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Silk Stockings

1957, Movie, NR, 117 mins

Silk Stockings: Review

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Great light entertainment that paid heavy dividends at the box office, SILK STOCKINGS is the delightful film version of the George S. Kaufman-Leueen McGrath-Abe Burrows-Cole Porter Broadway musical based on Ernst Lubitsch's classic screen comedy NINOTCHKA (1939). Fred Astaire is Hollywood film producer Steve Canfield, who comes to Paris to make a movie, meets touring Soviet composer Peter Ilyitch Boroff (Wim Sonneveld), and persuades him to remain in France to score his film, prompting Commissar Vassili Markovitch (George Tobias, who appeared in both the stage version and in NINOTCHKA) to dispatch of trio of underlings to retrieve the revered composer. In short order, Brankov (Peter Lorre, who is very funny but struggles vainly as a dancer), Bibinski (Jules Munshin), and Ivanov (Joseph Buloff) are contentedly indulging in the pleasures of life in the West. Ninotchka (Cyd Charisse, in the role Greta Garbo essayed so brilliantly), the exemplary Communist sent by Commissar Markovitch to retrieve the retrievers, is not so easily seduced by Western ways or by Steve, who falls in love with her. Despite Steve's marriage proposal, Ninotchka and the others return to the USSR; however, when Brankov, Bibinski, and Ivanov, sent again to Paris as representatives of the Soviet film industry, become partners in a nightclub with Steve, Ninotchka returns to collect her errant comrades, but this time love wins out. Hermes Pan oversaw Astaire's dancing, some of the last really dazzling terping he would do, while Eugene Loring handled the rest of the choreography. Charisse, a great dancer in her own right, gives a terrific performance (vocally looped by Carol Richards). Rouben Mamoulian's direction is brisk but not brilliant; Cole Porter's songs are witty, airy, and tuneful, though not as memorable as many of the renowned tunesmith's other works; and because the chemistry between Charisse and Astaire isn't the equal of that of Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, SILK STOCKINGS lacks NINOTCHKA's warmth. It does, however, have some wonderful musical moments and is the kind of picture that anyone of any age will enjoy. leave a comment
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