Musical Watch: Les Girls (1957)

Watched:  10/04/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Cukor

Les Girls (1957) is what happens when someone sees Rashomon, likes the notion of the same story told from different angles, but lacks the ability or skill to write a story that pulls off the Rashomon-effect.  And, so, Les Girls is three different stories with the same characters that seem like they take place completely divorced from each other.  Because of this, and because none of the three stories is very interesting (and because my mind drifts when movies are dull), it is, I think, somewhat of a confusing watch.  

But if you read about Gene Kelly, Les Girls gets mentioned all the time, so I wanted to check it out.  

The story, like Rashomon, is told in flashback based on courtroom testimony.  But instead of murdered samurai, we're dealing with a civil libel suit in British court (Patrick Macnee plays one of the barristers!) after a showgirl published her memoirs and scandalized her former co-dancer, a French girl.  Seems there were three dancers in a stage show - one British, one French, one All-American Mitzi Gaynor - and all three had entanglements with their boss/ director/ lead dancer, played by Kelly.

Both the British and French dancers take the stand and tell their version of events, but...  unlike Rashomon, they aren't the same events - they're basically two different stories altogether, and as the dancers are also roommates, I don't get how anything here was supposed to be a secret.  Nor do I know when each story took place, if this is just a sequential story, or if anyone is telling the truth at all (I suppose it's supposed to be on-the-nose/ deep that someone walks around outside the court with a sandwich board reading "What is truth?").  It is possible for r/3rds of the film, we're watching fabrications.   Which... why?

At last Gene Kelly shows up to tell his side, which is about how he was actually not courting either the British or French woman (both of whom were accusing the other of philandering with Kelly).  And he states he was always in love with Mitzi Gaynor.  

It is... laborious and boring and spends so much time on plot, there's a shocking lack of singing and dancing.  And what is there is... fine.  It's still Gene Kelly.  But by this point, he's cooking up dance sequences and is in his mid-40's trying to make sense of the success of The Wild One, and just as oddball as Astaire's "Girl Hunt Ballet" in The Bandwagon is a very weird sequence, so, too, is a 40-something Gene Kelly trying to play a guy playing a biker and obviously referencing the Brando movie.  

Also -- as Jamie pointed out, two of the three looked alike, and that caused some visual confusion.

If there's anything to recommend it, what dancing is there is spectacular.  But, really, there's some oddly prescient camera work in some sequences that seems like it's from the 1970's instead of the 1950's.  Just gorgeous stuff.  The sets are wild - with one multi-story contraption.  And it rightfully won an Oscar for costuming.

In theory, this is a Cole Porter movie, but it didn't really have any of my favorite Cole Porter numbers.  

It also has an ending that is so misogynistic, it's kind of mind-boggling.   

I don't recommend this movie.  Not my cup of tea.