Kismet series

  • Kismet (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) As far as remake crazes go, the brief subgenre of 1950s musical remakes has much to go for it – At their best, Silk Stockings, High Society and A Song is Born didn’t necessarily improve upon their inspirations, but presented something different enough to be enjoyable in their own right. Add 1955’s Kismet to that list – while it’s nowhere as good as those three films, it’s significantly more interesting as a musical than its original was as a tepid Arabian-Night-style drama. That a relative assessment, obviously – more interesting than a dull original doesn’t necessarily make Kismet all that worthwhile compared with the towering classics of the musical genre that were released throughout the 1950s. But I’ll take what I can, and watching this Kismet musical comedy right after the 1944 version was like a breath of redeeming fresh air for the double bill. (The relationship between the two films isn’t as direct as you’d think – This 1955 version of Kismet is far more closely associated with the 1953 Broadway musical than the 1944 film, or the three previous versions of the story brought to the big screen.)  Directed by Vincente Minelli, this Kismet features good production values (under the influence of producer Arthur Freed) a semi-decent male lead in Howard Keel and a good-looking Ann Blyth as the female lead (even if co-star Dolores Gray looks livelier – her take on “Not Since Nineveh” is a highlight). Some of the songs aren’t too bad, and there’s something comfortable in watching a Freed-unit MGM musical right past the very peak of the form. But Kismet’s effectiveness is more temporary (or relative!) than lasting – after an acceptable opening, the film struggles to keep an even rhythm, hampered by a curiously flat and ponderous direction that lets neither comedy nor music shine all that brightly. Oh, it’s still better than the 1944 film – but there’s a real sense of missed opportunities and botched execution to the results.

  • Kismet (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Lavish and expansive, the 1940s version of Kismet nonetheless fails to take off. Clearly meant to be a big-budget colour production (it was eventually nominated for four technical Academy Awards) and act as a late-career showcase for MGM’s beloved Marlene Dietrich as a harem queen supporting role (alongside Ronald Coleman playing a “King of the Beggars”), the film nonetheless feels ungainly and ineffective. Set against a non-fantastic Arabian-Night-style backdrop of long-ago Bagdad, the film will strike many twenty-first century viewers as a proto-Aladdin, and as pure cultural appropriation with little regard as to accuracy or respect for the other culture. It’s not terrible, but once again – for all of the big-budget care given to the production’s technical qualities and its escapist intentions in the middle of World War II, Kismet isn’t that much fun to watch. As much as I don’t like to highlight it, the one part of the film worth watching has Dietrich “dancing” (with a body double) with gold-painted legs. Otherwise, well, Kismet does the bare minimum that could be expected of a Hollywood-style Arabian epic (especially considering its pedigree as the fourth movie adaptation of the same original story), but fails to impress as much as earlier or later productions in the same ballpark. (It’s no Thief of Baghdad, for instance – although the thought of having Dietrich in that other film is interesting enough.) This 1944 Kismet even pales in comparison to its own musical 1955 remake… but that’s another review.