Bésame, Kate

SINOPSIS

This splendid MGM version of Cole Porter's smash-hit Broadway show was originally filmed in 3-D, hence all those shots where Ann Miller and Howard Keel chuck things at the audience, including themselves. Director George Sidney (Show Boat, Scaramouche) is completely comfortable in the world of the theatre, and utilises fabulous, and cleverly disguised, long takes in his filming of Keel as Fred Graham-cum-Petruchio and Kathryn Grayson as difficult diva Lilli Vanessi, alias Shakespeare's tamed shrew Kate. Keel has rarely been better but Miller nearly steals the show with Too Darn Hot, and comic gangsters Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore are wonderful in composer Porter's saucy waltz Brush Up Your Shakespeare. This is a treat, but it just lacks that special magic that makes a screen musical great: still, in the face of such talent, it doesn't really matter.