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This is a beautiful, entertaining film with clever dialogue and a bit of drama. Though Cole Porter himself said that there was little reality in it, his professional career was featured here in a most winning fashion, with both negative and positive elements of it featured fairly. It is appropriate that the film concentrated upon the career rather than the seedier side of the protagonist's private life. It is all too common these days to have to suffer through presumptuous exposés of the most-private affairs of famous people who are no longer with us. At least this film was produced while its subject was alive. The Irwin Winkler "remake" or retelling, "Delovely", was nothing but an outrageous, shallow outing that concentrated on negativity, while subjecting us to the most boring, flaccid dialogue ever--ironic, I think, for a story about one of the most clever American lyricists of the twentieth century! The 2004 outing starring Kevin Kline also featured some hideous modern renditions of Cole Porter's music that did no justice to the genius of the composer. Movies can accentuate the positive while minimizing the negative and still have value. This is one of the most visually appealing films I have ever seen, but it has moments of disturbing realism as well as glamor. The rigors of life as a prolific artist, as well as the trials of an artist's spouse are portrayed with an adequate degree of grim reality. It does not so much ignore the homosexual activities of the subject as it does allude to them very delicately, and that is all that is required if one has good taste and an active imagination. I'll take an original over a remake any day, and this production, co-starring the hilarious Monty Woolley and the lovely Alexis Smith as Linda Lee Porter, is a good example of that preference.
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