Jacques Demy's haunting romantic musical is an enchanting, one-of-a-kind musical experience. It's basically a movie operetta, in which the characters sing all the dialogue (or, rather, lyrics-by director Demy) to Michel Legrand's lovely score. The story spans five years (1957-1962) in the life of Geneviéve (the ethereally beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the role that launched her to international stardom), the teenage daughter of a woman who owns a Cherbourg umbrella shop. After Geneviéve's boyfriend Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) is drafted and sent off to Algeria, she discovers she's pregnant and complications ensue. With its dazzling candy-coloured palette, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg looks sweet and dreamy. Restored and re-released in 1995 to rapturous acclaim and the renewed delight of all who got the chance to see it. The video release is taken from the restored version. -Jim Emerson, Amazon. com.

Julie Andrews is at her peak of adorability in this enjoyable (and surprisingly sarcastic) spoof of the 1920s. It has every trick: occasional silent-movie intertitles, flapper lingo ("Oh, banana oil"), and a laughable plot about women being sold into white slavery by the scheming manageress (splendid Beatrice Lillie) of a Hotel for Ladies, aided by a cabal of wicked Chinese. (The stereotypes are bearable only if you remember this is a spoof of silent movie melodrama. ) Even with able support from Mary Tyler Moore and James Fox, this is Julie's show; she plays to the camera with the collusion of director George Roy Hill, who's clearly smitten with her silly streak. The movie has an annoying tendency to spend time on musical numbers-a Jewish wedding, a vaudeville act-that don't serve the plot. A future Broadway musical would create a new score, except for the delightfully catchy title tune. -Robert Horton.

Film buffs and critics can argue until their faces turn blue about whether this lavish Dickensian musical deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1968, but the movie speaks for itself on grandly entertaining terms. Adapted from Dickens's classic novel, it's one of the most dramatically involving and artistically impressive musicals of the 1960s, directed by Carol Reed with a delightful enthusiasm that would surely have impressed Dickens himself. Mark Lester plays the waifish orphan Oliver Twist, who is befriended by the pickpocketing Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) and recruited into the gang of boy thieves led by Fagin (played to perfection by Ron Moody). The villainous Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) casts his long shadow over Oliver and his friends, but the young orphan is still able to find loving care in the most desperate of circumstances. Full of memorable melodies and splendid lyrics, Oliver! is a timeless film, prompting even hard-to-please critic Pauline Kael to call it "a superb demonstration of intelligent craftsmanship", and to further observe that "it's as if the movie set out to be a tribute to Dickens and his melodramatic art as well as to tell the story of Oliver Twist. " -Jeff Shannon Film buffs and critics can argue until their faces turn blue about whether this lavish Dickensian musical deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1968, but the movie speaks for itself on grandly entertaining terms. Adapted from Dickens's classic novel, it's one of the most dramatically involving and artistically impressive musicals of the 1960s, directed by Carol Reed with a delightful enthusiasm that would surely have impressed Dickens himself. Mark Lester plays the waifish orphan Oliver Twist, who is befriended by the pick-pocketing Artful Dodger (Jack Wild) and recruited into the gang of boy thieves led by Fagin (played to perfection by Ron Moody). The villainous Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) casts his long shadow over Oliver and his friends, but the young orphan is still able to find loving care in the most desperate of circumstances. Full of memorable melodies and splendid lyrics, Oliver! is a timeless film, prompting even hard-to-please critic Pauline Kael to call it "a superb demonstration of intelligent craftsmanship," and to further observe that "it's as if the movie set out to be a tribute to Dickens and his melodramatic art as well as to tell the story of Oliver Twist". [+]

Of all her on-screen personas, Barbra Streisand sparkles in none as brightly as her role as 1930s comedian Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl. Wide-screen epic specialist William Wyler brings his personal touch to this vivacious 1968 film, an adaptation of Jule Styne and Robert Merrill's 1964 Broadway show that introduced Streisand to the world. In the belated sequel, Funny Lady from 1975, Streisand's Brice comes off as a harsher woman, slightly bitchy, without the tremendous charm she possessed in the first film. Herbert Ross takes over as director and the film just seems to get away from him. Much to the film's detriment, Funny Lady concentrates more on Brice's professional life than on her personal life, as the first film does. The songs are elaborately staged numbers that Brice performs in the theatres and while they are visually lush and spectacular they lack conviction. -Jenny Brown, Amazon. com.

Elvis Presley does the clam-a now-forgotten dance-in this 1964 potboiler in which the King stars as a singer who gets a gig in Ft. Lauderdale with his combo but has to baby-sit a mobster's teenage daughter (Shelley Fabares) as part of the deal. Fabares's character, looking for a break, runs wild and makes life difficult for Elvis. The film has the usual "Elvis movie" bounce, wolfish jokes and glossy disposability, but the endearing (and smart) presence of Fabares as the love interest adds a bit more zip than usual. Songs include the title track, plus "Puppet on a String", "Do Not Disturb" and "Let's Party Tonight". Directed by Boris Sagal who went on to helm the cult sci-fi classic The Omega Man (1971). -Tom Keogh.

Doctor Doolittle was an expensive 1967 movie that nearly wiped out the studio (20th Century-Fox) that made it, owing to public apathy. It doesn't engender much more excitement today. Rex Harrison still looks lost in the overblown production, the songs are still awful (except "Talk to the Animals", of course), the story of one man's communication with beasts devoid of enchantment. Director Richard Fleischer (The Vikings) certainly shares in the blame. -Tom Keogh.