Lili

Sixteen years old, orphaned and entirely alone, Lili attaches herself to a travelling carnival in a French town. She can barely speak to anyone there, but she can speak to puppets. The man working them is Paul, a dancer crippled in the war who has walled himself off from people and says everything he cannot say through cloth figures. The whole idea of the film sits in that one device. Leslie Caron plays Lili, Mel Ferrer plays Paul, and Charles Walters directed. It received six Oscar nominations, including Best Actress for Caron, and won exactly one, for Bronislau Kaper's score. The song Kaper wrote with Helen Deutsch's lyrics, Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo, went on to a life of its own and has been recorded dozens of times. Among MGM musicals it is the smallest in scale and the saddest in temperament, and it begins from a darker place than a film this bright has any obligation to. Who it is for: viewers who love the classic musical and Leslie Caron. Who it is not for: anyone who will find it too sweet, or the puppet scenes contrived.