This movie is based on a breathtaking conceit: That Yves Montand, the greatest singer-actor of the twentieth century and rivalled only in both departments by Frank Sinatra - had to be 'taught' to sing. As if that weren't enough they manage to top this by having Montand, a lifelong politically active supporter or the Left - his father's Communits activities forced him to flee his native Italy, where Yves was actually born, for France and his elder brother was a high-ranking official in the Communist party, and with his wife, Simone Signoret, Montand signed dozens of left-wing petitions - play a billionaire. In a film studded with bad jokes the biggest joke of all is Frankie Vaughan, a pathetic non-singer,non-actor, non-dancer who was, unnacountably, very popular in England, where they love the second-rate and to add insult to injury Vaughan gets to mangle the best new song in the score by a mile, the standout ballad Incurably Romantic, in which Sammy Cahn turned in a lyric reminiscent of Jimmy Van Heusen's previous collaborator Johnny Burke. It's clear from all the comments I've read here - though, to be fair, I haven't read all of them - that most of the posters are completely unaware of Montand and his track record in his adoptive France where he could sell out any venue in which he chose to appear with his unbeatable parlay of singing, dancing and charm. It was in fact his left-wing sympathies which left him visa-less and prevented him from appearing in the US until impresario Norman Granz finally obtained a visa for him in 1959 when, despite performing his one-man show totally in French, he blew the critics away and did SRO business for months instead of the two weeks he was contracted for and it was on the strength of this, and not, as one poster has assumed, his performance in the film version of The Crucible - which he had also played on the Paris stage with Signoret - in 1957. With the benefit of singing in English Sinatra left many more memorable records than Montand but against this Montand far outclassed Sinatra in dramatic performances on film, mostly post-Let's Make Love. For some reason none of the several films Montand made in England were wholly satisfactory including this one but, in its favor, we DO get to hear Montand perform, albeit incompletely, the gorgeous ballad Incurably Romantic and we DO get a glimpse of how gracefully he could dance, again, in an all-too-brief sequence when he imagines himself replacing the inept Vaughan in a number with Monroe, a clear case of a Bentley replacing a Skoda. Inevitably the film is still being marketed as a Monroe vehicle with everybody else just along for the ride but for Montand devotees it is a must in spite of its shortcomings.
Review of Let's Make Love
