Black Tights
| Black Tights | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Terence Young |
| Produced by | Joe Kaufmann (producer) Simon Schiffrin (producer) |
| Starring |
Cyd Charisse Moira Shearer Zizi Jeanmaire Roland Petit Maurice Chevalier |
| Cinematography | Henri Alekan |
|
Release date
|
1961 |
|
Running time
|
140 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French (singing) English (narration) |
Black Tights (1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs) is a 1961 French anthology film featuring four ballet segments shot in Technirama and directed by Terence Young. The film is also known as Un deux trois quatre! in France (short title).
The four independent stories are performed in the form of ballet. All were choreographed by Roland Petit. Two of the stories (La Croqueuse de diamants and Carmen) each have one song sung in French.
La Croqueuse de diamants translates as "The Gold Digger", or more literally as "the diamond cruncher". (Twice during the story, the title character swallows a diamond, with a crunching sound.) The story, a romantic comedy, opens in Les Halles. Amid the hubbub of street activity, a group of woman street vendors sing in French about their trade. A furniture delivery man (Dirk Sanders), while delivering a seating bankette to a cafe, encounters a woman pickpocket (Zizi Jeanmaire, The Gold Digger), who is the leader of a pickpocketing gang, based next door to the cafe. The delivery man and the gold digger fall in love with each other, the latter leaving her criminal gang to go off with her new love.
Cyrano de Bergerac is a tragic romantic story, based on a play of the same name. Both Cyrano de Bergerac (Roland Petit) and Christian de Neuvillette (Georges Reich) love Roxanne (Moira Shearer). But the poet Cyrano has a big nose and is too shy to declare his love to Roxanne. Instead, he helps his friend Christian woo Roxanne, writing love letters on his behalf.
Deuil en 24 heures translates as "mourning in 24 hours" or more loosely as A Merry Mourning. (A shop appearing in the film shows "Deuil en 24 heures" as the shop name.) Along the Champs-Élysées, a wealthy man (Hans von Manen) accompanies his wife (Cyd Charisse) on a shopping trip to buy a dress. A strange man (Roland Petit) flirts with his wife in a cafe. The husband challenges the flirting man to a deul which the husband fatally loses. The wife starts to enjoy her widowhood. The story is a black comedy.
Carmen is the tragic story of the soldier Don José (Roland Petit) falling in love with the Gypsy Carmen (Zizi Jeanmaire). The plot of the ballet roughly follows the story of the opera with some variations in plot detail. The ballet features music by Georges Bizet. In the Lillas Pastia scene, the ballet troupe sings l'amour est enfant de bohème in a half-sung/half-spoken fashion.
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