damian-fuller "Hey big spender" That's all I knew about Sweet Charity. A musical version of Federico Fellini's masterpiece "The Nights Of Cabiria" - I didn't think of Cabiria when I saw Charity on the screen. Shirley MacLaine's recreates and reinvents Giulietta Masina's Cabiria. That is something that very rarely works. But here in Bob Fosse's version, Cabiria has a new life, an American life, a song and dance life but just as sad. Sad but not hopeless. There is the spirit of Cabiria/Charity that will survive. Shirley MacLaine is magnificent. She manages to project that innocence that makes everything not just palatable but delicious.

gavin6942 Charity Hope Valentine (Shirley MacLaine) works as a taxi dancer along with her friends, Nickie (Chita Rivera) and Helene (Paula Kelly). She longs for love, but has bad luck with men, being robbed and pushed off Bow Bridge in Central Park by one ex-boyfriend. She has another humiliating encounter with Vittorio Vitale (Ricardo Montalban), a movie star.Is this better than Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria"? Nope. But it is also a different enough film that it may not be fair to compare them directly. Especially the change from prostitute to dancer (which makes sense in the world of Bob Fosse). Is Giulietta Masina better tan Shirley MacLaine? Yep. But then again, MacLaine is given a lot more to do.I suppose this film has many fans, but for me the muse of Fosse is Minnelli, not MacLaine. They both have their strong points, but Liza Minnelli is truly one of the greats of the 20th century (and beyond).

jjnxn-1 Shirley is endearing as the title character, a sweet overly hopeful hard luck dame not overly burdened with brains. Several of the songs-Where Am I Going?, Hey Big Spender, If They Could See Me Now, are excellent but the film is an overblown terribly dated dinosaur. The kind of out of touch production that killed the musical by the end of the sixties. A gargantuan flop upon its initial release costing 20 million and taking in only 8, it's easy to see why peppered throughout as it is with techniques, photos that stop the action dead, freeze frames in numbers, that were outdated even then. There are glimmers of Fosse's genius scattered here and there but he has done better work elsewhere. One of the very rare chances to see Chita Rivera on screen, for that alone it's worth sitting through once but it really a mediocre effort.

Galina My love and admiration for Federico Fellini/Guiletta Masina's film Nights of Cabiria had stopped me for long time from seeing Sweet Charity, the adaptation of the musical based on the same story which was made into a highly successful Broadway show directed and choreographed by a multi talented Bob Fosse. I am a fan of Bob Fosse. I love all his films, musicals and not, but I was hesitant to see Sweet Charity the movie and I never had a chance to see the Broadway musical. Well, I finally did and I can say that nothing is wrong with transporting the same story to the different time, place, language, medium, and to use the different artistic tools. The story is the same; the films are as different as Rome and NYC or as Federico Fellini and Bob Fosse. Fosse's film should be judged on its own terms, and it has a lot of breathtaking scenes to enjoy, bright colors, outrageously stunning costumes (the work of incredible Edith Head), adorable and unbelievably cute Shirley MacLaine, Sweet Charity Hope Valentine, and the best of all - the dancing sequences to die for. Among them, splendid The Big Spender is perfection and the real treasure. Fosse's staging of the musical numbers is outstanding. The most memorable moment in the movie for me was stolen from Shirley MacLaine by Chita Rivera in Big Spender. Just watch Rivera's seemingly boneless arms, the right one around her head and the left one behind her back, the left hand on her right hip as she sings, "do you want to have fun, fun, fun?" For this moment alone, I like the film even if I see very well that it has some minuses, too. The first act between two intermissions was really good, and it includes the best dancing and singing numbers: "Hey, Big Spender", "The Pompeii Club", "Rich Man's Frug", and "If They Could See Me Now". After the second intermission the movie went over the hill. I believe that it could do without both intermissions. We are not watching the show at the theater, and the intermissions only took time. The "hippiest" "Rhythm of Life" scene was overlong, did not make much sense, and made me want to fast-forward it. I take it that Fosse wanted to experience with the camera movements and different techniques in his very first feature film which was a screen transfer of his Broadway Musical. This is the only explanation of his multiple slow-motions, stills, color/black/white and back changes that did not add anything to the film, just paused it with no apparent reasons. His next screen adaptation was timeless Cabaret, and he had improved his directing style dramatically. As the result, Cabaret has stayed his greatest achievement along with All That Jazz.Coming back to the original tragic comedy "Nights of Cabiria", of all the characters Fellini had given life on screen, by his own words, Cabiria was the only one he worried about many years after the film was made. Of all the characters, I've seen in films, Cabiria is the one I often think about - whatever happened to her? Did she survive? Was she able to find love? As much as I like Shirley MacLaine/Charity, I did not worry about her future. She lived happily ever after - in both movie endings, theatrical and alternative.