A director drives a French star to exhaustion, so their American film is canceled. He meets a carnival dancer adept at accents, and trains her to "be" French. The deception, and the new star's feelings for him and his boss cause conflict.
1h 21min | Comedy, Musical, Romance | 2 February 1949
Director: Douglas Sirk
Stars: Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche, Janis Carter.
Robert Sidney ... choreographer
Familiar song Let's Fall in Love is from the antecedent 1933 musical film of the same name; in other words, this movie is a remake; 2 other Harold Arlen songs from the '33 film are not listed here. The other 2 songs in the '49 Soundtracks are first listed here on their composer's credits. (But IMDb Soundtracks are often sketchy, and/or links are missing.) I have not replayed the film to see if I detect more songs. (One user review incorrectly identifies Let's Fall in Love as a Cole Porter song; incorrect. This one is properly attributed to Arlen/Koehler. Porter's similar title is Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love. Hooray for Wikipedia again.)
Of Sirk's 42 director credits, the first 11 are as Detlef Sierck, and he has a gap between '39 and '43, so I count this as his 8th American film (19th overall). 2 of his pre-American films were music; this is his 1st of 2 American musicals.
The dance number interrupted by the 1st star's collapse (Adele Jergens, who never returns to the film) and then re-shot with DL is weird in at least one way: terrific shadows get cast across the star's face as she dances. Not all the time, but frequently. We're not given any context for the number, but she's in a seedy part of town (wharf?) dancing with Apache-dressed men and prostitute-posed women (but no Apache dancing). So it's likely the shadows were intentional. Still seems weird to me.
Because I don't recognize the faces of anyone after DA, DL & AJ, and because that dance number is not particularly interesting, this film is shrugworthy. I don't care what happens to the characters, and I get little pleasure from the visuals or the story. I don't think I've seen this film before, nor its antecedent, yet it feels familiar because it covers some well-trod ground without offering much new. Pygmalion it ain't, but I was going to use 'Svengali' to refer to DA in the synopsis. Maybe it's me; maybe I didn't pay close enough attention. Maybe another pass through musicals needs to segregate b/w and color, because b/w looks pretty dull by now.
Columbia, dir. Sirk; 6
