Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more

 

First a Girl (1935)

Director: Victor Saville

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The last in a series of German musicals transposed into English (and later remade with Julie Andrews as Victor/Victoria). Matthews is, as usual, an aspiring seamstress whose singing and dancing ambitions are fulfilled only after a sequence of sexual shenanigans. In Evergreen she won fame and fortune by impersonating her granny. Here, doing a Tootsie in reverse, she resorts to playing a female impersonator - with understandably convincing results. Saville doesn't quite get his Busby Berkeley act together, and an aura of inane innocence keeps at bay the interesting undertones of the plot. But for an English musical, this is tight, professional and unpretentious, and Matthews has a winsome vitality which is irresistible.

Author: RMy 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.