longrush

The color is great, although the sets are greatly romanticized. Paris isn't quite that neat and clean. Gene Kelly was a magnificent dancer and a fair singer. He makes dancing look so easy that I could do it--and I can't dance at all. Oscar Levant's dream scene at the piano is simply brilliant and offsets his poor acting. The Gershwin music is magnificent--what more can one say about it? Leslie Caron is--well, Leslie Caron. I was in love with her the first time I saw her in a movie, more than 50 years ago. Nina Foch is quite pretty, but she plays a role that we've seen too often.

There are many good things here, and yet somehow the very nice pieces never quite fit together. Perhaps the dumb love story is part of the difficulty. It's downright silly. Or perhaps it is the overdone artist's ball. Or perhaps it is the impossible ballet at the end with all those costume changes in mid-dance. All I know is that this remains in pieces and doesn't work for me as a whole.

Even for a B western, this wasn't very good. Compared with A westerns of the period, this is really bad.

The plot is confusing as to who is who in all that dust and with all those costume changes. There's lots of shooting, but not many dead bodies. The action scenes are interspersed with some fair to middling western tunes by the hero and others.

Gene Autry made better movies than this. This one appears to be thrown together as the movies was being shot. The ending is completely predictable and dull.

Gene even has a half-hearted love interest that comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. And he leaves her with a song.