MartinHafer Rarely have I seen my wife and oldest daughter hate a film as much as they hated "Silk Stockings"! I didn't think it was that bad, but I did understand SOME of their feelings. It sure should have been a lot better! "Silk Stockings" is a musical remake of "Ninotchka". Now that is a serious problem, as this Ernst Lubitsch film is a wonderful classic--a film that is very, very hard to top. But the film didn't even come close to the quality of the original for many reasons--though the biggest one is the music. Too often, the romance or comedy of the film grinds to a severe halt when the musical numbers intrude--and they did intrude! Few of the song and dance numbers were that good or had much to do with the film, but the tempo was even more seriously a problem. While the film is a sweet little plot--the songs are often HUGE production numbers. The fit is all wrong. And you know it's a problem when Fred Astaire is totally lost in the process! On top of all this, the characters are way too cartoony and silly to work. Overall, I see no need to see this one considering that "Ninotchka" is light-years better!

jhkp Unlike Fred Astaire's other 1957 release, Funny Face, Silk Stockings was not filmed on location in Paris. The film tells us that "Paris loves lovers", but never really shows it. Granted, very few of M-G-M's CinemaScope musicals were shot on location, after the first one (Rose Marie, 1954). Silk Stockings was no exception - though I have no idea if anyone even wanted to shoot it on location. Most of it takes place indoors. Not unlike the original, Ninotchka - but that was a more talk-oriented comedy. At any rate, elegant decor, costumes, and dialogue are relied upon here to convey the magic and romance of the setting as dictated by the script. Sometimes that works, and sometimes you may find yourself feeling cooped up, wishing you could see some of this immortal city everyone keeps singing and talking about. As Ninotchka, Cyd Charisse had the right looks for the part. As an actress, it's a stretch for her, requiring character acting, even a Russian accent. She pulls it off, but not brilliantly. Except when she dances - then she's Ninotchka to the life. It's one of her best roles as a dancer, and she's thrilling. As American producer Steve Canfield, Fred Astaire is not really on entirely familiar ground, either. The part seems a little aggressive for him. But he does his usual first-class job. Rouben Mamoulian - the director of the brilliant Love Me Tonight, and other early, innovative sound films - had his final hit with this one. It's not as creative as some of his other musicals, but overall it's a fine show.

Steffi_P Very few of the classic 1950s musicals were original stories. Most of them were musical adaptations of novels, stage plays or, increasingly, the previous generations' non-musical pictures. The quality of these often had little bearing on that of the original. The musical A Star is Born is for example considerably better than the original. But they could also be vastly worse than their predecessors after the rigours of plot rehash, singer-dancer casting and the conventions of a new era.The 1939 movie Ninotchka could only really have worked with Greta Garbo – it was built around her persona. Silk Stockings does not – and could not – have Garbo. Cyd Charisse is not a terrible actress, and even does a decent caricature of a steely soviet officer, speaking without moving a single other muscle in her face. Garbo on the other hand managed to get across the same idea without even such a trick as freezing up her face. She had something likable and beguiling about her even before her grim exterior was broken down. Charisse on the other hand succeeds only in presenting Ninotchka as totally robotic. That may be to her credit but it does not benefit the movie. Her transformation does not seem as plausible as Garbo's, and she is not especially human even after it.And this really seems to feed into all the other problems with Silk Stockings. With the Cold War and the McCarthy scare as a backdrop, there was no way the movie could be remotely equivocal about communism. As such the original story has lost a lot of its complexity, and a tone that was once playful now seems belligerent. Many of the lines seem unnecessarily dumbed-down (compare for example the language used by Garbo commenting on a fancy hat to the equivalent of Charisse and the stockings). There is a new subplot about a Russian composer having his music distorted for a screen musical, and there are a lot of attacks on ostentatious movie-making. But this is as simplistic as the politics, never going further than disdainfully listing the ills of modern Hollywood, as in the song "Stereophonic Sound".Presumably the studio didn't grasp the irony of these sentiments in a picture that was itself shot in Technicolor and cinemascope. Director Rouben Mamoulian probably did, apparently describing the new aspect ratio as "the stupidest shape I've ever seen". For a director usually at his most brilliant and inventive in the musical genre, his work is decidedly lacklustre here. The irony cannot have been lost on poor old Fred Astaire either, who is not at all well-served by 'scope. Either his feet are cut off at the bottom of the frame, or he seems lost amid all the other business on screen. It's a shame this was to be his last top-hat-and-tails performance. It's not exactly a noble send-off.There is one nice feature of Silk Stockings, and that is a sweet little performance by Peter Lorre. He's at his best here, all pent-up as if on the edge of a maniacal outburst. But the fact that this is the only laudable thing to say about the picture shows how generally dire the rest of it is. The Cole Porter songs are far from his best; weak rehashes of material from his earlier musicals. The second great irony about Silk Stockings is that, despite its waxing lyrical about the magic of true romance as opposed to bland analysis, the romance in the picture feels completely flat. It lacks all of the original movie's warmth and passion, not just in the love story but also in, say, the friendship between Ninotchka and the trio of Russian comrades. All in all, this is an atrocious movie.

ccthemovieman-1 I watched this to see Fred Astaire dance and Cyd Charisse to smile and show off her legs and dancing talents. I got very little of the above. Astaire, as "Steve Canfield," sang a lot more than he danced, and his singing was always "fair, at best." Charisse's character, "Ninotchka Yoschenko," mostly pouted throughout the film and spoke with a stupid accent, not exactly appealing. It also takes away from the film when you know someone else is singing, not her! To be fair, some of their work here together just makes you marvel at them. Perhaps another look - this time with a CinemaScope widescreen DVD picture, - would make me appreciate this movie more.This is a musical remake of the 1939 Greta Garbo film "Ninotochka." I don't think either is all that great but given the choice to watch either again, I'd take the Garbo film, even though it's always good to watch Astaire and Charisse stepping out, so to speak.