Silk Stockings (1957)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Sadly, I’m counting down the last few Freed-unit MGM musicals on my list—I can see why they were hailed as the best in the business, and there aren’t that many left for me to watch. I would expect a downward quality trend in getting to the less famous movies, but Silk Stockings is a strong entry in the musical corpus. It’s a decent musical adaptation of 1939’s Ninotchka, with Cyd Charisse stepping into the Garbo role in a movie at the measure of her legs—her solo number “Satin and Silk” is both funny and sexy, within a role that takes advantage of both her dancing abilities as well as her ice-queen acting range. The film has Fred Astaire as a movie executive trying to put together a project in Paris, which requires convincing Russian artists to work for the capitalistic west. Charisse plays a humourless Soviet operative gradually seduced by the leading man and Paris’s considerable attractions. The West-versus-East element of the original 1939 film plays far better in the middle of the Cold War, and this mid-1950s film also captures other obsessions of the era—most notably the decade’s obsession in distinguishing movies from TV through colour cinematography, widescreen framing and “Stereophonic Sound.” (It’s, by far, my favourite number of the film despite a dodgy cadence.)  Another highlight is “Red Blues,” as the gentle poking at Soviet rigidity finally makes its way over the Iron Curtain. There’s plenty to like in the acting, as long as you accept Astaire once again being in Paris with a much younger partner (as in the same year’s Funny Face)—if it helps stomach the 22-year age difference between them, keep in mind that few actresses, no matter their age, could keep up with Astaire’s dancing. This being said, Astaire is up to his usual very high standards (he keeps the best for last with an iconic final “The Ritz Roll and Rock”), but Charisse has the tougher role as the rigid accented Nina, slowly transforming over the course of the film. Their duet is quite good as well, perhaps echoing their comfort together after working on The Band Wagon four years earlier. Peter Lorre also has a funny small role. While Hollywood history is rife with disastrous musical remakes of earlier works, this certainly isn’t the case with Silk Stockings. Much like the quasi-contemporary High Society, it takes a good film and delivers something equally good in a slightly different way. It’s one of the essential musicals of the 1950s.