Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

davidallen-84122 While I agree with many of the ambivalent comments from other reviewers,"Can-Can" can only be fully appreciated on the giant Todd-AO screen,along with 6-track stereo. This becomes evident with the thrilling musical direction of Nelson Riddle.Besides the rich,stylish orchestrations,we have the equally stylish,sophisticated music of Cole Porter. The composer is well served with the two French actors.Louis Jourdan,not thought of as a singer,delivers the smoothest rendition of 'You Do Something To Me' I have ever heard. Maurice Chevalier is charming,as always and his 'Just One Of Those Things',along with the attractive presence of Louis Jourdan,provides one of the film's best moments. Now for my reservations.I feel that Frank Sinatra is miscast.He is far too glib and smug and seems to be moving in a different time-zone to most of the other players.Shirley MacLaine is also embarrassing at times;too American and shrill.Having said that,she has some bright moments and her dancing with Juliet Prowse in the final 'Can-Can' number is really exciting(provided it can be viewed on the giant screen). It's just a pity,given the talent involved,that "Can-Can" on film does not seem to totally satisfy very many people.Even so,there is clearly much left to enjoy.

TxMike I was 14 when this movie came out. I never saw it back then but thanks to the marvels of modern TV I was able to catch it on the "Movies!" channel. Watching it is fun to see how much movie-making has changed over my lifetime. Even though most of the characters are Parisian French they speak in American English. Filmmakers just wouldn't do that today.Frank Sinatra, about 44, was in the featured role as Durnais. But my favorite is Shirley MacLaine, about 25, as Simone Pistache. She was the owner and operator of the Parisian nightspot where lady dancers did the illegal, they raised their skirts while dancing to reveal the petticoats underneath. So much of the story is local puritans trying to prosecute and close down the nightspot, while François was trying to romance Simone.One of my long time favorites, dancer Juliet Prowse, has a role as Claudine, and of course she is the featured dancer in production numbers. But MacLaine also shows us that she can dance also, because that is how she got started in show business.All meaningless fluff but good entertainment. It was good to also see great French actors, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan.

mark.waltz Cole Porter had a mixed bag with his last group of Broadway musicals after Ethel Merman moved onto Irving Berlin. Only one of them, "Kiss Me Kate", was a smash hit both critically and financially, and two ("Can- Can" and "Silk Stockings") were fairly successful. Several flops ("Around the World in 80 Days" and the underrated "Out of this World") made Broadway life difficult for the ailing composer. For the movie version of "Can-Can", the basic story remained but much of the score changed with a hot box office cast brought into play the leads.The legal system is battling the nightclub area of Monmarte with women's groups protesting against the allegedly dirty dance. But the judges enjoy it just as much as the tourists and locals who go to see the jumps, twists and splits of the sexy chorines lead by Shirley MacLaine. Among the legal eagles involved are "Gigi" co-stars Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan, with MacLaine supported by none other than "Pal Joey", Frank Sinatra, re-teaming them after "Some Came Running". An overlong movie is broken up by a perky musical score, not one of Porter's best on stage, but a few songs stand out as classics.The lyrics have been taken out of the title song which MacLaine, Juliet Prowse and the Can-Can girls perform with great exertion. "C'est Magnifique", "I Love Paris" and "Live and Let Live" have all become standards, and of the other lesser known songs, MacLaine's drunken "Come Along With Me" is the most amusing. There's an Adam and Eve ballet, an Apache Dance (of course!) and the wittiness of Porter's lyrics which reflects his "Parisian" era seen earlier on Broadway in shows like "Fifty Million Frenchmen" and "Paris" which claimed some of his more risqué lyrics. All in all, there's nothing special about this likable but over-stuffed piece of fluff, but the performers all put their best foot forward (or dancing shoes) and the direction by Walter Lang is swift in spite of the running time. While this may not stand out as a classic among the golden age of movie versions of Broadway musicals, it certainly doesn't rank up there with some of the disasters, either.

crunchykitten I saw this movie when it was new- I was thirteen- and it embarrassed me then. It embarrasses me now. Sinatra and MacLaine were rather obviously miscast because they were big box office at the time and the assumption was that they could carry anything. Of course, in order to make the sly, intelligently witty and musically sophisticated Cole Porter vehicle appropriate for these limited performers, the show had to be completely denatured and stripped of every modicum of wit and intelligence- as well as all the best Porter songs. MacLaine was a fine dancer, but the non-dance portions of her performance combined strident shrieking and self-conscious cuteness in a particularly strange mix which the audience is supposed to somehow find charming. Sinatra, at the very height (or depth) of his finger-snapping, "Hey, Kooky, crazy, ring-a-ding-ding" phase simply sleepwalks through the non-singing portions of his role. Urk. Jourdan and Chevalier looked embarrassed, too- I hope they made enough money to make up for suffering through this mess.