Kismet

I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining this was. I had always assumed that I would find this to be "just okay". It is the lavish, Technicolor feast that you would expect from Vincente Minnelli and the Freed Unit at MGM. Dolores Gray is great fun and Howard Keel gives one of his strongest performances. Vic Damone sings "Stranger in Paradise" so beautifully that you can ignore his acting in his brief dramatic scenes. Watch for Jamie Farr as an unbilled fruit vendor.

As in something like GIGI (which I still definitely prefer), Minnelli is finely attuned to the actor's physical prescence and performances. Overall though, there is really nothing here that VM didn't do better elsewhere. I also just couldn't get into the setting (a problem I have with most Arabia-set films of Hollywood).

The popular Broadway musical (based both on an old theatrical warhorse and on Alexander Borodin's glorious music) was filmed by MGM, but it's one of their weaker productions; aside from Howard Keel's rambunctious Hajj, the acting is generally drab (Vic Damone as the Caliph of Baghdad? I don't think so), Vincente Minnelli's direction often seems detached--he seems uncomfortable with the CinemaScope--and the songs only occasionally dazzle. Still, it's a colorful bit of Arabian Nights fantasy.