Last month, you'll recall, we did a splash on the French film, Folies-Bergère, calling attention to the various versions of certain scenes, i.e., Rare, Medium and Overdone. The United States, of course, was scheduled to get the Overdone version, while other countries enjoyed the refreshing sight of torsos unadorned, or adorned only by a few rhinestones in the wrong places. This sagacious strategy we attributed (if we may quote ourselves) to "Gallic practicality" -- but now it appears that practicality is not an exclusively Gallic commodity.
We're talking about a U. S. film called The Ambassador's Daughter. It has a lot of high-type Americans in the cast -- Olivia de Havilland, John Forsythe, the late Edward Arnold -- and the plot concerns itself with a senatorial investigation of American G.I.s' conduct in Paris. It's a fairly routine Hollywood product, except for one charming little scene photographed at the famed Parisian nightery, the Lido. Olivia and Forsythe are seated at a table therein, playing footsie and watching the floor-show. The show consists ofa rather undistinguished hunk of terpsichore performed by ladies with fans. This doesn't impress Forsythe much until the fans are lowered. Then he -- and the audience -- gets a long, close gander at what makes American G.I.s in Paris conduct themselves like American G.I.s in Paris. Forsythe blushes a bit, Olivia twits him, and the scene is over.
We say the audience gets a gander, but we'll have to amend that a little. The French audiences who see this American movie will enjoy the added spice, all right, but the only condiment American filmgoers will get is the salt on the popcorn. This scene -- like the semi-nude sequences in Folies-Berère -- has been shot twice. In the version the U.S. will see, the idea of the bare-breasted dancers will be gotten across by mirror shots showing silky backs. They're nice backs, if you like backs, but they can't pinch-hit for the fine stuff up front.
Thus, the producers of The Ambassador's Daughter have pulled a switch on the usual situation of foreign-producer-cleaning-up-film-for-American-market. But no matter whothe chef is, there's no switch on who is served the Overdone rarebit on the menu: that hapless personage is, as usual, the strong-stomached Mr. U.S. Moviegoer. The difference between the two versions is slight, but Vive, as a Frenchman said on another occasion,la différence!
John Forsythe and Olivia de Havilland prepare for scene.
Below, scene from The Ambassador's Daughter as it is being shown to U. S. audiences; at right, the European version.
