Like Mel Brooks's remake of "The Producers", this can be described as the film of the play of the film. The 1939 film "Ninotchka", starring Greta Garbo, was in 1955 turned into a stage musical entitled "Silk Stockings", which was itself made into a film two years later.
The musical makes a few changes to the plot of the original film, but the basic idea is the same. An unfeasibly beautiful female Soviet official named Ninotchka arrives in Paris on an official mission. In the original film this concerned the sale of jewellery confiscated during the Russian Revolution; here Ninotchka's mission is to persuade Peter Boroff, a defecting Russian composer, to return to the Soviet Union. In both cases Ninotchka, who initially comes across as fanatical, dull and humourless, allows herself to be seduced by Western freedoms and consumer luxuries, including the silk stockings of the title, and ends up falling in love with a Westerner. In the first film her lover is a Frenchman; here he is an American. (Despite the Parisian setting, not a single major character is French).
This was one of two musicals which Fred Astaire made in 1957, the other being "Funny Face" with Audrey Hepburn. It is also the only film in which he dances to a rock and roll number, "The Ritz Roll and Rock", a new song written for the film and which did not feature in the stage show. Astaire, who would have been 58 in 1957, wanted to concentrate on "straight" acting in future, and announced that "Silk Stockings" would be his last dance musical. (He was, in fact, to return to the genre for one last bow in "Finian's Rainbow" in 1968). Astaire's character here is Steve Canfield, the American film producer with whom Ninotchka falls in love, and his leading lady is Cyd Charisse, who had already starred alongside him in "The Band Wagon" from four years earlier. Like most of his female co-stars she was a lot younger than him, and Astaire never really looked convincing as the love-interest of a woman young enough to be his daughter.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised by Charisse's performance in this film. In the past, I had got the impression from films like "The Band Wagon" and "Party Girl" that she had become a big star on the basis of her good looks, her shapely legs and her dance skills rather than her acting, an impression strengthened by "Singin' in the Rain", in which she was drafted in as Gene Kelly's dance partner even though she does not have an acting role. Here, however, she succeeds in the difficult task of portraying the stony-faced apparatchik of the early scenes and the warmer, more human Ninotchka of the later ones, while making it clear that these two apparently different people are really two sides of one personality. She was even nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe.
Like the original "Ninotchka", the film is an anti-Soviet satire, but as it is also a comedy it largely ignores the brutality, authoritarianism and lack of political freedom inherent in the Soviet system. Instead it concentrates on painting the Soviet Union as a grim, joyless and puritanical society, which is probably exaggerated. Certainly, consumer luxuries such as silk stockings and champagne might have been in short supply (although they would have been available to anyone with the requisite influence and connections or to anyone prepared to pay black-market prices), but it is not correct to imply, as the film does, that Soviet citizens were deprived of simple pleasures like music and dancing.
Indeed, the film does not always show Western society in the best light, although it is difficult to decide how much of this is deliberate and how much inadvertent. From what we see of it, the film being produced by Canfield, ostensibly an adaptation of "War and Peace", seems horrifyingly vulgar. Or at least it did to me, but I am not sure whether I was meant to be horrified. The makers of American musicals of this period were often keen to defend lowbrow culture in the name of giving the masses what they want and to satirise highbrows as snobbish, pretentious "longhairs"; "The Band Wagon" is a good example of this phenomenon.
One thing which did appear to be deliberate satire was the characterisation of Peggy Dayton, a Hollywood actress who is the star of Canfield's movie. Peggy is portrayed as an airheaded nymphomaniac; asked what she thinks of Tolstoy, she replies "There's no truth in the rumours, we're just good friends". (Her standard reply when asked about any man). As Peggy is described as a swimmer who has starred in aquatic musicals, the character was presumably written as a spiteful dig at Esther Williams who had recently had a very public falling-out with the studio, MGM.
It is a long time since I last watched "Ninotchka", but from what I can remember it was considerably better than "Silk Stockings". Not every good film- even every good comedy- can be made to work as a musical. Especially if, as in this case, the music is not particularly memorable. The dance sequences are well performed, but there is little here to contradict my view that Astaire should have retired from playing romantic leads at least a decade before he actually did. 6/10.
The musical makes a few changes to the plot of the original film, but the basic idea is the same. An unfeasibly beautiful female Soviet official named Ninotchka arrives in Paris on an official mission. In the original film this concerned the sale of jewellery confiscated during the Russian Revolution; here Ninotchka's mission is to persuade Peter Boroff, a defecting Russian composer, to return to the Soviet Union. In both cases Ninotchka, who initially comes across as fanatical, dull and humourless, allows herself to be seduced by Western freedoms and consumer luxuries, including the silk stockings of the title, and ends up falling in love with a Westerner. In the first film her lover is a Frenchman; here he is an American. (Despite the Parisian setting, not a single major character is French).
This was one of two musicals which Fred Astaire made in 1957, the other being "Funny Face" with Audrey Hepburn. It is also the only film in which he dances to a rock and roll number, "The Ritz Roll and Rock", a new song written for the film and which did not feature in the stage show. Astaire, who would have been 58 in 1957, wanted to concentrate on "straight" acting in future, and announced that "Silk Stockings" would be his last dance musical. (He was, in fact, to return to the genre for one last bow in "Finian's Rainbow" in 1968). Astaire's character here is Steve Canfield, the American film producer with whom Ninotchka falls in love, and his leading lady is Cyd Charisse, who had already starred alongside him in "The Band Wagon" from four years earlier. Like most of his female co-stars she was a lot younger than him, and Astaire never really looked convincing as the love-interest of a woman young enough to be his daughter.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised by Charisse's performance in this film. In the past, I had got the impression from films like "The Band Wagon" and "Party Girl" that she had become a big star on the basis of her good looks, her shapely legs and her dance skills rather than her acting, an impression strengthened by "Singin' in the Rain", in which she was drafted in as Gene Kelly's dance partner even though she does not have an acting role. Here, however, she succeeds in the difficult task of portraying the stony-faced apparatchik of the early scenes and the warmer, more human Ninotchka of the later ones, while making it clear that these two apparently different people are really two sides of one personality. She was even nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe.
Like the original "Ninotchka", the film is an anti-Soviet satire, but as it is also a comedy it largely ignores the brutality, authoritarianism and lack of political freedom inherent in the Soviet system. Instead it concentrates on painting the Soviet Union as a grim, joyless and puritanical society, which is probably exaggerated. Certainly, consumer luxuries such as silk stockings and champagne might have been in short supply (although they would have been available to anyone with the requisite influence and connections or to anyone prepared to pay black-market prices), but it is not correct to imply, as the film does, that Soviet citizens were deprived of simple pleasures like music and dancing.
Indeed, the film does not always show Western society in the best light, although it is difficult to decide how much of this is deliberate and how much inadvertent. From what we see of it, the film being produced by Canfield, ostensibly an adaptation of "War and Peace", seems horrifyingly vulgar. Or at least it did to me, but I am not sure whether I was meant to be horrified. The makers of American musicals of this period were often keen to defend lowbrow culture in the name of giving the masses what they want and to satirise highbrows as snobbish, pretentious "longhairs"; "The Band Wagon" is a good example of this phenomenon.
One thing which did appear to be deliberate satire was the characterisation of Peggy Dayton, a Hollywood actress who is the star of Canfield's movie. Peggy is portrayed as an airheaded nymphomaniac; asked what she thinks of Tolstoy, she replies "There's no truth in the rumours, we're just good friends". (Her standard reply when asked about any man). As Peggy is described as a swimmer who has starred in aquatic musicals, the character was presumably written as a spiteful dig at Esther Williams who had recently had a very public falling-out with the studio, MGM.
It is a long time since I last watched "Ninotchka", but from what I can remember it was considerably better than "Silk Stockings". Not every good film- even every good comedy- can be made to work as a musical. Especially if, as in this case, the music is not particularly memorable. The dance sequences are well performed, but there is little here to contradict my view that Astaire should have retired from playing romantic leads at least a decade before he actually did. 6/10.