Can-Can (1960)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I am not a student of film, but I enjoyed it. Different people have different tastes, therefore different likes and dislikes. I think any "reviewer" that look for nits to pick an/or technicalities to point out, especially in older movies, should make his/her own movies. In addition, I don't think a review is valid if it is based on a personal dislike of of someone in the movie. Why does it matter if a movie follows a book to the letter, unless it claimed to follow the book? I think movies are mostly for entertainment and/or story telling. If it claims to be based on facts, then nit-pick, if it isn't factual. Otherwise, it is for entertaining the viewer.

I was 14 when this movie came out. I never saw it back then but thanks to the marvels of modern TV I was able to catch it on the "Movies!" channel. Watching it is fun to see how much movie-making has changed over my lifetime. Even though most of the characters are Parisian French they speak in American English. Filmmakers just wouldn't do that today.Frank Sinatra, about 44, was in the featured role as Durnais. But my favorite is Shirley MacLaine, about 25, as Simone Pistache. She was the owner and operator of the Parisian nightspot where lady dancers did the illegal, they raised their skirts while dancing to reveal the petticoats underneath. So much of the story is local puritans trying to prosecute and close down the nightspot, while François was trying to romance Simone.One of my long time favorites, dancer Juliet Prowse, has a role as Claudine, and of course she is the featured dancer in production numbers. But MacLaine also shows us that she can dance also, because that is how she got started in show business.All meaningless fluff but good entertainment. It was good to also see great French actors, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan.

... what have they done to your wonderful Broadway show? Answer; about what you'd expect from a Hollywood that had a congenital aversion to transposing Broadway musicals to the screen untampered with so that, for example, a family from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who went to NY on vacation and saw, for example, The Pajama Game, on Broadway could return home secure in the knowledge that the movie version they saw at their local movie theatre a couple of years later would NOT be the show they saw on Broadway.Frank Sinatra appeared in Five movie versions of Broadway musicals during his career and NONE of them was wholly satisfactory, mostly because of meaningless tampering. Higher and Higher, for example, retained only ONE number from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway show and that one, Disgustingly Rich, was a minor number; on the other hand the film did give Sinatra two 'hits' in A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening and I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night. On The Town also jettisoned a sizable portion of the Broadway score, including Lonely Town, and added stuff that was one step above total garbage. Guys and Dolls was by far the most faithful to the Broadway original but even then they jettisoned the 'big' ballad, I've Never Been In Love Before (as well as A Bushel And A Peck) but they DID prevail on the original composer, Frank Loesser, to supply new material (Adelaide, A Woman In Love); Pal Joey suffered a bad case of both jettisoning and interpolating disparate songs by the same writers (Rodgers and Hart) so that Happy Hunting Horn, Do It The Hard Way, In Our Little Den Of Iniquity, What Is A Man, Plant You Now, Dig You Later, all went out the window and were replaced - if that's the word - by There's A Small Hotel, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is A Tramp. Which brings us to Can-Can. Cole Porter went to great pains to replicate the Sound of Parisian Music Hall circa 1890 - a fact I mentioned in my review of the execrable Moulin Rouge, which made absolutely NO concession to its time frame - so it is ironic that Fox elected to discard such Porter gems as Allez-vous en, I Am In Love, Never Give Anything Away, Ev'ry Man Is A Stupid Man, Never, Never Be An Artist, all of which had the FEEL of the period, in favour of You Do Something To Me, Just One Of Those Things, Let's Do It, which are totally out of place in the context of the story and time. They also 'created' a part for Sinatra that didn't exist in the show and he was allowed to PLAY the Sinatra for which he is best known, hip, cool, ring-a-ding ding (at one point Louis Jourdan even SAYS ring-a-ding ding - in 1896, yet - when describing the Sinatra character to Shirley MacLaine). I write as a lifetime admirer of both Sinatra AND Cole Porter so I was doubly disappointed with this travesty. Ironically the BEST Screen musical in which Sinatra ever appeared was High Society, also the work of Cole Porter and DOUBLY ironically it was so successful that it became s Stage musical with - you've guessed it - several EXTRA Porter numbers interpolated. Can-Can had the potential to be an outstanding film musical instead it is little more than mediocre.

Shirley MacLaine is a delight as the owner/operator of an 1895 Paris Night Club. The problem: A new, "disgusting" dance craze called the "Can Can" has swept Paris, and Shirley's night club seems to be the only place that dares to perform it nightly. Money man Frank Sinatra, who also is the on-again-off-again fiancé of the owner, attempts to bribe the authorities to turn a blind eye to what's going on at the club. Law man Louis Jourdan also falls for Shirley, while an ever-wise Maurice Chevallier tries his best to play cupid.The musical numbers are wonderful, especially Shirley MacLaine's solo "Come Along With Me", The MacLaine/Sinatra duet "Let's Do It" and the grand finale "Can Can". -- This film cost 6 million dollars to produce, which was a lot in 1960. I'm glad they went through with it, because this is one of my favorite film musicals. They don't come much better than this!