My Geisha (1962) Now here's one strange 60's rom-com that I can safely predict will never, ever come under consideration for a remake........
Only decades and decades before our era of ethnic diversity, could Shirley MacLaine get away with this movie. Shirl's plays a top superstar whose successful director husband (Yves Montand) flies off to Japan to make a film of "Madame Butterfly".
Yves, I should point out, has already vetoed the idea to using Shirley as Butterfly, preferring to discover a real Japanese girl to play the role.
First you must swallow the idea at some major studio greenlighting an opera with an unknown Japanese girl singing in dubbed in Italian.
Oho, but that's just the beginning.......
Yves can't find any worthy Japanese girls at the auditions.......they all want to be pop stars (and who can blame 'em?)
Simply as as elaborate prank, Shirley disguises herself as a shy, self-effacing Geisha, just to hoodwink Yves as a party gag.
But guess what? Yves to falls for it, he hires her for the lead role, thinking she's the real thing.
And in true rom-com fashion, chaos and ....uh....hilarity ensue, as Shirley is sometimes caught without her Asian make-up in place.
Hi-jinks include her clueless co-star (Robert Cummings) falling head over heels for Shirley's Geisha alter-ego......to the point where he hopes to add her to his long list of ex-wives.....yikes.
(Okay, let's stop here and allow all of BQ's Asian visitors to express disgust and withering contempt.......which of course, this film's whole premise richly deserves.....)
Remember though, the film is 61 years old.....and we're talking about the era when British actors frequently donned makeup to play Japanese and Chinese characters. For real.
Things come to head when Yves has to look at some potentially damaged footage. When he views the clips projected in reverse negative imagery, Shirley's revealed in all her non-Japanese splendor. Cue the marital damage scenes........
Feel free to wonder how this movie can extract itself out of the awkward situation it places its characters in and stumble into a happy ending.
Feeling castrated and humiliated by his wife's deception, Yves goes along the plan for Shirley's. big "hey,the Japanese star was really me!" surprise at the movie's premiere......but that will effectively end their already rapidly crumbling marriage.
I wouldn't dare spoil the ending for anyone still interested in watching this film.....other than to say Shirley comes up with solution that's at the very least as bonkers as rest of the story.....
(but I don't think it's any surprise that the marriage is saved......this is, after all, a romantic comedy of sorts...)
Any pluses to this bizarre, very un-woke, inappropriate-on-multiple-levels movie?
A few, believe it or not. Most oddly, its director was the master cinematographer(and sometime director) Jack Cardiff. How he ended up in charge of a Shirley MacLaine comedy, I've no idea. So the movie looks splendid.
Secondly, it provides a co-starring role for one of BQ's all-time favorite international stunners, Yoko Tani.....among the most perfectly beautiful girls I've ever seen in 1960's cinema.
And that's about it. Strictly for MacLaine completists and adoring lovers (like BQ) of the most oddball entries in the anything-could-get-made era of the60's and 70's. 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)
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