Warner Archive provided me with a free copy of the Blu-Ray I reviewed in this article. The opinions I share are my own.
Money makes the world go round and is at the center of both these films set in Paris, France.
Some cats would be happy living on mice and milk. Mewsette (Judy Garland) has bigger plans. No longer satisfied with life as a farm cat, Mewsette decides to stowaway on her owner’s sister’s carriage and try her paw at the big city. When she trusts the wrong cat, however, Mewsette realizes she may have been too hasty to leave her provincial friends behind. Will Jaune Tom (Robert Goulet) and his trusty sidekick, Robespierre (Red Buttons), arrive in time to help her escape the clutches of Meowrice (Paul Frees)?
Written by Dorothy and Chuck Jones (Gay Purr-ee is Dorothy’s only feature film writing credit, while Jones is a Looney Tunes legend), Gay Purr-ee feels like a precursor to Disney’s The Aristocats, except (unlike Duchess) Mewsette doesn’t come from money and is more impressed by high society types.
That Mewsette and Jaune Tom bear an uncanny resemblance to Duchess and Thomas seems an unlikely coincidence (Gay Purr-ee came first, so UPA are in the clear) but, by using solid colors for the characters, they really stand out against the film’s painterly backdrops. In one scene the film even uses a marriage portrait as an excuse to give a history lesson on some of the artists whose work influenced the animators, from the pronounced brush strokes of Monet to the colors of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
While the songs in this musical don’t always serve the plot and can be on inane subjects (like a song about why buggies are ideal places to have affairs), they do have good beats and Garland’s voice was made for melancholy numbers like, “Paris Is A Lonely Town.”
Amongst the cast, Frees is a standout as Meowrice. I especially appreciated that he didn’t go for an exaggerated French accent or try to draw any correlation between Meowrice being French and predatory. As for Meowrice’s evil plan, it’s a little hard to suss out at first. While his associate, Mme. Rubens-Chatte (Hermione Gingold) has the air of a madam, with her heavily painted face, prostitution wouldn’t do for a family film, so I guess cat trafficking was the child-friendly choice (?).
The only voice actor who feels miscast is Buttons as Robespierre. While Robespierre’s size marks him as a kitten, Buttons’ voice isn’t childlike, and it creates a disconnect between his voice and the visual.
Bonus Features:
Warner Archive’s Blu-ray comes with two Pepé Le Pew cartoons and one featuring Bugs Bunny. In “French Rarebit,” Bugs gets mixed up with two French chefs who are inspired by his arrival to try a rabbit recipe.
“Louvre Come Back to Me” and “For Scent-imental Reasons” are both classic Pepé cartoons of him pursuing Penelope Pussycat. There’s a lot of Frenchify-d English (AKA putting “le” in front of words so they’re magically French). It’s fun to see how each cartoon rises to the challenge of answering how Penelope winds up with a stripe down her back so that Pepé can confuse her for a skunk and fall in love with her. Less cute: the emotional blackmail and Pepé’s aggressive courting techniques.
Based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and adapted for the screen by Brooks, Julius J. Epstein, and Philip G. Epstein, most people are probably familiar with the photos from VE Day of women kissing enlisted soldiers to celebrate the end of the war in Europe. The Last Time I Saw Paris is like a hypothetical imagining of what would happen if one of those duos became a couple and got married.
Charles (Van Johnson) is a reporter who dreams of being a successful author someday. Helen (Elizabeth Taylor) is a fun time girl who doesn’t have the funds to support her lifestyle but – having learned from her father (Walter Pidgeon) that it’s better to live beyond your means – isn’t too worried about cash.
Going by this set-up, it would seem like the film was gearing up to be biased against Helen, but it’s actually equal opportunity when it comes to showing both partners’ flaws. Charles isn’t exactly good with money either, and they’re often not on the same page when it comes to maturing and personal growth.
As the title suggests, The Last Time I Saw Paris is Charles reflecting on his past (he’s been in America for the last two years), and the film is really successful when it comes to showing the passage of time and covering a lot of years within it’s two hour runtime.
It’s hard to know whether Donna Reed was directed to play Helen’s sister as a killjoy, or if that was an acting choice, but it’s the most predictable way of playing what could’ve been a very complex part. Instead, Marion glares all the time, making her unlikable even when she has a point.
The title song by Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) gets milked a lot, too, and rearranged to play during any situation. Still, The Last Time I Was In Paris is romantic drama at it’s most wrought, and the film (which is in the public domain) has never looked more lush.
Bonus Feature:
“Touché, Pussy Cat!” is an adorable Tom and Jerry riff on The Three Musketeers (or should I say ‘the two mouseketeers’).
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