1h 30min | Comedy, Musical | 19 January 1951
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Van Johnson, Kathryn Grayson, Paula Raymond, Lewis Stone, Reginald Owen.
Vladimir Rosing ... director: opera sequences
Watched online, blurry.
What does it mean that this is black/white, when both stars have been in color films for a while now? And we get a lengthy dream sequence with segments of the opera Carmen (rewoven in bizarre fashion), which should be colorful. (La Boheme, also excerpted, can be drab.)
We get other music (besides opera): a hot Dixieland band, the Firehouse Five Plus Two play a couple of lively numbers, and then give us the Charleston for VJ to dance. And we get a novelty "birdy" song played by a doctor's amateur orchestra.
This is, as the academics say, a comedy of remarriage, with KG hell-bent on getting VJ back, even though he's engaged to his work-partner's daughter. I'm not keen on all the tantrums KG throws, but the fiancee is no prize either. And since I don't like VJ much, the whole thing leaves me shrugging.
MGM, dir. Leonard; 6
