Back to my Alphabetical Musicals Project:
After Debby did Dallas I finally got to Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, my favorite Jacque Demi/Michel Legrand score. I first saw it when it came out with subtitles, and later one of the networks aired the British release which had the entire score sung in English. I have it somewhere in a box on a reel-to-reel. Although Gene Kelly didn't do his own singing in the French version (only Danielle Dariuex did--she, by the way, took over for Hepburn when she left Coco on Broadway), he sang on the Englilsh track, as I believe did George Chakiris and Grover Dale.
My memory of the English version is that it was a terrific translation, rendering a lot of the word-play of the original which was lost in the subtitles; e.g, when Maxence says he has he is going to Nante on leave (a perme, he jokes "j'ais une perme à Nante", une permanante = a permanent. The translation changes the city and he sings "I was born to lose in Toulouse". Even the dinner scene, in which the banal conversation is entirely in classical alexandrine verse, is rendered thus in the English. There is even a gratuitous pun when Gene Kelly sings, "So long, Solange."
I'm sure our French members could point out more examples, but one of the fun things about Demi is his sense of humor--not just obvious things like the deus ex machina fairy godmother in Peau d'Ane arriving in a helicopter, but jokes in the coördination of the sets and costumes in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. And of course, Les Demoiselles is one long extended joke of potential lovers constantly passing like ships in the night.
I only wish the CD had more of the score and the songs were all in the right order. Hint, hint!