Les Demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

For foreign-language musicals on screen, mostly Indian movies come to mind. The only exceptions I could think of were Nosotros los pobres and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, both of them serious and the latter possibly qualifying as an opera with its nonstop singing. By contrast, TYGoR is more of a Gene Kelly-type vehicle; indeed, Kelly gets a supporting role as visiting composer Andy. And yes, most of his lines are in French.

The official English title is misleading in that the leads, sisters Delphine (Catherine Deneuve, also in TUoC) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac), are old enough to work as teachers. Delphine is on the verge of dumping her obnoxious gallery-owning boyfriend (Jacques Riberolles), and both sisters hope to find romance and move from Rochefort to Paris to pursue musical success. As it happens, showmen Étienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale) could use help with a town fair stage act. But they're not the true love interests. Solange will literally bump into hers (Kelly), and Delphine will keep missing Maxence (Jacques Perrin), the sailor and artist who already has a crush on her. Meanwhile, their café-owning mother (Danielle Darrieux) is thinking she broke up with the unfortunately named music shop owner Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli) too rashly.

For intro paragraph brevity, I have skimped on the credits. Most of the above characters have alternate actors for singing voices: Anne Germain as Delphine, Claude Parent as Solange, Romuald Figuier as Étienne, José Bartel as Bill, Donald Burke as Andy, Jacques Revaux as Maxence, and Georges Blaness as Simon. Some of the less prominent characters do too, leaving me to wonder whether Darrieux was the only on-screen actress to sing.

About half the musical sequences focus on dance over singing. No, we don't get to see a lot of that from Kelly, who was in his mid-50s by then. But it's no La La Land either; the choreography is pretty good.

As for the songs, the melodies are fine, and I've grown fonder of the sound of French. Sometimes the subtitles try for rhymes, tho not consistently. One odd scene has characters talking in rhyme, in both languages, without music. Maybe more than one did and I was too caught up in other elements to notice.

What could distract me so? Well, the plot, which I also skimped on above. It may look conceptually basic, and the loves are certainly shallow, but events get pretty intricate, and the dialog isn't slow. Some of its humor may get lost in translation, though I perked up at an explicit reference to Jules and Jim. The rest of the humor is largely in situational improbabilities, along with the cute brattiness of the sisters' much younger brother (Patrick Jeantet on screen, Olivier Bonnet for singing).

Apart from Kelly's age, you could almost believe that this musical came out a great deal earlier. There are just a couple lines too risque for the Hays Code era, not that that ever applied in France.

Overall, I just kinda like it. I feel I would've gotten more out of it if I were better versed in French. And maybe more alert at the time.

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

All I really knew about this before -- perhaps all anyone today is expected to know about it -- is that it includes a dance sequence involving Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse of Tom and Jerry fame. That told me it was going to be whimsical, even by old musical standards. If nothing else, that scene promised to be cute.

On shore leave in Hollywood, Clarence (Frank Sinatra) looks to Joe (Kelly) for guidance on courtship. Lessons are interrupted when a cop irregularly strong-arms them into persuading single-digit boy Donald (Dean Stockwell), who wants to join the Navy right away, to return home that night. They accompany him and meet his Aunt Susie (Kathryn Grayson), an aspiring singer who immediately appeals to Clarence but not Joe, who'd rather pursue the local woman he's already dated. Through a series of events that's tricky to summarize, Joe winds up claiming that Clarence can get her an audition with concert pianist José Iturbi (as himself), figuring it's Clarence's best shot. As the two men try to make that claim a reality, their feelings shift....

Brigadoon (1954)

This may be the first film I watched because of a vocabulary lesson. Dictionaries make the titular place sound akin to Xanadu or Shangri-la, albeit often with less emphasis on utopian qualities and more on separation from the outside world. When I learned that the source was a Lerner and Lowe musical and this version had Vincente Minnelli directing and Gene Kelly starring, I opted to take a chance in spite of a mixed reception.

Two New Yorkers, Tommy (Kelly) and Jeff (Van Johnson), go hunting for sport in Scotland and stumble on a curiously unmapped farming town. They can tell that the citizens are unaccustomed to visitors, but Charlie (Jimmy Thompson), feeling great about his imminent wedding, urges their welcome. As it happens, Tommy rapidly falls in mutual love with the bride's sister, Fiona (Cyd Charisse), nearly forgetting his fiancée back in New York. But Jeff can't shake the feeling there's something too fishy about Brigadoon, and he'd like to forget the whole thing....

Summer Stock (1950)

Yup, another "summer" movie. I was unaware of the theatrical term to which the title alludes. There might be a double entendre, considering the agriculture herein.

Somewhere in New England, Jane (Judy Garland) has just had two farmhands quit on her due to poor outputs of late. Fortunately, her fiance, Orville Wingait (Eddie Bracken), has a rich father (Ray Collins) willing to buy her a tractor to make up the loss...and unwilling to let her forget it. Jane's work faces further disruption when her sister, Abigail (Gloria DeHaven), begs to let her troupe practice and perform in the barn, because they never get a good place. Jane agrees on the condition that all the actors/singers/dancers pull their weight in farmwork, which they don't do well. Stage director and star Joe (Gene Kelly) is Abigail's fiance, but he and Jane start emotionally straying toward each other. It doesn't help that the Wingaits disdain show business....