The Girl Can't Help It

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The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
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STARS...........: Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O'Brien
DIRECTOR........: Frank Tashlin
WRITERS.........: Frank Tashlin, Herbert Baker, Garson Kanin (novel)
GENRE...........: Comedy, Music
IMDB............: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049263
RUNTIME.........: 1h 37mn
SIZE............: 5.67 GB
VIDEO CODEC.....: HEVC ([email protected])
BITRATE.........: 8000 Kbps (2-pass)
RESOLUTION......: 1920x816
ASPECT RATIO....: 2.35:1
FRAMERATE.......: 23.976 fps
AUDIO1..........: FLAC Mono 2.0
AUDIO2..........: Commentary by film scholar Toby Miller
SUBTITLES.......: ENG
SOURCE..........: Criterion Blu-ray
ENCODE DATE.....: 2022-05-25


In 1956, Frank Tashlin brought the talent for zany visual gags and absurdist pop-culture satire that he’d honed as a master of animation to the task of capturing, in glorious De Luxe Color, a brand-new craze: rock and roll. This blissfully bonkers jukebox musical tells the story of a mobster’s bombshell girlfriend—the one and only Jayne Mansfield, in a showstopping first major film role—and the washed-up talent agent (Tom Ewell) who seeks to revive his career by turning her into a musical sensation. The question is: Can she actually sing? A CinemaScope feast of eye-popping midcentury design, The Girl Can’t Help It bops along to a parade of performances by rock-and-roll trailblazers—including Little Richard, Fats Domino, Julie London, Eddie Cochran, the Platters, and Gene Vincent—who light up the screen with the uniquely American sound that was about to conquer the world.


Extras


• Audio commentary featuring film scholar Toby Miller
• New video essay by film critic David Cairns
• Interview with filmmaker John Waters
• New conversation between WFMU DJs Dave Abramson and Gaylord Fields
• New interview with author Eve Golden
• On-set footage
• Interviews with Jayne Mansfield (1957) and Little Richard (1984)
• Episode of Karina Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This
• Trailer