MGM’s surprise hit has remained one of their more beloved musicals — a musical with one song!  Leslie Caron is inspired casting as the lost orphan who drifts into a circus, is charmed by illusions but finds her place in life and love. Jean-Piere Aumont has his best Hollywood role and Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mel Ferrer possibly their best roles ever. Don’t let the ‘Hi Lili, Hi Lo’ song fool you; writers Paul Gallico and Helen Deutsch work some excellent theatrical effects here, and the romantic message comes off as sincere. Digitally remastered from 3-Strip Technicolor.

Lili
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 81 min. / Street Date April 29, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 21.99
Starring: Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, Amanda Blake, Alex Gerry, Ralph Dumke, Wilton Graff, George Baxter, Charles Walters, Frank Radcliffe, Arthur Mendez, Diki Lerner, Dorothy Jarnac.
Cinematography: Robert H. Planck
Art directors: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse
Choreographer: Charles Walters assisted by Dorothy Jarnac
Puppets created by Michael O’Rourke, Paul E. Walton
Puppeteers: George Latshaw, Wolo Von Trutzschler
Costumes: Mary Ann Nyberg
Film Editor: Ferris Webster
Composer: Bronislau Kaper
Song Hi-Lili, Hi-lo by Kaper, Lyrics by Helen Deutsch<br/ >Screenplay by Helen Deutsch from the story The Man Who Hated People by Paul Gallico
Produced by Edwin H. Knopf
Directed by Charles Walters

MGM hit a minor gold mine with Lili, a slight, highly emotional tale written first as a short story by Paul Gallico, who most kids my age knew as the author of Disney’s  The Three Lives of Thomasina. Although a musical, Lii wasn’t from MGM’s Freed or Pasternak units, but staff producer Edwin H. Knopf, brother of the famed publisher. Knopf directed and wrote numerous films, but this one is probably his best remembered.

It’s also a big achievement for writer Helen Deutsch, who wrote Knopf’s wartime hit  The Seventh Cross, an early directing job for Fred Zinnemann. Deutsch also wrote the lyrics for the movie’s incredibly popular song Hi-Lili, Hi-lo … we hope she retained some monetary rights, for it hasn’t stopped playing ever since.

Lili plays like a child’s story with some well-handled adult themes. The setting and designs verge on storybook simplicity. An introductory shot for a carnival reminds us of Fritz Lang’s version of Ferenc Molnár’s  Liliom (hm, that title) but brighter and more candy-colored. The performers in the little European carnival are somewhat idealized as well, with costuming that leans toward that seen in pictures like Pagnol’s  Marseilles Trilogy, but neat and tidy for the Technicolor camera.

Lili is said to have been MGM’s most successful musical of 1953, which means that it either out-performed the Fred Astaire classic  The Band Wagon, or that it came out ahead because Astaire’s movie cost more to produce. But nobody complains — Lili made an unusually strong emotional connection with audiences. It’s still touching — quite an achievement for a story that sounds like an exercise in bathos.

Orphaned at 16 years, the sheltered and unworldly Lil Daumier (Leslie Caron) arrives in a little port town to find that the old family friend who offered her a job has died. An unscrupulous shopkeeper makes an unwanted pass at the vulnerable young woman, but she’s ‘rescued’ by the intervention of Marc (Jean-Pierre Amont), a talented carnival magician and busy ladies’ man. Fully enamored of the handsome Marc, Lili begs him for a job, and he tries to get her work with the carnival. An accident instead lands Lili with a role to play in the act of puppeteer Paul Berthalet and Jacquot (Mel Ferrer and Kurt Kasznar). She carries on a conversation with the puppets Carrot Top, Golo, Marguerite and Reynardo, not realizing that they are puppets. Their exchange draws a big crowd on the fairway, especially when they sing.

The main conceit of the story is that Lili doesn’t realize that she’s talking to puppets … or is what she does something like fantasy role-playing — is she so in need of human warmth that she accepts them as ‘safe’ friends?  Lili’s childlike innocence is irresistible. The puppets mimic some of the carnival personalities, as seen by puppeteer Paul. The dishonest fox Reynaldo is like Marc, who has something going with several showgirls. The ballerina puppet Marguerite is vain and lovesick; she turns out to be a cognate for Marc’s gorgeous assistant Rosalie (Zsa Zsa Gabor). The ‘nice’ Carrot Top appears to be how Paul sees himself — friendly, honest and deserving.

Paul Berthalet eventually states that his puppets are all parts of his own personality. But Jacquot is always advising him to change his negative attitude. Wounded in the war, Marc could no longer dance, so he’s embittered with the world. He especially resents Lili’s attraction to the superficial Marc, and is cold and rude to her … yet expresses a whole spectrum of emotional understanding through his puppets. How will this romantic tangle straighten out?  Lili can’t shake her infatuation with Marc.

Leslie Caron had an impressive run with MGM, in the years when the studio dropped its entire roster of contract players. Personally enlisted by Gene Kelly for a starring role, her seven MGM years were bookended by the big successes  An American Paris (1951) and  Gigi (1958), both of which won multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture. Lili was a smart show for the 5′ 2″ ballerina with the emphatic facial features. At 24 she had no difficulty passing for 16, and she could have looked even younger had somebody wanted to make a movie of Ludwig Bemelmans’  Madeleine. Cleverly costumed, the wide-eyed actress projects transparent emotions. Her play-it-young act is excellent.

Thanks to Ms. Caron, the movie doesn’t feel false, playing an adult story in the emotional style of a children’s fable. We accept that Lili doesn’t know what puppets are, that she regards Carrot Top and Marguerite as living creatures. ‘We adults’ are aware that Mel Ferrer’s Paul is behind the curtain, filtering his unspoken desires through his puppets. Is this dramatic construction Pirandellian?  When pitched well, a theatrical conceit can be stronger than a realistic approach. Many stories posit puppeteers ‘living’ through their puppets, but few hold an audience as well as this one, children and adults alike.

Screenwriter Deutsch retains just enough of a European ‘earthy’ quality to ward off complaints of an MGM ‘nice-nice’ whitewash. The backlot waterfront set is familiar but attention was paid to detail, with extras that seem more foreign than usual. Mel Ferrer couldn’t be better. The actor had a tendency to drift through his roles, with a dull attitude somewhere between irritation and boredom. He is a perfect fit for this character, greatly aided by Kurt Kasznar’s supporting performance, which describes Paul’s disaffection so that Ferrer doesn’t have to lay it on too thick.

The more memorable French films of this kind were often earthy tragedies, where no innocent survived unspoiled; raw classics like H.G. Clouzot’s  Manon seem fixated on human depravity. If Lili had been made by Clouzot or Duvivier, the port town would be a partly bombed-out wreck. The carnival would be a seedy haven for smuggling, and Lili a lost orphan menaced by human trafficking. The Deutsch-MGM-Knopf picture finds different style beneath MGM’s glamour. That it doesn’t ring phony is real praise.

The movie really isn’t a children’s film, what with its frank adult relationship between Marc and Rosalie  (Spoiler:)  Marc’s assistant Rosalie is also his wife, and she’s accepted a kind of open marriage because such things are almost unavoidable in carnival life. A move to a more dignified level of show business prompts Rosalie to decide that Marc must start wearing his wedding band…

This is by far the best role we’ve seen for Zsa Zsa Gabor. She of course dazzles in her show costumes, but she also handles Rosalie’s dramatic scenes well, whether sizing up young Lili’s infatuation, or laying down the law to her wandering husband. So there’s more to Zsa Zsa than her classic turn in John Huston’s  Moulin Rouge.

Director Charles Walters’ work is not flashy, but he stays out of the way of the fine performances and makes no false moves. He stages Ms. Caron’s interactions with the puppets simply and directly, framing her performance as fresh and sincere. Walters also did the choreography for the fantasy segments representing Lili’s dreams, that include dancing versions of her puppet confidantes. It’s often said that the Powell-Pressburger dance film  The Red Shoes spurred MGM’s top musical talents in the direction of gigantic ballets.  Lili hasn’t the budget to quite go ‘all Minnelli’ on this story, and so avoids stylistic overkill. Lili seques in and out of these dreams with Technicolor dissolves that superimpose water ripples over a close-up, a visual very much like those seen in The Archers’  Black Narcissus.

That Hi-Lili, Hi-lo song is a genuine earworm, the kind of catchy melody that out-Disneys Disney. If you think of its rosy lyrics as potentially ironic, it doesn’t come off as too saccharine.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Lili is the expected dazzling digital remaster of a film that was once a universally-loved favorite. The show arrived in the final year of authentic 3-Strip Technicolor, with warm, saturated hues. The puppets almost look as if they were 3-D, and Leslie Caron’s smile is intoxicating. Old TV prints tended to bleed, or to look too gaudy; the precise image seen here is much sharper and accurate.

For extras, the WAC throws on three full cartoons, a Barney Bear and two Tom & Jerrys. The one called Puppy Tale is the most accomplished, with Jerry Mouse adopting a pet dog. The menu also lists a trailer, which came up stretched out on my setup.

Is there some clever psychology working in the main title sequence?  Lili follows its Technicolor lion logo with color text over a B&W background of a rural road, that for us conjures an association with  The Wizard of Oz, specifically, the view of the lonely Kansas road taken by Dorothy Gale. Does the unconscious association prepare us to anticipate Lili Daumier as a vulnerable waif out on her own?

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Lili
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
MGM Cartoons The Impossible Possum, The Pecos Pest, Puppy Tale
trailersfromhell.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: May 24, 2025
(7332lili)

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