LILI

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 16

LILI

(M.G.M.) HE marquees and caravans of a travelling French carnival troupe provide the setting for this film about an orphan girl, an angry puppeteer, and a handsome magician. The title role is played by Leslie Caron, the dancing star of An American in Paris, with unususl talent and charm, and she is assisted by Mel Ferrer as the puppeteer, Jean Pierre’ Aumont as the magician, and Zsa Zsa Gabor as the magician’s assistant. The carnival atmosphere is admirably suggested by some fine Technicolor camerawork and excellent use of a soundtrack based on the tune "Hi Lili Hi-lo,." Charles Walters, the director of Lili and choreographer of the film’s two ballets, has handled his material with a sure feeling for the story’s more delicate shades of sentiment and fantasy. He has invested the whole show with a spontaneity and zest’ reminiscent of Stanley Donen’s On the Town or Vincente Minnelli’s early musical comedy, The Pirate. The dream-like ballet sequences, which develop out of the action in much the same stylised manner as they did in An American in Paris, have, as they did in that film, an almost Freudian authenticity. The occasion on which Lili sings her theme-song merges unobtrusively into the general background of the setting. The musical side of Lili is, however, of minor importance. The film opens on a view-of a French country town in the early morning, where Lili, having discovered for the first time that she is quite alone and friendless in the world, meets and falls in love-with the young magician. She follows him back to the carnival, where he gets her a job as a waitress. But she is so gauche and unworldly that the carnival boss fires her after a brief trial. She is about to wander out into the streets again when the puppeteer, who has fallen in love with

her, persuades her through the medium of his puppets, to stay. Her naive conversation with the talkative puppets, which she believes to be real, attracts the attention of an amused crowd, and the puppeteer decides to take her on as a permanent part of his act. The-re-mainder of the story is concerned with how she shakes off her infatuation for the magician, who isn’t really interested in her, and finds her true love with the scowling, tender-hearted puppeteer. Lili is a triumph for Leslie Caron, whose expressive features have been photographed in a way to make the most of her appearance of child-like innocence. The little ballerina dances with her usual grace, and altogether gives to the film a quality of refreshing vitality.