Vincente Minnelli's 1958 adaptation of Colette's story about a girl (Leslie Caron) groomed as a courtesan-but desired as a wife by a Parisian playboy (Louis Jordan)-won a lot of Oscars, but it also has the unusual distinction of being an MGM musical shot on location in the City of Lights. What a musical it is (by Lerner and Loewe): Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold crooning "Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well", plus the songs "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", "Gigi", "I'm a Bore", and "She's Not Thinking of Me". Director Vincente Minnelli (Some Came Running, Meet Me in St Louis) makes a sumptuous, dreamy, almost laid-back affair of it all and the indispensable cast is forever etched into memory. Hollywood's long-running infatuation with continental grace and manners, the memory of a much earlier time imported to American movies through such immigrant directors as Ernst Lubitsch, may have finally come to a gentle end with this film. -Tom Keogh Gigi, Vincente Minnelli's 1958 adaptation of Colette's story about a girl (Leslie Caron) groomed as a courtesan but desired as a wife by a Parisian playboy (Louis Jordan), won a lot of Oscars, but it also has the unusual distinction of being an MGM musical shot on location in the City of Lights. What a musical it is (by Lerner and Loewe): Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold crooning "Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well", plus the songs "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", "Gigi", "I'm a Bore", and "She's Not Thinking of Me". Director Minnelli makes a sumptuous, dreamy, almost laid-back affair of it all and the indispensable cast is forever etched into memory. Hollywood's long-running infatuation with continental grace and manners, the memory of a much earlier time imported to American movies through such immigrant directors as Ernst Lubitsch, may have finally come to a gentle end with this film. -Tom Keogh.

Billed as an updating and retelling of Irish folk legend, Lord of the Dance is less Erin Go Bragh than Hooray for Hollywood. Michael Flatley, lately of Riverdance, gives us the old razzle-dazzle, fashioning a Celtic-influenced spectacular that wanders faraway from its Riverdance roots. The light-show presentation is closer kin to another contemporary Irish musical group, U2. Flatley himself has gone designer chic. With close-cropped haircut, earring, buffed abs,and tight black pants he bears more than a passing resemblance to Bono. But you have to hand it to the guy-he works hard for the money, as does his attractive corps. The one maddening aspect of this glitzy, entertaining 90-minute festival is the overzealous editing. No image remains on screen for more than a few seconds. Neither Flatley nor his talented troupe deserves to have such craftsmanship sliced and diced like an MTV music video. -Richard Natale Billed as an updating and retelling of an Irish folk legend, Lord of the Dance is less Erin Go Bragh than Hooray for Hollywood. [+]

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos' old story from the 1920s about a pair of single women in search of husbands, gets a makeover in Howard Hawks' 1953 musical. The remake stars Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe as two friends who go to Paris looking for mates. The film is charged by Hawks's stylish snap, a famous set piece or two (Monroe descending that staircase while singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend"), Russell's wit and songs by Leo Robin and Jule Styne. The film may largely be a fluff project best remembered as a showcase for its leading actresses, but then Monroe and Russell rarely got such extended opportunities to prove that they were more than cinematic icons. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

The most widely seen movie produced by a Hollywood studio, The Sound of Music grows fresher with each viewing. Though it was planned meticulously in pre-production (save for the scene where Maria and the children take a dipping in an Austrian lake that nearly cost a life), on each viewing one is struck anew by the spontaneous almost improvisatory air of the acting, notably of Julie Andrews under Robert Wise's direction. There are also the little human touches he brings to, for instance, the scene where Maria leads the children to the hills, over bridges and along tow paths where the smallest boy trips up and momentarily gets left behind: it creates a feeling that most of us have encountered. From the opening pre-credit sequence of muted excitement as the camera roves over the Austrian Alps (photographed in magnificent colour), where little phrases from the wind instruments on the soundtrack are flung as if on the breeze, foreshadowing the title song to follow, the production never puts a foot wrong. On the DVD: On the first disc the film itself has never looked or sounded better since its original presentation in Todd AO (prints of which are said to have disappeared forever). The disc also contains a separate audio guide that takes the viewer through the film sequence by sequence, with director Robert Wise commenting on the weather, the production design by Boris Leven, the sequences filmed on location and in Hollywood (like the interiors of the Von Trapp villa), and the naming of other actors who were eager for the lead roles, notably Doris Day and Yul Brynner. On the second disc there are the documentaries. "Salzburg Sight and Sound" was Charmian Carr's own record of her time on location in the summer of 1964, playing Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter. "From Fact to Fiction", running two hours, begins with the birth of Maria in 1905 who inspired the film, charts her subsequent marriage to Captain Von Trapp, their escape from Nazi Germany not across the Alps but via a train across the Italian boarder, their home in Vermont and thence to the German film of the family that was brought to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein as an ideal vehicle for a stage musical. A second group of documentaries covers previews, television and radio commercials and a 1973 interview with Wise and Andrews. [+]

The 1944 musical Cover Girl charts the story of a Brooklyn chorus girl (Rita Hayworth) who becomes a big star when she is put on a magazine cover. She is torn between a glittering Broadway career under the aegis of elderly sugar-daddy tycoon (Otto Kruger) and real life with the roughneck he-man choreographer (Gene Kelly) she really loves. Columbia were so intent on showing off their prime asset in this vehicle that Hayworth is sometimes in danger of being swamped by sheer production values and Charles Vidor's ever-so-slightly stuffy direction. However, gorgeous Technicolor and the even more gorgeous Rita make the creaking plot not only bearable but also sparkling. There are oddly unsentimental and unsettling flashbacks with Hayworth playing her character's turn-of-the-century grandmother offering a cut-down of the main story and energetic comedy support performances from Phil Silvers (who proves himself an unexpectedly adept dancer) and the fabulously hated cynic Eve Arden (not to mention the wonderfully-named Jinx Falkenberg). One stand-out performance is the Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin duet ("Long Ago and Far Away") enlivening an otherwise so-so score (other tunes: "Make Way for Tomorrow", "Put Me to the Test", "Sure Thing", "That's the Best of All", "The Show Must Go On", "Who's Complaining?" and "Poor John"). Of course, the film becomes magical in its dance sequences, with the young Kelly staging and performing several wonderful routines-including the famous "Alter Ego" turn, in which he dances with his own reflection-and finding, in the trim Rita, one of his most perfect partners: although Martha Mears dubbed Rita's singing voice, she impressively delivers all her own dance moves. -Kim Newman.

A wimpy remake of an already anaemic movie (the 1947 Rita Hayworth vehicle Down to Earth), this glitzy musical from 1980 improbably stars Olivia Newton-John as a heavenly muse sent here to help open a roller-derby disco. Gene Kelly is mixed up in this well-meaning but goofy effort to fuse nostalgia with late-70s glitter-ball trendiness, and he looks just plain silly. Directed by Robert Greenwald, the film doesn't even work as decent kitsch. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

One of the finest American musicals, Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St Louis is an intentionally self-contained story set in 1903, in which a happy St Louis family is shaken to their roots by the prospect of moving to New York, where the father has a better job pending. Judy Garland heads the cast in what amounts to a splendid, end-of-an-era story that nicely rhymes with the onset of the 20th century. The film is extraordinarily alive, the characters strong and the musical numbers are so splendidly part of the storytelling that you don't feel the film has stopped for an interlude. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com In Easter Parade, Don Hewes (Fred Astaire) is devastated when his longtime dancing partner, Nadine Hale (Ann Miller), breaks up the team to set out on her own. Determined to prove that he can succeed without her, Astaire vows that he can pick any random chorus girl and make her a star. Fortunately for him, the chorus girl he picks happens to be one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century, Judy Garland (playing Hannah Brown). Easter Parade turned out to be the first and only collaboration between the two screen legends. Garland made the 1948 film despite ongoing health problems then had to pull out of a planned follow-up, The Barkleys of Broadway (Ginger Rogers replaced her); Astaire had retired following Blue Skies in 1946 but was brought in for this film as an emergency replacement after Gene Kelly broke his ankle playing touch football. Fortunately, Easter Parade always feels like an Astaire film rather than a Kelly film, from its Pygmalion-esque plot (which helps explain the principals' 23-year age disparity) to its score of Irving Berlin standards (some new, some recycled from earlier films). [+]