Can-Can or if you prefer Ca-Ca 1960

 A flat and dead on arrival musical that was based on the hit Cole Porter Broadway show of 1953. The film arrived in 1960 in a big Todd AO reserved seat showing. Me as a 12 year old saw it at the now gone Rivoli Theatre and was not impressed. The thing I vividly remember was how dizzy I got when the curtain opened on that huge screen showing a Paris street scene on the back lot of 20^th Century Fox. I decided to take a look at it again after all these passing years since it is now on a restored 2 disc dvd and my opinion of it hasn’t changed much. The dvd that has been so lovingly restored has shifting colors throughout and the general faults of the film and there are quite a few should be laid at the feet of  Walter Lang who directs it like it was a stage production, head on and flat. He has no idea it seems how to make a production number into a production and he isn’t helped by the blah art direction or the ordinary costume design.  

Lang who was a 20^th Century Fox in house director had a very long career that began with silent films and ended in 1961 with the lowly and ludicrous “Snow White and The Three Stooges”. He was a decent enough director and is mostly known for all those Betty Grable and Alice Faye interminable 1940’s lavish musicals along with some Shirley Temple features. His biggest achievement and only directing Oscar nomination was for his helming “The King and I” into a box office hit. Of course the two directors who immediately come to mind who maybe could have breathed some life into it were Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor. Minnelli probably didn’t want to do another Paris set musical especially one that was so studio bound as Can-Can and Cukor was about to start working with Marilyn Monroe who by the way turned this turkey down to make “Some Like It Hot” good choice Marilyn.

There is no “cinematic” involvement between the viewer and the film, we are kept at a far away distance and this is especially glaring in the big musical numbers. The dancers work damn hard and yes they are good, thanks to Hermes Pan but compare what John Huston did with his “Moulin Rouge” especially the Can-Can dancers back in 1952, or The Renior movie “French Can-Can  or the fast and furious Baz Luhmann “Moulin Rouge.” This one just doesn’t cut it and it is silly at best and dull at worst. The film has been sheared of many of the Cole Porter numbers from the show, and a new character has been added played by a lazy Frank Sinatra, who gives one of his dead performances that he was very capable of giving especially in the late 50’s and early 60’s. His toupee looks askew and its basically a rat pack routine especially since one of the members, the only female in the group Shirley McLaine is also plopped down on us. She is shrill and annoying. I was expecting some cameos by Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. & Dean Martin. Also pushed on us is a deadly reprieve of those two fun loving “real” Frenchmen Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier fresh off their “Gigi” gig.  There are several wonderful Porter songs that have been added to try to flesh this load out, and in fact when Sinatra sings It’s Alright With Me” to Juliet Prowse we are in a great place if only for a very few minutes. Although not a box office bomb, it finished at 23^rd in b.o. profits for the year, but received only 2 Oscar nominations. See this one if you must.