Night and Day (1946)

Night and Day is delightful!

It's clear from the beginning of this film that the star of Night and Day is the music of the man himself...Cole Porter. The song and dance sequences are beautifully done (the tap dancing number in particular was fantastic) and I even took pleasure in the story. Of course, since this film has been made, we now know much more about Cole Porter than is revealed in this film such as his being homosexual. However, I find that Night and Day better honors Porter and his love of his music first and foremost. It is a delightful and entertaining movie that truly sings Cole Porter's praises. July 2, 2008

Not lovely

If you're looking for a movie that accurately tells the story of Cole Porter, this is clearly not it. Nor is it a great movie in any way. The story telling is cheesy and quite amateurish -- a surprise for a movie starred by Cary Grant. Still Grant's sheer charisma, and Porter's extraordinary music, make this a movie somewhat worth watching. January 17, 2008

It's a good thing Cole Porter had a sense of humor

Night and Day is probably the worst of the reverential "biographies" of America's great theater composers which Hollywood cranked out in the Forties. Rodgers & Hart, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, the list goes on, were all smoothed out, glossed over, given awful dialogue and had to see their songs so over-produced at times it must have seemed that they were hearing the heavenly choir.

Night and Day gives us a number of Cole Porter songs polished and massaged with the lush sound stage treatment. The movie also gives the songs pretentious orchestrations so foreign to Porter's style, plus bowdlerized and rewritten lyrics to insure little of Porter's naughtiness would survive to possibly offend middle America.

Most surrealistically, we have Cary Grant as Cole Porter...and that is the kind of casting that makes the Hollywood studio system so wonderful to read about. In addition to being one of the great theater composers, Porter was short, enthusiastically gay, a bit pop-eyed and a terrible social snob. On the other hand, he was supposed to have had a great sense of humor, and reportedly was highly amused when Cary Grant was chosen to portray him. (Another odd bit of Hollywood casting was choosing Mickey Rooney to play Lorenz Hart in Words and Music.)

One or two good biographies have been written about Porter. As a film biography, though, Night and Day is largely a work of hack Hollywood fiction. But don't we at least get a bunch of his songs? Sadly, the songs have been so over-produced, treated so respectfully and have been so sanitized, that watching the numbers often is just downright irritating.

Porter, such a social snob and living the kind of high-maintenance life some might consider simply frivolous, is worth knowing because of his songs...and his songs are best enjoyed when they are performed with impudence and style. It's smart to remember that when he wrote...
I love you
Hums the April breeze.
I love you
Echo the hills.
I love you
The golden dawn agrees
As once more she sees
Daffodils.
It's spring again
And birds on the wing again
Start to sing again
The old melody.
I love you,
That's the song of songs
And it all belongs
To you and me.
...he wrote it to win a bet that he couldn't write a hit love song using mundane images. Porter won the bet and thoroughly enjoyed seeing what he consider a mediocre string of cliches become widely popular. If you enjoy detective work as well as Cole Porter songs, track down the CD's produced by Ben Bagley, the Cole Porter Revisited series of albums. I think Porter might have enjoyed them. And there is also this essential book, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter August 23, 2007

Night and Day

I am thankful this movie is available on DVD. It is very entertaining and enjoyable, because I LOVE OLD MOVIES!!! August 15, 2007

It's the Music - not the storyline

This "bio" of Cole Porter was produced in an era (pre-50's)when certain personal lifestyles were not discussed and certainly not accepted. Thus, you get a squeaky clean Cary Grant as Cole Porter. But it's the music and the presentation of the music that I've always liked. Just writing this review has me humming "Night and Day" and thinking about "When they begin the Beguine". August 4, 2007

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