Drei Mädchen in Madrid

I so enjoy teasing a friend of mine about his long-time and, let's face it, abject adoration of the Swedish bombshell, Ms. A-M. This one was shown on American Movie Classics recently, "formatted" (Why do they bother?!?), which reduces one's visual pleasure by approximately 50%! But even without a forty-foot wide screen to celebrate her astonishingly talented assets, Annie is something to behold. When she waggles that tush...well, it's no wonder she performs almost all of her musical numbers indoors on studio sets. The censorious Spanish would have had her arrested! It rivals "Viva! Las Vegas" as her finest hour!

As an artifact of times long gone, this is still fairly enjoyable. Today's young ingenues seem like such tired-out, world weary ladies of the evening compared to the virginal Miss Tiffin, the ambitious Miss Lynley and the incomparable Miss Margret. (Eat your heart out, J. Lo!) And with Brian Keith and Gene Tierney on hand to attest that those beyond their thirties could still care for each other (though it takes the scriptwriters until about the final sequence to maneuver them to that realization), one can regretfully observe that we've come a long way from the bright and beautiful early Sixties, and there's not much to crow about on that score.