SILK STOCKINGS ***

"Silk Stockings" isn't a great musical in the same way that "Ninotchka" was a great comedy, despite the Cole Porter score, but it is a sublime entertainment. The director was the great Rouben Mamoulian who was probably second only to Minnelli at this sort of thing, (in his use of colour and widescreen or as the song says, 'Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound'); consequently it looks great and thanks to the superb script from Leonard Gershe, Leonard Spigelgass and Harry Kurnitz, borrowing more than liberally from the original, it sounds great, too.

Fundamentally, it's a vehicle for its leads. Fred Astaire may have been almost 60 at the time but you would hardly notice; he's still as nimble on his feet as he ever was. As an actress Cyd Charisse is no Garbo, (she wasn't much of a comedienne either), but she was a great partner for Astaire and a terrific dancer in her own right. Janis Paige is here too and is good enough to make you half wish she had been cast in the film version of "The Pajama Game", (as we all know she was passed over in favour of Doris Day). Peter Lorre, Jules Munshin and Joseph Buloff make up the Russian delegation and one of the joys of any musical is seeing Lorre supporting himself between a table and a chair during a Russian dance. Indeed the whole movie is something of a treat and if it sends you back to "Ninotchka" so much the better