Sweet Charity (1969) Reviews

• Shirley MacLaine/ Giulietta Masina

  damian-fuller2017-11-07

  "Hey big spender" That's all I knew about Sweet Charity. A musical version of Federico Fellini's masterpiece "The Nights Of Cabiria" - I didn't think of Cabiria when I saw Charity on the screen. Shirley MacLaine's recreates and reinvents Giulietta Masina's Cabiria. That is something that very rarely works. But here in Bob Fosse's version, Cabiria has a new life, an American life, a song and dance life but just as sad. Sad but not hopeless. There is the spirit of Cabiria/Charity that will survive. Shirley MacLaine is magnificent. She manages to project that innocence that makes everything not just palatable but delicious.

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• Fosse's first film (and big bomb) is remarkable

  zetes2002-08-12

  There's just something about this movie that I love. I had seen bits and pieces of it some half a dozen times in the past couple of years. Tonight I finally sat and watched all of it. In theory it sounds like blasphemy: a musical remake of Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. But somehow first time director Bob Fosse pulls it off, and enormously well. Fosse is daring and innovative in his direction. Not just in the musical numbers, where you would expect it, but in every scene. He plays, and he's obviously having a ball. After the direction, a high percentage of the film's success is due to Shirley MacLaine, who was never better as Charity Hope Valentine. As much as I love and care for Giullieta Masina's Cabiria, I love and care for MacLaine's Charity. She's such an enormously lovable character, and MacLaine is simply brilliant. Her comic timing is impeccable. Sweet Charity also proves an interesting time capsule of late 60s New York City. In the scene cognate to the Picadilly Club in Nights of Cabiria, we visit a trendy night club where the girls where blue feathers as hats. Clips of Cleopatra (the one with Claudette Colbert) and an unidentifiable W.C. Fields movie play on a big screen in the background. We visit a religious ceremony for hippies who sing The Rhythm of Life. Sammy Davis Jr. is the priest! In Cabiria, a parade of young people cheer her at the end of the film. In Sweet Charity, a group of hippies, amongst them a young Bud Cort, hand out flowers in the morning, just saying good morning to everyone they meet. This movie was a huge bomb when first released. Fosse is actually really lucky they gave him another chance at direction, and then he made a film instantly recognizable as a masterpiece, Cabaret. Sweet Charity did not deserve to fail so miserably. Just the fickle fingers of fate, I guess.

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• MacLaine, Fosse & Fellini Make a Musical Comedy

  Kennedy632007-08-25

  While "Sweet Charity" was being filmed, almost 40 years ago, Shirley MacLaine was a song and dance actress with a body and matching charm that wouldn't quit. Bob Fosse was the rising choreographer of MacLaine's and so many other dancers' dreams, in this, his first major musical. Fellini was a brilliant director. In hindsight, MacLaine's career may have been royally jump-started by "Sweet Charity." As a dance hall hooker, more or less, her character, Charity Hope Valentine, was looking for Mr. Goodbar--a man with money to marry. Her classic song, "If they could see me now," comes from this musical and as scene where she found one such guy. Nearly 2 scores later, MacLaine is still playing leading characters with the same comical charm and extraordinary talent; still singing hits like "I'm still here," in "Postcards from the Edge," and has out lasted both famous men. What I've always loved about Shirley MacLaine's characters is that even though they are supposed to be sexy, like Charity, as a dance hall hooker, she makes them into charming, funny, and innocuously cute-sexy rather than sleazy women. In fact, it's her trademark to do so. "Irma la Douce" is another fine example. Though MacLaine could have easily used her dancer's body to seduce us to the pinnacle of the stage and screen, she uses her multiple talents instead. And she is "still here!"

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• Shirley MacLaine Channels Gwen Verdon

  drednm2013-12-14

  Shirley MacLaine is excellent in this underrated, brassy musical based on the Italian classic film, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA. MacLaine plays Charity Hope Valentine, a sweet but rather clueless woman who works in a dance hall but yearns for love. She's constantly linking up with men who use her, take her money, dump her. The film opens with Charity in Central Park with her "boyfriend." Sitting on a bridge, she chirps about making a wish and throwing something off the bridge. The creep shoves her into the water. She has two wiser-but-cynical pals, played by Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly. They seem resigned to their fates as dance hall girls but there's still an ember of hope for a better life. Charity meets an Italian film star (Ricardo Montalban) and spend the night with him ... in his closet. She then meets a repressed man (John McMartin) in a stalled elevator and seems to have found happiness at last..... But is happiness in the cards for Charity? MacLaine seems to channel Gwen Verdon (who starred in the show on Broadway and who worked with MacLaine on the dance numbers) and excels in the many productions numbers, especially "If They Could See Me Now" and "Somebody Loves Me at Last." MacLaine also has a spirited rooftop dance number with Rivera and Kelly as they opine "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This." The show-stopper is probably the "Big Spender" number which features MacLaine, Rivera, and Kelly with a line of dance hall girls who try to lure men to be their partners. It's a sensational number that shows Bob Fosse's choreographic skills and also demonstrates the cynical life of a dance hall girl. Other great numbers include MacLaine and Montalban's visit to the Pompeii Club where the dancers go through a series of landmark Fosse dances. The lead dancer here is the sensational Suzanne Charny. Among the dancers are also Ben Vereen, Lee Roy Reams, and Chelsea Brown. Sammy Davis turns up the heat with the "River of Life" number which shows Charity and Oscar (McMartin)seeking meaning and discovering the 60s counter culture. Then there's Stubby Kaye as the dance hall manager who throws Charity a wedding party and sings "I Love to Cry at Weddings." This is a hugely underrated musical filled with great music and production numbers. Big, bright, brassy, and brazen, what's not to love? MacLaine won a Golden Globe nomination.

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• Fosse's first

  buby19872005-07-01

  Sure, Bob Fosse sometimes indulges in trendy late-60's stylistic touches like freeze-frames and crash-zooms. Some of the jokes by Neil Simon are corny, and Shirley MacLaine can be a little hard to take sometimes. The film also suffers from the bloated, over-produced quality that infected most 60's major studio musicals. The dull non-musical scenes are a chore to sit through, but when one of Fosse's amazing production numbers begins, Sweet Charity soars into the sublime. Fosse was quite simply a genius, and the great showcase numbers such as "Hey Big Spender" and "Rich Man's Frug" are as brilliant as any dance numbers ever put on film. Shifting configurations of dancers, contorted body poses, dance steps that are by turns awkward and graceful, a studied contrast between clustering dancers and separating dancers -- it is hard to describe the magic of the Pompeii Club sequence. I've always felt that Fosse's choreography has the same sense of space and volume as Cubist painting. Fosse's camera placement and camera movement capture an ideal "in-the-round" feeling of choreographed numbers that one cannot experience in the theater. For a first-time film director, Fosse revealed an amazing facility for the form. Usually theater directors don't take to the medium of film as quickly as Fosse did. Usually, theater directors make visually unexciting films that feel stage-bound. Not Fosse -- Sweet Charity, despite some flaws, doesn't play like a filmed stage play, it has the visual panache of Fellini and Godard. Sweet Charity was just a warm-up, Fosse's personal film school at Universal's expense, before he truly mastered the form of film-making with the classic Cabaret.

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