Pretty Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The music isn't one of the best from Cole Porter and it features a strangely subdued Gene Kelly. There's a reason Cukor was called a woman's director, because in this film the women are the focus and are they hilarious! I never heard of Kay Kendal before watching this movie. Her unique beauty and comedic timing are genius. It is the worlds loss that she passed away so soon. Top notch performances, sumptuous costumes and choreography make this musical a must see.

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. She's pixish and very appealing. As the most pragmatic of the trio Mitzi Gaynor is slyly comic, wonderfully relaxed and of course dances beautifully, this is one of her best performances. But the real standout and the person who walks away with the picture is the magical Kay Kendall. A performer with an enormous comic gift and a vibrant screen persona she was already suffering symptoms of the leukemia that would take her life within two years. You would never know it from watching her on screen she is so full of life and radiates energy and vitality, a bewitching creature. Gene Kelly is good but his is really a sidelined role. The full MGM treatment was brought to bear on this, one of the last of the big successful musicals before the studios somehow lost their way and gave in to gargantuan overproduction. There were still a few good musicals that came after, Gypsy, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Funny Girl and a few others but before too long overblown dinosaurs like Hello, Dolly, Finian's Rainbow and Dr. Doolittle killed off the genre.Not quite in the same league as Singin' in the Rain, On the Town, Meet Me in St. Louis or other MGM musical classics this is still a solid show from the time when MGM reigned supreme and was able to manufacture this sort of quality entertainment effortlessly.

The only thing wrong with this movie is Mr. Kelly. He has one of the worst voices in the history of Hollywood. If he just danced and they dubbed him, it would have been better. His voice has no volume, including his speaking voice. It always sounds like he is fighting a cold. It's a shame they let him do so much talking in films. He is also in desperate need of acting lessons! What a bad actor! He is only believable because of his dancing. It amazes me that an actor can be forgiven so much when he has one flashy ability. Gene always got by on his dancing and athletic aplomb but really if you pay attention, he is not acting well at all. He is the equivalent of a high school senior play performer.

Cole Porter's final film score and next to last music written for any media is Les Girls. The same team producer Sol Seigal and writer John Patrick who produced and wrote the adaption of The Philadelphi Story for High Society worked with Porter again and this time George Cukor was directing. It's a good film, but I've got the feeling that it could have been a whole lot better. One of the criticisms that Porter used to get annoyed with was the perennial 'it isn't up to Cole Porter's standard' and then you'd look in the score and see a lot of classics. Can-Can is the best example of that. But in the case of Les Girls Porter admitted this to be true. According to the George Eells biography of Porter, he was starting to suffer the decline in health that would eventually end his life in 1964. He did have surgery to bypass an ulcer and was not feeling up to par.Still the numbers are mostly for a vaudeville act, Barry Nichols and Les Girls so they're serviceable to a bright Rashomon like plot. The members of the act are Gene Kelly and the girls are Mitzi Gaynor, Taina Elg, and Kay Kendall. Kay's written a memoir that includes an alleged suicide attempt by Elg and she's suing her in an English court. As we get testimony from Elg, Kendall, and Kelly, they all give out with different versions. It's also clear he had his fling with all of them at one time despite his alleged no fraternization policy.Elg has the best ballad of the score, Ca C'est L'Amour which sounds like something that might have been written for Can-Can and discarded. Cole Porter discards are better than a lot of composer's best efforts. The sparkling Kay Kendall was never shown to better advantage on the screen than with You're Just Too Too in a duet with Kelly. And Cole Porter wickedly satirizes Marlon Brando and The Wild One in Why Am I So Gone About That Gal with Kelly and Mitzi Gaynor.In addition to this being Cole Porter's last film score, this film also marks Gene Kelly's last full blown musical. He did do other musical numbers in films like What A Way To Go and Young Girls From Rochefort and Xanadu, but this was the last musical he did. They were getting way too expensive to make, something Kelly learned from behind the camera when he directed Hello Dolly.Even with a score that Cole Porter himself wasn't thrilled with, Les Girls is still a fresh bit of film making. And since it's original to the screen, the Porter wit is not edited severely. All in all four great musical performers, three of them Les Girls.