★ 7 / 10
Charity" (Shirley MacLaine), "Nickie" (Chita Rivera) and "Helene
CinemaSerf
"Charity" (Shirley MacLaine), "Nickie" (Chita Rivera) and "Helene" (Paula Kelly) are call-girls working in a grotty dance hall. "Charity" is an honest, maybe…
"Charity" (Shirley MacLaine), "Nickie" (Chita Rivera) and "Helene" (Paula Kelly) are call-girls working in a grotty dance hall. "Charity" is an honest, maybe too honest, gal, but after years going round in circles she needs a decent man in her life. That might just happen when she meets "Oscar" (John McMartin) but he doesn't know what she really does to make a living. It isn't quite in a bank. Should she tell him and risk him walking away? The story itself here is no great shakes, but the performances are really entertaining. MacLaine, Ricardo Montalban as the legendary actor "Vittorio" and the rhythmic Sammy Davis Jr. as "Big Daddy" all contribute to a tight ensemble delivering some of the best from musical theatre to the big screen. "Big Spender"; "If My Friends Could See Me Now"; "...Something Better Than This"; "The Rhythm of Life" - all cleverly written and scored by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields and sung by the folks we are watching. Now the production isn't the best. The editing is really quite bitty and director Bob Fosse still can't quite remember that cinema can flow in a continuous fashion that theatre cannot. It's not Neil Simon's best script adaptation either, indeed "Nights of Cabiria" might blush at the rather staccato nature of this tribute. It looks great and there's quite some chemistry between MacLaine and the suave and debonaire Montalban and by mid-way through, you just want poor old "Charity" to find her happiness. It's hard to see how it could be better and is well worth watch if you want to see charisma on screen in spades.
Read full review
★ 7 / 10
Bob Fosse: Dance expresses joy better than anything else
Galina_movie_fan
My love and admiration for Federico Fellini/Guiletta Masina's film Nights of Cabiria had stopped me for long time from seeing Sweet Charity, the adaptation of…
My love and admiration for Federico Fellini/Guiletta Masina's film Nights of Cabiria had stopped me for long time from seeing Sweet Charity, the adaptation of the musical based on the same story which was made into a highly successful Broadway show directed and choreographed by a multi talented Bob Fosse. I am a fan of Bob Fosse. I love all his films, musicals and not, but I was hesitant to see Sweet Charity the movie and I never had a chance to see the Broadway musical. Well, I finally did and I can say that nothing is wrong with transporting the same story to the different time, place, language, medium, and to use the different artistic tools. The story is the same; the films are as different as Rome and NYC or as Federico Fellini and Bob Fosse. Fosse's film should be judged on its own terms, and it has a lot of breathtaking scenes to enjoy, bright colors, outrageously stunning costumes (the work of incredible Edith Head), adorable and unbelievably cute Shirley MacLaine, Sweet Charity Hope Valentine, and the best of all - the dancing sequences to die for. Among them, splendid The Big Spender is perfection and the real treasure. Fosse's staging of the musical numbers is outstanding. The most memorable moment in the movie for me was stolen from Shirley MacLaine by Chita Rivera in Big Spender. Just watch Rivera's seemingly boneless arms, the right one around her head and the left one behind her back, the left hand on her right hip as she sings, "do you want to have fun, fun, fun?" For this moment alone, I like the film even if I see very well that it has some minuses, too. The first act between two intermissions was really good, and it includes the best dancing and singing numbers: "Hey, Big Spender", "The Pompeii Club", "Rich Man's Frug", and "If They Could See Me Now". After the second intermission the movie went over the hill. I believe that it could do without both intermissions. We are not watching the show at the theater, and the intermissions only took time. The "hippiest" "Rhythm of Life" scene was overlong, did not make much sense, and made me want to fast-forward it. I take it that Fosse wanted to experience with the camera movements and different techniques in his very first feature film which was a screen transfer of his Broadway Musical. This is the only explanation of his multiple slow-motions, stills, color/black/white and back changes that did not add anything to the film, just paused it with no apparent reasons. His next screen adaptation was timeless Cabaret, and he had improved his directing style dramatically. As the result, Cabaret has stayed his greatest achievement along with All That Jazz.
Coming back to the original tragic comedy "Nights of Cabiria", of all the characters Fellini had given life on screen, by his own words, Cabiria was the only one he worried about many years after the film was made. Of all the characters, I've seen in films, Cabiria is the one I often think about - whatever happened to her? Did she survive? Was she able to find love? As much as I like Shirley MacLaine/Charity, I did not worry about her future. She lived happily ever after - in both movie endings, theatrical and alternative.
Read full review
82%
TOMATOMETER
· 11 reviews
73%
AUDIENCE
· 5K ratings
7.0/10
7.9K
•••
Great film, with crazy musical numbers! Trivia: This is a musical remake of Fellini's "Le notti di Cabiria"