AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Martin Bradley "Silk Stockings" isn't a great musical in the same way that "Ninotchka" was a great comedy, despite the Cole Porter score, but it is a sublime entertainment. The director was the great Rouben Mamoulian who was probably second only to Minnelli at this sort of thing, (in his use of color and widescreen or as the song says, 'Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound'); consequently it looks great and thanks to the superb script from Leonard Gershe, Leonard Spigelgass and Harry Kurnitz, borrowing more than liberally from the original, it sounds great, too.Fundamentally, it's a vehicle for its leads. Fred Astaire may have been almost 60 at the time but you would hardly notice; he's still as nimble on his feet as he ever was. As an actress Cyd Charisse is no Garbo, (she wasn't much of a comedienne either), but she was a great partner for Astaire and a terrific dancer in her own right. Janis Paige is here too and is good enough to make you half wish she had been cast in the film version of "The Pajama Game", (as we all know she was passed over in favor of Doris Day). Peter Lorre, Jules Munshin and Joseph Buloff make up the Russian delegation and one of the joys of any musical is seeing Lorre supporting himself between a table and a chair during a Russian dance. Indeed the whole movie is something of a treat and if it sends you back to "Ninotchka" so much the better.

TheLittleSongbird Silk Stockings is not one of MGM's best films, with it just lacking their earlier films' sparkle, and it is not as good as Ninotchka(a Greta Garbo and Ernst Lubitsch gem), that it's a remake of. However, while it has its flaws, it is eminently watchable and is good entertainment.The film is a handsome-looking film, especially in the sumptuous sets, though the colourful and expansive photography, not-too-bright-not-too-drab lighting and elegant costumes also delight. The music is energetic and whimsical and the songs, while not among Cole Porter's best(Ritz Rock and Roll is a little dull and tired) are very good, with memorable melodies and Porter's usual wit evident. All of You and Paris Loves Lovers are dreams come true for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse lovers, but the highlight is the enormously fun Stereophonic Sound, Siberia has some funny moments but not for all tastes. Choreographically Silk Stockings is splendid, but does not waste Astaire or Charisse's talents at all, the songs I mentioned as highlights are also the highlights for the choreography, and while Ritz Rock and Roll is tired song-wise Astaire's dancing certainly is not.Also present are a very clever script, where most of the humour sparkles and the romantic parts have the right balance of sweetness and magic while not feeling too much, it also has a good deal of warmth chemistry-wise which stops it from feeling cold and underdeveloped. The film is warm-hearted, good-humoured and light-footed on the most part, and is competently directed, while the cast are as splendid as the choreography. Astaire is as charming and graceful as ever, and Charisse is glamour and elegance personified. Janis Paige is hilarious, and comes close to stealing the show in Stereophonic Sound, and Peter Lorre and Jules Munshin are amusing, though both have given better performances elsewhere.It's not a flawless film though. It does get heavy-handed in places and occasionally over-plotted, the anti-Russian jokes may leave a sour taste in the mouth and as aforementioned the Ritz Rock and Roll lacks the energy and is not as memorable or up-to-tempo as the rest of the film.Despite the problems, Silk Songs is very watchable and fun and an above decent but inferior musical remake of Ninotchka. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Steffi_P Very few of the classic 1950s musicals were original stories. Most of them were musical adaptations of novels, stage plays or, increasingly, the previous generations' non-musical pictures. The quality of these often had little bearing on that of the original. The musical A Star is Born is for example considerably better than the original. But they could also be vastly worse than their predecessors after the rigours of plot rehash, singer-dancer casting and the conventions of a new era.The 1939 movie Ninotchka could only really have worked with Greta Garbo – it was built around her persona. Silk Stockings does not – and could not – have Garbo. Cyd Charisse is not a terrible actress, and even does a decent caricature of a steely soviet officer, speaking without moving a single other muscle in her face. Garbo on the other hand managed to get across the same idea without even such a trick as freezing up her face. She had something likable and beguiling about her even before her grim exterior was broken down. Charisse on the other hand succeeds only in presenting Ninotchka as totally robotic. That may be to her credit but it does not benefit the movie. Her transformation does not seem as plausible as Garbo's, and she is not especially human even after it.And this really seems to feed into all the other problems with Silk Stockings. With the Cold War and the McCarthy scare as a backdrop, there was no way the movie could be remotely equivocal about communism. As such the original story has lost a lot of its complexity, and a tone that was once playful now seems belligerent. Many of the lines seem unnecessarily dumbed-down (compare for example the language used by Garbo commenting on a fancy hat to the equivalent of Charisse and the stockings). There is a new subplot about a Russian composer having his music distorted for a screen musical, and there are a lot of attacks on ostentatious movie-making. But this is as simplistic as the politics, never going further than disdainfully listing the ills of modern Hollywood, as in the song "Stereophonic Sound".Presumably the studio didn't grasp the irony of these sentiments in a picture that was itself shot in Technicolor and cinemascope. Director Rouben Mamoulian probably did, apparently describing the new aspect ratio as "the stupidest shape I've ever seen". For a director usually at his most brilliant and inventive in the musical genre, his work is decidedly lacklustre here. The irony cannot have been lost on poor old Fred Astaire either, who is not at all well-served by 'scope. Either his feet are cut off at the bottom of the frame, or he seems lost amid all the other business on screen. It's a shame this was to be his last top-hat-and-tails performance. It's not exactly a noble send-off.There is one nice feature of Silk Stockings, and that is a sweet little performance by Peter Lorre. He's at his best here, all pent-up as if on the edge of a maniacal outburst. But the fact that this is the only laudable thing to say about the picture shows how generally dire the rest of it is. The Cole Porter songs are far from his best; weak rehashes of material from his earlier musicals. The second great irony about Silk Stockings is that, despite its waxing lyrical about the magic of true romance as opposed to bland analysis, the romance in the picture feels completely flat. It lacks all of the original movie's warmth and passion, not just in the love story but also in, say, the friendship between Ninotchka and the trio of Russian comrades. All in all, this is an atrocious movie.

bkoganbing After an adaption to Broadway as the final stage musical of Cole Porter's career, Ernest Lubitsch's acclaimed film Ninotchka, now Silk Stockings is getting its film treatment. Silk Stockings ran for 478 performances on Broadway in the 1955-1956 season and starred Don Ameche and Hildegarde Neff in the roles originally played by Melvyn Douglas and Greta Garbo.For reasons I don't understand Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder's names are not given credit here. I distinctly heard a lot of lines from the original Ninotchka that came from them. I also heard some of the acid barbs of George S. Kaufman who worked with Abe Burrows on the book for Silk Stockings.Most of Cole Porter's score makes it intact to the screen, but since the male and female leads were now dancers, Porter wrote Fated To Be Mated and The Ritz Roll and Rock for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. The latter is one of my favorite Astaire numbers from his film. Porter who was no mean satirist himself was having a bit of fun at the new trend in music called Rock and Roll in a spoof of Rock Around the Clock.The plot from the original Ninotchka was changed and updated from the time of the pre-World War II Soviet Union of Stalin to the Cold War. Commissar Ninotchka is no longer concerned with selling jewels of the former nobility, she's negotiating with an American producer who wants a famous Russian composer to score his film adaption of War and Peace. Curiously enough War and Peace did make it to the screen the previous year.Astaire as the producer also has a sexy, but very tough minded star in Janis Paige to contend with. Janis has her moments on screen with the song Josephine and singing and dancing with Astaire in Stereophonic Sound. The big hit song from the score, All of You is sung and danced elegantly by Fred and Cyd. As usual Cyd's vocals were dubbed in this case by Carole Richards who used to be a regular for a while on Bing Crosby's radio show.Peter Lorre, Jules Munshin, and Alexander Granach are the three commissars who Ninotchka has to bail out as in the original film. Granach repeats his role from Ninotchka. But George Tobias sets a record as the only player to appear in both film and the Broadway version. In the original Ninotchka he was the Soviet Embassy Official who balks at granting Melvyn Douglas a visa. On stage and on screen he plays the boss of Garbo/Neff/Charisse, a part that was done in the original Ninotchka by Bela Lugosi.The comedy is a lot more broad than in the Lubitsch film, but with that Cole Porter music and the charm and dancing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, Silk Stockings is a film you should not miss.