed to trip over into the Seine. Maurice Chevalier hasn’t much to do, and smoothie Jourdan never means to yet manages anyway to give us a case of the creeps. With Paris pivotal to the narrative we expect to “see” the City of Light via TODD-AO. Just 2 measly tourist shots on the Seine are inserted as afterthoughts; there are better atmospherics, and dancing, in Huston’s 1952 Moulin Rouge. Can-Can isn’t the first time Hollywood has re-virginized Cole Porter to take the risk out of his risqué but it may be the most offensive: it’s about as suggestively bawdy as a Disney animation, with the use of the word “boudoir” the racy max. Sinatra and company aren’t finished shafting Porter: though eight numbers written for the musical were dropped and three from other sources added, the crooner and Maurice filmed the signature “I Love Paris” that was edited out and its footage lost. While their version is on the album, the song is in the movie as a chorus vocal during the credits and conclusion, and instrumentally heard during the entr’acte and exit music. Without TODD-AO, the pas de trois Hermes Pan choreographed with Adam (Marc Wilder), Eve (Shirley) and the Snake (Prowse) barely works, as much of the stage business is panned and scanned away. Restored to proper aspect ratio, it’s somewhat classy, moderately sexy—Prowse slithers down a tree toppingly—and concludes as Shirley’s only successful moments. Not a trace of Sinatra interfering. (Opening 4/19/1960 at the Palace, running 28 weeks.) Oscar nominations: best color costumes, best scoring of a musical picture (Nelson Riddle). ROLL OVER IMAGES
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER (Revised 6/2024) All Rights Reserved.
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