2h 20min | Drama, Musical | 9 May 1961 | Color, WS
Director: Terence Young
Stars: Maurice Chevalier, Les Ballets de Paris, Zizi Jeanmaire, Roland Petit, Moira Shearer, Cyd Charisse.
Alfred Adam ... choreographer: "La croqueuse de diamants"
Françoise Adret ... ballet mistress
Raoul Celada ... assistant: to ballet mistress
Roland Petit ... choreographer
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053726/
Available on AmazonPrime, but watched on a megapack for access to chapter/ffwd. Poor quality prints.
This is not an American film; countries of origin are France & Portugal, where the initial release date comes from.
Strange poster for a color film.
The synopsis writer exaggerates with "live scenes in Paris"; MC introduces each ballet, perhaps from a location shoot, perhaps with a process shot.
Previously rated 5 on 2010-01-31, I'm not inclined to upgrade that today. Partially because of the bad print, but mostly because the film is boring/annoying to me. This is yet another illustration of my dislike for ballet, which baffles me. I like classical music, I like dance, but together they make my eyes roll. Although dance can be a great way to convey emotion, ballet's structures/strictures don't really foster that. And these are ballets in the strict sense.
I also don't like some of the stories. Specifics:
- The Eater of Diamonds ZJ is a pickpocket who works with a crew of men who detain victims near a crack in a wall so she can reach through and remove a valuable. Then we see them dividing up the loot, but she has a large loose gem, which she swallows in front of them. How did she get that? Must have been in a container we didn't see. Later, she waves around a large pendant, which she fake-swallows, chain and all. Why the near-victim falls for her and they run off together I didn't follow.
- Cyrano is a tale about words, so we're going to make it a mime dance? This gets a more narration by MC during the dance than the others. MS is Roxanne.
- Duel: either I didn't understand this, or it was a really nasty tale. CC wants her husband to buy a very expensive dress for her, he refuses. They sit at a cafe, clearly she's angry. A stranger flirts with her, hubby gets mad, one man challenges the other to a duel, where hubby gets killed, and CC dances with the killer. Then the dress arrives at her home, she wears it out to Maxim's, and dances a strip tease, removing skirt and garters. What? Who is this woman?
- Carmen (ZJ) also gets more narration than the 1st and 3rd, and is a well-known tale of bad/doomed woman Carmen corrupting weak man Don Jose, leading to her death. My complaint here is the idea of Carmen dancing in balletic fashion. It takes much less suspension of disbelief to accept her singing operatically than dancing balletically. Any other form of dance would be ok, but there's just too much discipline and hard work inherent in ballet.
If you want to watch a specific vignette, they provide title cards for each, and credits at the end of each, and although the chapter breaks don't correspond with the content, they are a good place to start, with only 4 on this dvd.
Grandes Productions Cinématographiques, dir. Young; 5
