Les Girls

When Barry walks away from Joy after he first fakes heart problems at the outside market, Joy's voice can be heard telling the salesperson in French that she wants celery.

But as she is turning her head to watch Barry leave, you can clearly see that her mouth is not moving.

Mitzi Gaynor breaks her picture over Gene Kelly's head, and storms out the door.

As he gets up to go after her, the frame is still clearly around his neck.

But as he goes out the door, the frame is gone.

An old school Hollywood filmmaker, George Cukor dives right into the most profound questions of humanity in "Les Girls" (1957), an MGM musical from the golden days, with an arguably tongue-in-cheek mentality which is, however, too often and too quickly taken as a loss of ambition and artistic devotion. The film discovers its peculiar place in between of conventional romantic comedy and philosophical tragedy.

There are fabulous talents involved in this film, but the result is not as good as I expected. Cole Porter's songs are surprisingly undistinguished, and there's not quite as much singing and dancing as there could be.

In London, the former dancer of the Barry Nichols (Gene Kelly) and Les Girls Company and presently Lady Sybil Wren (Kay Kendall) is sued by her former roommate and fellow dancer Angèle Ducros (Taina Elg). Sybil wrote a best-seller based on her memoirs from the time she was a dancer and lived with Angèle and Joanne 'Joy' Henderson (Mitzi Gaynor) and in a chapter she discloses the affair of Angèle with Barry and how she committed an attempt of suicide when Barry left her.

So much dancing. Prompt.

Gene Kelly's last MGM musical is oddly obscure, seldom mentioned in the same breath as his earlier classics such as 'Singin' In The Rain' or 'On The Town'. Let it is a very enjoyable movie which sticks in the mind long after you have watched it.

Okay, perhaps this isn't on a par with Gene Kelly's greatest films, and perhaps the Cole Porter score is not one of his absolute best. But this film is so well written (its take on "Rashomon" is extremely clever), such a brilliant combination of comedy, drama, song and dance, with an exceptional performance by the great Kay Kendall, and equally fine turns by Mitzi Gaynor (who is always maligned, when she had developed into a terrific singing/dancing comedienne by this point in her career), Taina Elg and Kelly.

Chic, light as air confection is a pleasant diversion and a wonderful showcase for its three leading ladies.This was a career high for Taina Elg, a charming elfin actress who worked steadily but never broke through to the majors.

The musical "Les Girls" (1957) is curious, I suggest for many reasons. It has three leading ladies, only a few very good musical numbers and a plot that is heavy on satirical comedy, with four distinct sections.

This was Gene Kelly's last musical for MGM studios. He partnered with a trio of leading ladies-Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg-and fittingly ended his contract with a Cole Porter film score (also his last), as he had begun it, and in Paris, which he loved-although the tunes tend to be some of his less familiar, including the title song, "Ça c'est l'amour," "Ladies in Waiting," "You're Just Too Too!