Word: courtesanly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Maurice Chevalier once sang in bordello baritone to introduce Lerner and Loewe's Gigi, little girls grow up in the most delightful way. Leslie Caron certainly has; 21 years after the movie, the apprentice courtesan has matured into a Parisian Mrs. Robinson enticing or seducing three of her daughter's male school friends in a new French film Tous Vedettes (All Stars). At 48, Caron remains alluringly convincing as Lucille, the French actress who has come home to Paris from Hollywood successes to amuse herself with l'amour. The daughter is played by Kitty Kortes-Lynch...
...chief accomplice and paramour of the suave con man, Edward Pierce (Sean Connery), who masterminded England's first celebrated train heist in 1855. Miriam served as an all-purpose decoy: to help steal ?12,000 worth of gold ingots, she had to pose successively as a French courtesan, a cockney seamstress and an old beggar. Down turns each impersonation into a polished comic nugget; she swings effortlessly in and out of her various roles. Her scenes as Miriam are just as funny: in the film's best bit, Down turns the act of shaving Connery's neck...
...film was made as a vehicle for Edna Purviance, the female lead in 35 early Chaplin comedies and, it seems, the first great love of his life. It beautifully suits her talent, for she makes the transformation from the naive country girl to the worldly courtesan (and back again) with ease. Better still, the woman she becomes has a way of flashing glimpses of the girl she once was that is very touching, mostly because it is so effortless and unselfconscious...
...post alludes to a human figure; a torso, teetering on its absurd harem cushion. The sides of the box are plastered with pinups and reproductions of classical nudes. Finally, the stuffed chicken on top of the box reminds us that one of the many French terms for an expensive courtesan is a poule de luxe...
Anne Dufresne as Philia, the courtesan who is to be sold to the great captain Miles, is properly, well, courtesanly. She's perfect as the broken-voiced dumb blonde who always gets three and five mixed up. She brings perhaps the most depth to her part--she may be a virgin but after all she's been instructed in the arts of life (which Hero hasn't been) and when she sings "I'm lovely," she really is. But that voice ain't the voice of any virgin I ever heard; that's a Weimar cabaret voice, smokey Blue Angel...