AllMovie

Lady in the Dark is not a horrible musical, but it's not a bad one -- and it should have been a splendid one. As was the custom at the time, Hollywood took the stage piece and eliminated virtually all of its score. This was rarely a good idea, but it was particularly damaging because the musical sequences in Lady were absolutely essential to its success. The stage show was really a play with music, rather than a musical; the songs were only in 3 dream sequences, and each sequence was essentially a self-contained mini-operetta. Not only was it stripped of almost all of its score, but there wasn't even a real attempt to replace the missing music, aside from one negligible piece of Jimmy Van Heusen dreck. About the only thing that survives from the original, magnificent Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin score is the fabulous "Saga of Jenny." (The show's hit song, "My Ship," is hummed briefly.) The script has also been cheapened, and a given a big whiff of misogyny. The original stage play suffered from its "a woman must be secondary to a man" theme, but it was at least less emphatic about it. As the title character, Ginger Rogers should have been a treat; but although she sounds good and dances divinely, her dramatic portrayal is stiff and unconvincing. Mitchell Leisen's direction seems to be totally consumed by attention to the look of the film, which is sensational -- gaudy, garish and grandiose. But his attention was desperately needed elsewhere -- the acting, the pacing, fundamentals of the story -- and was woefully in short supply.