VV
Victor Victoria – The film opens on a fake-looking Paris of 1932, a set practically torn out of the Universal Studios production lot (see also Who Framed Roger Rabbit). The film is full of flirty gay dialogue, and a struggling-actress Julie Andrews’ wicked audition with breaking glass, “What in the hell was that?” “D-flat.” (yes, it becomes a terrible cliche). Lots of great off-camera comedy happening – hey, it’s a Blake Edwards film!!! Gay Pa-ree song by a gay (“they say that Pa-ree has always been that way”; self-consciously funny). Cockroach-waiter-restaurant-maitre d story (“Mademoiselle, I offer my sincerer apologies.”) Amazingly – this is a Blake Edwards film – the cockroach waiter turns up later on… great “is she… that girl I saw earlier… nah” internal conversation expressed on the face. Ha ha! Julie Andrews beats up a gay man (we’re watching this one night after we saw her in The Sound Of Music), and sets up a plausible diversion. Awesome champagne balancing act set-up by a magician, possibly set up by Victoria and her partner Toddy. Gay onlookers at practice, watching a women pretending to be a gay Polish count pretending to be a woman. During musical numbers we see Julie’s cleavage, but everyone else is fooled when she pulls off her headgear to reveal… a short haircut! She’s a HE!! “Sit up, stand up, throw up.” Great musical numbers, great Robert Plant-like siren rise.
I just love French men.
Me too.
I think the right woman could reform you.
I think the right woman could reform you!
You must have been in the army.
Oh, once or twice.
“Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope are gay.”
You know, being a man has its disadvantages.
My dear count, you just said a cotton-pickin’ mouthful.
Spanish number again with shattered glass. Lesley Ann Warren awesome as the dopey, fleshy, cleavage-y gangster moll Norma Callaghan, who is kicked out of her impotent (uninterested) boyfriend’s suite, scorned, flashing her lingerie as the train pulls out of the station in Paris, in a new cabaret in Paris tattling on her ex’s wavering sexuality to gawking slack-jawed cigar-clenching local gangsters. “Run that by me again.”
Great fight – nice touch as Toddy tries to bribe a cop, then punches him and keeps the money. Wonderful unveiling romance.
I don’t care if you’re a man.
I’m not a man.
I still don’t care.
The burly bodyguard has an opportunity to come out to his boss, and more insanity ensues. Crackling dialogue abounds, especially from Julie “I’m my own man, so-to-speak” Andrews and tough guy James “If you think I”m worried that people think I’m a fag, then you’re right” Garner. And Blake Edwards, being Blake Edwards, can’t resist throwing in a bumbling inspector, played by Geoffrey Beevers, who has two great scenes, one of them after he sits down on a stool after a bar brawl:
Be careful.
I am always careful.
That stool is broken.
It is?!?!
BAM!! Great scene as Andrews and Garner go to the fights (he’s into it), and then to the opera (her world). Ha ha. Gay dancing, with masks. “You two-timing son-of-a-bitch – he’s a woman!!!”
Incidentally, the film is a remake of the film Viktor Und Viktoria, a German film from 1933, and later in French as Georges et Georgette (also in 1933).
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