Ann Blyth and Vic Damone, pictured in the above lobby card, star in Kismet (1955). Turner Classic Movies presents this classic this coming Saturday. From my book, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.:
The “Strangers in Paradise” number. Vic Damone has followed Ann to the walled garden of a small house. She is trespassing, but he thinks she is the well-to-do young woman of the house and he falls in love with her. He doesn’t tell her he’s the Caliph; he lets her think he is a gardener. He is dressed in colors making him a part of the garden—sand and bright green, and she is in yellow, like the flowers dotting the foreground in this scene. He is the plant; she the flower. They are both organic to the place, they belong here. Note the staging, how they stand in tableau in the arches, how they part, she slightly above him on steps as his adored one on a pedestal, with a peacock between them.
Next, as the song, which is their courtship, progresses, they stand together with another peacock unfurling his magnificent white fan of tail feathers. Finally, they come together in a section of the garden with red flowers, the color of romance, when their passion culminates in a kiss and a promise. Interestingly, they step back away from us to kiss. Perhaps to get their full forms in view, but CinemaScope did not work really well with close-ups. Minnelli makes CinemaScope work well for this picture with gracefully framed shots. Ann promises to meet Damone here at moonrise. It’s a lovely scene, but dissolves too quickly when we really want to linger on her watching him leave. It’s one of the most graceful and elegant scenes ever filmed in CinemaScope.
Catch Kismet on TCM Saturday, March 24th at noon ET.
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