It would be easy to dismiss this as The Three Faces Of Eve with songs but it is, actually, a little more than that. Alan Lerner had a lifelong interest in ESP and toyed with the idea of basing a musical on it for years before finally getting around to it in the mid sixties more or less a full decade after My Fair Lady. The Broadway version failed to find its audience but was jam-packed with great numbers (Lerner was again working with Burton Lane with whom he wrote one of the all-time great ballads, 'Too Late Now' for the MGM movie Royal Wedding) most of which the producers have seen fit to jettison leaving the leading man only three numbers but the film is, nevertheless, interesting if only for the chance to see and hear the great Montand working in English. Montand, who learned English late in life, made several films in the English language none of them really satisfactory and whilst at one level the antipathy of most of the posters here is understandable one can't help feeling they are lacking in sensitivity inasmuch as the charm and shining talent of the man are obvious even in a vehicle tailored to his co-star as is this. Streisand is certainly adequate and with Minnelli at the helm she is both costumed and photographed to full advantage but by 1970 sophisticated lyrics like those in What Did I Have were wasted on if not bewildering to an audience educated in punk rock. Despite what the nay-sayers think Montand was worth every dime of the (for the time) silly money that enticed him to cross the Atlantic. Maybe not one to buy (unless you rate even minor Montand as I do) but certainly one to rent.
