Silk Stocking Scene

[slaytonf]

Silk Stockings always appeared to me as second rate (of course, considering the level of musicals at the time, that's not very bad). There are a number of things that interfere with my enjoyment of it, not the least of which is the painfully humiliating role Peter Lorre has. I can't imagine what could have driven him to take it. Did he need the money that badly? There is also the continual, and unavoidable comparison with Ninotchka; unfortunately, and unadvisedly encouraged by the borrowing from the original. While Fred Astaire compares well with Melvyn Douglas, Cyd Charisse, in spite of her dancing, doesn't--well, she isn't Garbo.

 

She is responsible for the one scene that has real charm, the one where she sheds her socialist garb for Paris fashion while dancing, butterfly from chrysalis-like is delightful. At the beginning of the next scene, when she enters, completely remade, we are hit with what a stunningly beautiful woman she was.