It's Delightful, It's Delicious--It's Wrong
"But the worst thing "De-Lovely" does to Porter's music isn't musical, precisely; it's interpretive. After a few bars of 'In the Still of the Night,' the angel Gabe says, 'You wrote that for her, of course.' Porter responds, reasonably, 'A song doesn't have to be about someone.' The rest of the movie ignores this caution, and makes Porter out to be a kind of proto-James Taylor. It shows Porter jotting down a love song upon waking beside Linda, and generally suggests that his lyrics closely tracked his personal life. This is to impose a rock 'n' roll--or perhaps singer-songwriter--aesthetic on a prerock mode of production. Notions of sincerity and self-expression have little direct application to songsmiths of Porter's era, who produced romantic, rueful, or raucous material according to the needs of a given form, be it stage show, film, or the individually marketed song. "