Lili

Surprisingly enough, even during 31 Days of Oscar there are some older movies that I haven't done blog posts about before, and that I have on my DVR. Among them is one that I'll admit I hadn't watched before now because I wasn't certain it would interest me. But it's the sort of movie where I probably ought to rectify not having watched it, considering it won an Oscar: Lili. It gets its next airing overnight tonight at 12:30 AM, which is technically February 26 in the eastern time zone but still February 25 in more westerly time zones.

Leslie Caron plays Lili, and as the movie opens she's a 16-year-old girl who lost her mother at some point in the past while her father has just died, leaving her an orphan. She's from some sort of small French town, and has come to another small town looking for an old friend of her father's who might be able to tell her. But that friend has died, too, and Lili, being naïve, is at risk of being exploited by somebody. She's rescued by Marc (Jean-Pierre Aumont), who works as a magician for a traveling carnival. Marc gets her a job, but it's going to require traveling with the carnival.

In response, Lili develops a crush on Marc, not realizing that he's married to his assistant Rosalie (Zsa Zsa Gabor). She's so infatuated with Marc that she doesn't pay attention to the job she has with the carnival, that of waiting tables, instead watching Marc's magic act. She's going to need to do something different than waitressing. And just wait until she learns that Marc and Rosalie are married.

On the first point, she's mildly lucky. Another part of the carnival is the puppet show, with the puppets manned by Paul (Mel Ferrer) and his assistant Jacquot (Kurt Kasznar). Paul used to be a dancer, but he was injured fighting for the Free French in World War II and can no longer dance as a result. This is why he got into puppeteering, but has also left him bitter and using the puppets as a surrogate to communicate with the outside world. Lili, being immature, talks to the puppets as though they're real characters.

But this interaction is actually a stroke of unintentional genius, as using a human to communicate with the puppets as part of the show is something that really draws in the carnival viewers. And Paul and Jacquot use the conversations they have with Lili to turn the puppet show almost into an improv show. But will everybody's personal issues destroy the whole show?

Lili is in some ways a strange little movie, in that it defies genres. You'd think it should be a musical, and there is a fantasy dance number at the end. But it doesn't quite have as much music as the Freed Unit musicals that MGM was putting out did. Lili is also so immature that the way the adult men treat her comes across as creepy at times.

However, Leslie Caron does a fine acting job, picking up an Oscar nomination along the way. Lili was a big box-office hit, and it's easy to see why it would appeal to a lot of people. I don't quite share that appeal, to be honest, but a lot of viewers even today probably will find it appealing.