The greatest movie ever!

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Don't Believe the Hype

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I knew nothing of this film, but watching it one immediately sees the extraordinary quality of the direction and production. I didn't know that Dorothy Lamour began her career as a singer for a big band and later sang on radio for network shows. She was Miss New Orleans in 1931 and her heritage included being Spanish. Looking at her she reminds one of Katy Jurado and could have played roles for Latin characters. In this film I think she was especially effective when she played "herself", Mary the carny girl. The production numbers were excellent and indicated the direction dance numbers would be presented in the future. Don Ameche was excellent as always. So this film was a very pleasant surprise.

SLIGHTLY FRENCH is a delightful little trifle starring Dorothy Lamour as a cynical carnival performer who is wooed by movie director Don Ameche to star in his new movie and feign being a great French star imported to America for the film. (Interestingly, this very plot was used that same year in IT'S A GREAT FEELING with Doris Day - and Day's Faux French femme's last name was Lamour!!!). Elegantly filmed by cultish director Douglas Sirk, SLIGHTLY FRENCH is not a classic but it's a very appealing little comedy/musical/drama with two excellent stars. Cannot believe one reviewer on IMDb wrote Lamour "never became a movie star" away from Hope and Crosby, she was only one of the biggest stars 1936-1949 in pictures and in 1941 was VARIETY magazine's top female box-office attraction. She starred in many excellent films sans Bob or Bing, THE HURRICANE, THE FLEET'S IN, JOHNNY APOLLO, SPAWN OF THE NORTH, etc. You'll note she gets billing over Ameche in this film. Alas, few of the big movie stars of the era have had their careers locked away in the vaults as Dorothy has - most of her films were at Paramount, and Universal (which now owns the 1930-1948 Paramount films) has done a very poor job getting most of them in circulation so most do only know her today from the Road movies. She was a great singer, a delightful screen star, and a fairly good actress too. Here's hoping this Columbia release will show up on Turner Classic Movies soon so more can see this lovely glamour girl in this underrated gem.

"Slightly French" is a rather a leaden trifle, which today is chiefly of interest to students of Douglas Sirk's films or Dorothy Lamour or Don Ameche fans. I thought the implausible plot would have worked better in the late 1920s or early '30s, and found at IMDb that it was a remake of "Let's Fall in Love," a 1933 vehicle for Ann Sothern. By 1949, passing off a New York Irish carnival dancer as the Parisian cousin of a vocal coach, and tying her starring in a movie to bringing back a fired director, was too great a suspension of nearly anyone's disbelief. (And note that Lamour was 35 in 1949 while Sothern was 25 when she made "Let's Fall in Love." Lamour was far from old but the plot would have been more convincing if she were younger.) The breezy style needed to carry it off was just a memory, at least on the Universal studio lot.Nevertheless, everyone involved in the production was enough of a professional to keep a not-too-demanding viewer entertained with the plot twists, snappy dialogue and musical numbers. Lamour gets to sing -- in French-accented English -- a short version of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Let's Fall in Love," the only song in the picture that sticks in the memory, to excuse her calling a playwright at a press party a "plagiarist." She dances a little, too, though in the big dance number set in the streets of Paris the soloist looks younger and thinner. Ameche is a stereotypical egomaniacal director, single and living with his sister in an oceanfront Hollywood-moderne mansion. The explanation for his bachelorhood is excessive self-love, but his best friend producer is similarly single. Inquiring minds inevitably will speculate on the coincidence, though both end up symmetrically in love by the picture's end.Meant for the bottom half of a double-bill, "Slightly French" never quite gets out of its B-picture category, but for a low-budget black-and-white musical it isn't half bad.

Don Ameche was on the decline in his career and Dorothy Lamour still trying to acheive stardom outside those "Road" movies when this movie was made. It tries to borrow from Ameche's earlier hits with Alice Faye but the formula does not work here because Lamour is no Faye. And she is expected to carry it. Supporting performances from Page and Kennard is good but not enough. If it were made today, it would make a good video rental.