It takes a big to swallow the premise of this Norman Krasna penned comedy – Shirley MacLaine is a Hollywood comedy star whose film director husband (Yves Montand) wants to do a version of Madame Butterfly in Japan without his wife. The studio won’t give him the money to make it without MacLaine, so she pretends to be a Japanese geisha, and ends up being cast in the lead, without her husband knowing.
I went with the impersonation because MacLaine wears geisha make up – I didn’t buy so much that hubby would cast her (maybe they should just have Montand doing research as opposed to casting her in the lead of a film). The main Act two complication is the sleazy leading man (Bob Cummings) falling for MacLaine’s geisha. Unfortunately this means Montand’s character is less prominent when he should be key.
MacLaine is good and few do light comedy as well as Bob Cummings (even if he was starting to look a bit long in the tooth) but it’s not a lot of fun. Jack Cardiff handles things with a leaden hand and far too much of this is heavy and not that funny eg Cummings trying to hit on MacLaine to such a degree he almost rapes her, Montand talking and talking about how he felt emasculated in his marriage (poor director). (I wonder if this was in there because of producer Steve Parker, who was married to MacLaine and spent most of his time in Japan.) It’s also a bit sexist with its praising of geisha lifestyles and how they support men. Oh, and Montand seems to world-weary and tired to be effective in farce.
On the sunny side, there are some gorgeous images of Japan, it’s nicely photographer and we get slabs of Puccini. Edward G Robinson plays the producer who is in on the deception.
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