Those of you who know me know that the musical is one of my favorite film genres. I bought the obscure film The French Line sight unseen because I'd heard one cute song from it, and once I watched Guys and Dolls twice in a week. I don't know why it took me so long to finally watch the film version of Kismet, but I only saw it for the first time a few months ago. Howard Keel, in the lead role as a glib poet able to talk-or sing-his way out of any predicament, is really incredible. He performs the show-stopping number "Gesticulate" as only he could: stylized, over-the-top but still accessible, and with charm but without conceit. He carries the movie, outclassing his costars by head and shoulders, but since he's in so much of the film, it doesn't really matter that the scenes he's not in drag a little. The romantic leads, Ann Blyth and Vic Damone, aren't particularly interesting, and they don't sparkle with chemistry the way Howard Keel and Dolores Gray do. If your favorite songs in Kismet are the ballads "Stranger in Paradise" and "This Is My Beloved," you'll be severely disappointed in this movie. If you don't really care about two young kids in love and prefer more upbeat tunes, you'll be fine.Don't laugh, but my favorite song in the show was Dolores Gray's dazzling number "Not Since Nineveh". The reason this musical isn't watched or performed anymore is because you just can't give rousing applause to a song that starts with the line "Baghdad! Don't under-estimate Baghad!" However, if you're able to put foreign affairs aside-which is essential if you're going to sit down and watch Kismet-Dolores's song is fantastic. She's beautiful and has a stunning figure, clad in inventive costumes by Tony Duquette, and she has a very nice alto voice that sells a song beautifully. Between her and Howard, it's easy to forget anyone else is even in the movie!For musical aficionados, you should probably check out Kismet if you haven't already. You'll hear some beautiful singing-not by Vic Damone, though-and watch some incredible dancing by Reiko Sato, Patricia Dunn, and Wonci Lui. Plus, the story is very fast-paced, clever, and entertaining, a feature not always included in a musical comedy. Even without the songs, it would still be an interesting movie.

On paper this is a great cast but on screen it doesn't work because no two cast members seem to be working in the same film. The best voice by a country mile is that of Dolores Gray but it is diametrically opposed to that of Ann Blyth and we can only be glad they had no numbers together, Similarly Howard Keel and Vic Damone are equally poles apart. The last place one expects to find Ted de Corsia is in Baghdad and so on. We're talking serious mish-mosh here and three 'standards' - Baubles, Bangles and Beads, And This Is My Beloved, Stranger In Paradise - are not really enough to save it and, if it comes to that, they're not necessarily the best songs in the film. Vincente Minnelli directs as if he were determined to make something more insipid than Brigadoon and totally erase the charm of Meet Me In St Louis from the memory-banks of cinema-goers everywhere. Well worth missing.

We find Howard Keel and his daughter, Ann Blythe, in some whimsical Arabian fairyland. Keel is a near beggar who sells poems for a living. Some of the dialog is pretty witty. The whole screen play is full of keen lines. The plot is about mistaken identities and barely avoided executions and other nonsense, and Keel winds up terribly rich and accompanied by his enemy's lusty widow. Ann Blythe winds up married to Vic Damone, the all powerful Caliph.It's colorful, fast, tuneful, and often amusing. I don't know why it doesn't show up more often among the lists of favorite MGM musicals or something. Maybe what it needs is a little injection of Terpsichoreate from time to time. There is some uninspired ensemble dancing and that's it. It's easy to imagine one of the great dancers in MGM's stable in a supporting role: not Gene Kelly, of course, but Tommy Rall or Jacques D'Amboise. Either of them could have pepped up the choreography too, which is repetitious and a little bizarre.Keel does okay in the role of the quick-witted and fast-talking pawn of fate who is thrown from one state to another. His baritone is user-friendly and the lyrics are unusually sophisticated for what is basically a musical comedy. The evil Wazir is about to have Keel's hand chopped off for theft and Keel sings a love song to his hand, something along the lines of "how can I make a fist there, when there's nothing but the hint of a wrist there?" Hint of a wrist there? The lyrics approach those of Cole Porter and Noel Coward.You can't fault Ann Blythe's supreme soprano either. She reaches notes that would shatter glass for a mile around. Only Vic Damone sounds like he belongs on a period juke box.At least two or three of the songs became hits on that juke box, "Stranger in Paradise" was one. It's difficult for a viewer to understand just how complicated it is to arrange a musical that has so many melodies and choral passages in it. I was in a college production of "Kismet" and found the numbers tuneful and intricate, full of counterpoint and unexpected melodic intrusions. I was only a beggar but the part was demanding. Did you ever try wrapping a turban around your head? No. I thought as much. It was a small role but as a beggar I was peerless, convincing -- nonpareil. A great beggar. I still am.Maybe another reason why "Kismet" isn't so popular is that it draws its tunes from the works of Alexander Borodin. He was a good composer, considering that he was a chemist or something. But he wrote music that could be turned into POP SONGS. You can imagine how that made the cognoscente feel about Borodin. Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett on that damned juke box again, and, who knows, Lefty Frizell. Ask the music critic for the New York Times what he thinks of Borodin -- or Tchaikovsky ("Tonight We Love") or Rachmaninoff ("Full Moon and Empty Arms") and see what answer you get.Snobs, all of them. And I'll bet they never pay any attention to the colorful beggars either, no matter how magnificent the beggars' performances.

HA funny thing my father named me Marsinah because he loved this movie so much. and i love it too. the songs i thought were very lovely and i felt very much in a dream when i watched it. i thought i was romantic and very sweet. i loved it. and i wished they had a DVD for it, y'know i could never really find one. i hope ONE day it will come out on DVD. oh and one of my favorite parts is when Marsinah and Omar (i think thats his name) meet up and meet each other in the garden and sing and i believe they sing stranger in paradise or night of my nights ha ha my memory is so bad ha-ha. it's funny, i talk to many people about this play and no one knows about it. i wish more people knew.