Search - Kiss Me Kate on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1953 DVD Release: 04/22/2003 Format: DVD - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered,Restored/Remastered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 50 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 28 Genres: Comedy, Musical, Musical Comedy, Backstage Musical

Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a musical within a musical -- altogether appropriate, since its source material, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, was a play within a play. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson star as famous Broadway singing team who haven't worked together since their acrimonious divorce. Keel, collaborating with Cole Porter (played by Ron Randell), plans to star in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew titled "Kiss Me Kate." Both he and Porter agree that only one actress should play the tempestuous Katherine, and that's Grayson. But she isn't buying, especially after discovering that Keel's latest paramour, Ann Miller, is going to be playing Bianca. Besides, Grayson is about to retire from showbiz to marry the "Ralph Bellamy character," played not by Bellamy, but by Willard Parker. A couple of gangsters (James Whitmore and Keenan Wynn) arrive on the scene, convinced Keel is heavily in debt to their boss; actually, a young hoofer in the chorus (Tommy Rall) owes the money, but signed Keel's name to an IOU. But since Grayson is having second thoughts about going on-stage, Keel plays along with the hoods, who force Grayson at gunpoint to co-star with her ex-husband so that they'll get paid off. Later the roles are reversed, and the gangsters are themselves finagled into appearing on-stage, Elizabethan costumes and all, though that scene is less of a comic success. This aside, Kiss Me Kate is a well-appointed (if bowdlerized) film adaptation of the Porter musical. Virtually all of the play's songs are retained for the screen version, notably "So in Love," "Wunderbar," "Faithful in My Fashion," "Too Darn Hot," "Why Can't You Behave?," "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" (a delightful duet delivered delightfully by Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore), and the title song. Additionally, Porter lifted a song from another play, Out of This World, and incorporated it in the movie version of Kiss Me Kate; as a result, "From This Moment On" has been included in all subsequent stagings of Kate. This MGM musical has the distinction of being filmed in 3-D, which is why Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson throw so many chairs, dishes, and pieces of fruit at the camera in their domestic battle scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kathryn Grayson - Lilli Vanessi
Howard Keel - Fred Graham
Ann Miller - Lois Lane
Keenan Wynn - Lippy
Bobby Van - Gremio

George Sidney's Kiss Me Kate was one of the more successful screen adaptations of Cole Porter's musicals, not surprising, given its appealing cast from top to bottom, the choreography by Hermes Pan and Bob Fosse, and the fact that, for the first time, a movie version of a Porter musical kept most of the score intact (and even added a key number from another Porter stage vehicle). The only flaw in the original filming was the decision to shoot in Ansco Color, a German-based color process that was less expensive than Technicolor but didn't hold up well over time and, in fact, also had a tendency to interact with the soundtrack element. Coupled with the poor preservation of the Technicolor prints, Kiss Me Kate did not retain its brightness or luster terribly well into the 1960s. That problem was solved through various restoration efforts over the ensuing decades (including a retrieval and restoration of the 3-D version of the movie), which resulted in a very handsome early '90s laserdisc edition, and now this DVD.

The disc isn't loaded up with as many extras as one would have liked -- a full-length commentary track by surviving stars Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Tommy Rall, and James Whitmore, and perhaps music director Andre Previn, would have been ideal. As it is, there's a ten-minute documentary about the making of the movie, "Cole Porter in Hollywood: Too Darn Hot," produced by Peter Fitzgerald, in which all of those mentioned participate, except for Previn. The recollections are enjoyable and enlightening, especially those by Miller, Rall, and Whitmore, and the short does fill in some gaps. The other major bonus feature is a short documentary entitled "Short Mighty Manhattan, New York's Wonder City," which offers color visions of the city from the end of the 1940s, including glimpses of such lost features as the Third Avenue El, Fifth Avenue as a two-way street, the Metropolitan Museum of Art when admission was free, the old Central Park Zoo (since redesigned to be more animal friendly), and Ann Miller at the Starlight Roof, with Xavier Cugat leading the band. (The documentary also includes outsized praise for Mayor William O'Dwyer, a man so corrupt and such an embarrassment that midway through his term he was appointed ambassador to Mexico in order to get him out of the country and beyond the reach of a subpoena to testify at hearings into his administration.)

Some serious restoration work had been done on the movie Kiss Me Kate almost a decade before the Broadway revival of the original show at the end of the 1990s, and it's a bit difficult to complain of the image or sound here. The detail and resolution are good; however, compared to the '90s restored print of the movie, the color doesn't quite hold up overall, especially in the opening sequence of the film. There are still moments of uneven tinting within certain shots during the scenes set in the Graham apartment. The close-ups are a good match for the theatrical presentation, and Ann Miller's "Too Darn Hot" sequence is close, but a proper theatrical showing still has it over this disc, at least for the first 15 minutes. Once the film moves to the theater setting, the tints bloom and fill up somewhat, like dye being poured in, and the rooftop sequence (featuring Tommy Rall's still-awesome dance solo) is gorgeous. When the actual musical-within-the-movie takes to the boards, the whole screen explodes in color. This disc is, in fact, the next best thing to a theatrical showing, capturing the most lustrous sections magnificently, and the sound is the most beautifully mastered in a home viewing version yet. Kiss Me Kate used stereo about as well as any MGM musical, and, in fact, is one of the earliest extant stereo releases by the studio; that element of dimensionality is beautifully represented here, in a dozen vivid musical spots. It all pulls together in Chapter 33, which encompasses the denouement of the musical and the song "From This Moment On," the one major addition to the original theatrical score and one of the most celebrated dance sequences in the history of musical films -- it's even better in 3-D, but until a disc with that attribute comes along, the mastering here on that scene is worth the price by itself.

Among the more pleasing bonus options on this disc is the ability to watch the movie with just the music score running -- the producers went back deeply enough into the elements to isolate the Oscar-nominated score by Saul Chaplin and Andre Previn, and it's delightful to hear their work, shorn of dialogue and sound effects for the first time. The only flaw in that plan is that not all of the musical numbers start at the beginnings of the chapters in which they appear, so one has to sit through some silence upon punching up each song title. Other than the placement of the chapter starts, the movie has been treated to a well-designated 36 chapters. The disc opens to a triple-layered menu that is easy to navigate, including a selection of special features that advances automatically at the end of each selection. And the original trailer, which is comprised of what look like alternate takes of many shots, is also included. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide