My Geisha could never, ever be made today, for so many reasons. In addition to it being enormously politically incorrect and offensive, it would also anger every feminist on the planet. In the film, Shirley MacLaine plays an actress married to a director, Yves Montand, but he doesn't really take her career seriously. She's an extremely well-loved and successful actress, but he doesn't think she can carry a drama. When he decides to make a movie of Madame Butterfly, Shirley wants the part. Yves doesn't think she'd be convincing in the role, and to prove him wrong, she decides to don a disguise and audition as an actual Japanese geisha. She tries to learn enough Japanese to get by when real Japanese people talk to her, but most of the time, she just makes offensive sounds and hopes no one will notice. I'm not dissing Shirley; these parts were actually written into the script. Why did anyone think was a good idea?
Besides the obvious offensive aspects of the story, I had trouble with the casting. If the entire point of the movie was that Shirley has to talk in an accent and pretend she barely speaks English, why did they cast someone as her husband who talks in an extremely thick accent and seems like he barely speaks English? I always have a hard time understand Yves Montand, and since many of his lines involve teaching English to Shirley-when she's in geisha-mode and pretends not to understand his English colloquialisms-wouldn't it make sense to cast someone who doesn't seem to need lessons himself?
One person I did like in the movie was Edward G. Robinson. I always love him, and I think he transitioned marvelously in his career from a young to middle-aged man. In the 1950s and 1960s, he still took very meaty roles, instead of fading away. You can skip this one, though, and rent A Hole in the Head instead.
Besides the obvious offensive aspects of the story, I had trouble with the casting. If the entire point of the movie was that Shirley has to talk in an accent and pretend she barely speaks English, why did they cast someone as her husband who talks in an extremely thick accent and seems like he barely speaks English? I always have a hard time understand Yves Montand, and since many of his lines involve teaching English to Shirley-when she's in geisha-mode and pretends not to understand his English colloquialisms-wouldn't it make sense to cast someone who doesn't seem to need lessons himself?
One person I did like in the movie was Edward G. Robinson. I always love him, and I think he transitioned marvelously in his career from a young to middle-aged man. In the 1950s and 1960s, he still took very meaty roles, instead of fading away. You can skip this one, though, and rent A Hole in the Head instead.