mail-72840 Yes it's a period piece in terms of manners and cultural mores but I can't get by the horrible age difference between the leading man and leading lady. Lesley Caron is meant to be a student but was actually 24 at the time of filming. She does not convince in the former role yet is demonstrably far too young for Fred Astaire. He is meant to be a kind sponsor/guardian and at the time of filming was 56 years old. The relationship is a bit sick. As for the dancing, FA does his usual slick shtick and LC attempts to keep up. But she is not comfortable and there is no harmonyor charisma in their routines together. With a predictable plot, this film has noneof the charm or spirit of many far better romantic dance films.

sam_i_amgirl For a book so popular it spanned (at least) four movie adaptations over the last century and countless plays, musicals and anime series - it's a shame that the most famous adaption was SO adapted it barely resembled the original. Where the original book is witty and funny and sweet - because the leading lady is AMAZING - this version is just sweet and icky based on a may-December (or should I say, may-next-December) romance. Yes, the original book is slightly romantic, but only at the end. And the book focuses on so many societal and political issues such as the suffrage movement and equality and the class rank, that it's modern for it's time and remarkably intelligent. This 1955 adaptation - true to the anti-feminist 50s ideals - completely ignored all that and made Judy (er.. Julie) into this sexy French maiden with a geriatric playboy beau. Gross. And they accused the book of being dodgy?If you don't compare it to the book and look at it on it's own, it has it's merits. But as a huge fan of the book, I can't help but feel that this is an insult to the author Jean Webster herself. I love Fred Astaire, but I don't like the film makers' clichéd and backward views on a classic female story. Imagine if they adapted Anne of Green Gables or Pride and Prejudice* into something like this? There'd be an outrage! Well, I'm part of the outrage for Daddy Long Legs. READ THE BOOK Y'ALL Judy is Lizzie Bennet meets Anne Shirley meets Sybil Crawley. And she's actually funny.*Bride and Prejudice... no comment.

theowinthrop "Daddy Long Legs" was one of those movies that were made again and again in the teens up to the 1930s, sometimes under it's own original name (the name of the novel it was based on) and sometimes, like in a Shirley Temple version called "Curley Top", under a different name. Although Mary Pickford was in a silent version, the best known early version was a 1931 film with Warner Baxter and Janet Gaynor. However, aside from Temple's "Curley Top" (which had a plot difficulty changed by a rewrite), the most successful version to modern audiences is this one that starred Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron in 1955. It was one of Astaire's last musicals, and was one of the series of musicals from "An American In Paris" through "Lili" that led to Caron's best remembered musical starring role in "Gigi" (1958). The plot of "Daddy Long Legs" was about a millionaire who sees a young girl in an orphan home and secretly adopts her. His shadow on the wall is noticed and he is referred to as "Daddy Long Legs" The girl grows up and meets the man when she is reaching adulthood, and her secret guardian falls for her, and eventually marries her. It is a kind of wish fulfillment plot - and it's unintentional overtone of twisted sexual relations between an adopted father figure and and adopted daughter figure has been commented on. In fact it really gets a going over in the current version from the American Ambassador to France (Williamson) played by Larry Keating, who points out how really scandalous the matter is to Astaire. It causes a bump on the road to a happy conclusion, but it is a big bump. Only in "Curley Top" was this avoided by having Shirley Temple have an older sister who could be romanced by the millionaire.Oddly enough, the 1931 version has an unintentional eerie footnote to the strange sex issue. When that version came out, one of the people who saw the film (it is, apparently, one of the last films she ever saw) was the ill-fated Starr Faithful, whose still mysterious death (murder/suicide/accident?) is debated to this day. Starr had been having an affair with her mother's older cousin, Andrew Peters (the Mayor of Boston in the early 1920s), which somewhat looked like the relationship between the guardian and the young orphan in the story. Whether Starr went to see "Daddy Long Legs" for that reason or not is a minor mystery in the last days of her life.I've never seen the Baxter-Gaynor version. This 1958 version was shown on the 20th Century Fox Cable network this afternoon. Forgetting the central problem mentioned above about the twisted relationship, it is a good musical. There are several good musical numbers, such as the "slue-foot" dance at the college prom (that Astaire does with Caron) to the music of Ray Anthony's orchestra. There is also the use of two popular tunes: "Dream (which becomes a type of theme tune for Caron, while thinking of Astaire), and "Something's Got To Give", which unconsciously summarizes their odd relationship (Astaire being the old unmovable object hit by the unexpected force of Caron). But the major musical number of the film is rather odd.When (after his unfortunate conversation with Keating) Astaire breaks with Caron on a sexual level, she has a dream sequence which in design reminds one of Caron's earlier dance/ballet sequence with Gene Kelly in "An American In Paris". She dreams she is back in the hallway of the luxury New York City Hotel that she was in when Astaire was romancing her, but all the rooms have "3203" (her room number) on them. But the hallways and doors are all drawn (they are not solid wooden doors. It's like the backdrop of Paris that Kelly stands in front of when he begins his dance sequence regarding Caron in "An American In Paris". It gets weirder, as Caron changes styles of dancing - first ballet, then tango, than carnival - as she enters rooms representing Paris, Buenos Aires, or Rio. What makes it weird is that Astaire does not dance with Caron or alone - he appears as an onlooker, either in an opera/ballet box, a table on the side, or a tourist looking at the carnival. It is the only time I can recall Fred Astaire in a musical number where he does nothing!The cast is good, particularly the outspoken personal secretary Ms Pritchard (Thelma Ritter) trying to get Fred to reveal himself, and the long suffering lawyer/business adviser Griggs (Fred Clark) trying to keep Astaire aware of what he should be doing, and what he is doing all wrong. It's a good musical, once you swallow that odd sexual connection between the principals. Due to the cast, the musical numbers (even the one where Fred does nothing), and the light touch of director Jean Negulesco I would say it gets an "8" out of "10".

Sa'ar Vardi I've recently got to watch Daddy Long Legs (1955), a classic DVD i've won thanks to an Oscar trivia contest I participated in earlier this year. The film was OK, I guess, yet something bothered me, and it damaged an otherwise enjoyable viewing.You see, the acting was good, the dance sequences were engaging even by today's standards and the whole thing felt like a giant time capsule from the 1950's - which is all good in my book. However, as much as I tried, I couldn't overcome the gigantic age gap between lead actors Fred Astaire (who was 55 year old when the movie got out) and Leslie Caron (who was 23 or 24 years old at the same time). Bend it as you may, a 30 year distance between romantic leads feels wrong\immoral\awkward (take a pick). Since I wasn't around in the 1950's, I don't know if it was acceptable by the public at that time, but viewing it in the 2000's made it feel completely wrong, and this lack of credibility damaged my final judgement.I gave it a 6 out of 10.