Three Smart Girls

It feels weird to start with this musical because it doesn’t feel like a musical because there are only three songs in the whole movie all performed by Deanna Durbin and with a running time of only 80 minutes it doesn’t feel like a film either. So why pick this, I guess because I was intrigued by the cover which loudly proclaims that it’s part of the Deanna Durbin collection who I didn’t know until I brought this DVD. Also it’s age also intrigues me if I’m going to learn more about musicals, I suppose I better start at the beginning and while 1936 doesn’t make it the first musical, it does show the beginnings of the musical and hopefully over time I’ll see how this genre evolved.

Firstly I’m going to talk about Deanna Durbin, normally I would talk about the plot or the songs first but since both seem to be an excuse to promote Deanna Durbin, I suppose it’s a good place to start. Deanna who was 14 at time plays Penny a young girl who’s not pig headed, she’s just strong willed. Her character in this movie does seem strangely realistically, she plays everything so gloriously over the top, that it reminds me of a lot of 14 year old girls and she is strangely loveable or maybe I’m just relieved to see a 14year old girl without a Bieber fixation. This leads me to her voice as I was watching this film I was constantly amazed that such a small girl could have such a powerful voice, if this movie was made today, I’d suspect auto tune but these guys had only just got used to filming people singing, it would be a few years before they mastered filming someone to look like they can sing as I’ve already said she only has three songs but she performs them all well and with such passion and gusto and her whole performance is filled with this that she truly lights up each scene she’s in.

So the plot of this film, we start in Switzerland, Penny has 2 sisters who make up the three smart girls Joan and Mae both played by Nan Grey and Barbara Read. It turns out her father has divorced her mum and it doesn’t seem she’s quite over him which is a bit of an understatement because it seems that she’s dangerously close to becoming Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Luckily for her she has three plucky daughters who decide to go to New York to stop him from remarrying. They plan to sabotage the delightful bitch Miss Lyons and her Mother by tricking her into leaving her father from a richer man. At first the enigmatic Bill Evans puts his hilarious drunk and broke friend Count something to the task but things go awry and Lord Michael Stewart the smoothest man to ever grace New York is confused for the count and promptly falls in love with Mae.  Mae reciprocates but this means there’s no one to tempt Miss Lyons away and this makes her angry. However when Penny runs away her Father realising the fool he’s been decided to break it off and she ends up on a cruise ship with her mother and Count what’s his name for company. The father and mother get back together and everyone is happy.

I suppose I should talk about the songs, unfortunately i'm not a big opera fan and she sings very operatically which is distancing for me. It's also weird to watch a musical where I feel bad if I try and sing along. Deanna's voice is so beautiful that I know if I was singing along, I'd ruin her song if I tried. My personal favourite was il bacio just because I love the way the policeman reacted to it.

 

The stand out performance for me was Ray Milland as Lord Stewart, I just love his brisk air of confidence and how he just seems to breeze in and out with every scene, he should be irritating but the guy just radiates charm. He’s decided that he’s going to get Mae at the end of this movie and he’ll go along with any pretence he think is necessary to achieve that. The Dad played by Charles Winniger is just so loveable yet so clueless, it’s impossible not to gravitate towards him instantly. Count what’s his face played by Mischa Auer also has quite a few good laughs considering how few scenes he’s in. Miss Lyons and Mrs. Lyons both make wonderfully effective villains. From the very first shot where you see Miss Lyons wearing leopard print you know she’s evil and she doesn’t disappoint and Mrs Lyons does a good job at being the mastermind behind her plan to marry her daughter off to the richest man she could fine. Both Nan Grey and Barbara Read do a good job  but despite theoretically  being title characters they have surprisingly little to do, Barbara Read has it a little luckier because she get to be seduced by Ray Milland but Nan Grey’s romance with Bill Evans happens so fast and has so little impact on anything that it doesn’t seem worth mentioning. In fairness to Nan Grey though in the gymnasium scene, she seems to be on a strange piece of gym equipment and it’s hilarious.

One of the things this movie suffers from is pacing the only time it ever stops is when Deanna Durbin decides it’s time for a song at which point the plot comes to a complete halt. But the rest of the film goes by so fast that sometimes it’s hard to make out what people are saying and you’ll have these 5 second scenes just to indicate that time has passed. This is ok for the screwball comedy scenes but it really hurts the two romances in this film since they’re not given any time to develop naturally, it’s just bang you’re in love, the only relationship the film seems to have any patience for is the scenes with penny and her father which are truly heart-warming although a bit incredulous because they haven’t seen each other in 10 years so she must have been 4 when he left and it’s hard to buy why they have such a meaningful connection, it would make more sense for Joan to have the strongest connection because she’s the only one who had a chance to know him but since when has making sense stop anyone in Hollywood.

Lastly the special features, this paragraph's going to be short because the special features were a bit sparse but hey I spent 13 quid on this DVD so may as well get the most out of it. There's a picture galerry with some quite good screen shots of the film and some good promotinal pics. If you've got the DVD check them out, it'll only take a couple of minutes.

All in all this is a fun film and the moment I finished watching it, I wanted to watch it again. Is it flawless? No but I think the main reason for that was it didn’t know what it wanted to be, a family comedy, a romantic comedy or a straight up musical and it struggles to fit all that into 80 minutes. But it is a good film managing to take advantage of the great pool of talent they had available especially Deanna Durbin who despite her youth has a great presence and you immediately warm and care for her even though her performance can be a bit over the top and annoying at times and I can see why she had all this hype generated for her. So all in all a good experience and I hope to see Deanna Durbin again