Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 172: More Musical Melodies

I know I've been laying low for a while in terms of the Oscar hunt but that's because I've had other things on soon these posts will have their own exclusive blog dedicated to them but for the moment I present a quadruple bill of 1960s musicals. However the characters in the musicals aren't the most savoury of characters - child thieves, gang members, murderers and conmen who can all hold a tune, isn't it just lovely. And we'll kick off with the first two films from that quadruple bill.

Starting off with the film that triumphed at the 1962 ceremony - an update of Romeo and Juliet starring too warring, gun-toting, all-singing, all-dancing gangs. I'm talking of course of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim's classic musical, which was transplanted to the screen in 1961 to rave reviews. As always with films that I know quite well it's hard for me to know how much plot detail to put in but I will say that the film deals with the rival gangs the Latino-only gang The Sharks and The Jets which are made up of mainly Polish immigrants. Russ Tamblyn plays Jet leader Riff whose lieutenant Tony has essentially quit the gang preferring to work at the local drugstore however he is convinced to come to the dance where both gangs will arrange a rumble. That's where Tony meets Natalie Wood's Maria the sister of Bernardo the leader of the Sharks, played by George Charkiris, with Tony and Maria obviously being the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet. As we all know the story the two warring factions end up getting in the way of the love story with both Biff and Bernardo biting the dust before the final scenes. The only change-up is that Tony is killed but Maria survives telling the gangs to stop what they are doing before there is even more bloodshed. For me the opening fifteen minutes of West Side Story builds it up perfectly with the opening conflict between the two gangs played out to minimal beats building up to a large climax which provides the impetus for the rest of the film. Though I do have a bit of a problem finding gangs that are that in time when dancing together particularly threatening everything else about this film is great. While I found Wood and Richard Beymer a little flat as Maria and Tony there was support elsewhere in two Oscar winning turns from Chakiris and Rita Moreno the latter playing Bernardo's girl and Maria's confident. Actually out of all the performances I feel that Moreno's is the best especially towards the end when The Jets are circling around her following Bernardo's death. The songs are spectacular from America to Maria to Someday and the staging is perfect especially the playground with wire around it a perfect place to start and end the film. So all in all a perfect Oscar Best Picture winner then.

Moving on to the next year a less racy and more traditional musical with The Music Man although it does still feature an unsavoury lead character in conman Professor Harold Hill who comes to the sleepy Iowa town of River City to flog band uniforms and instruments to the unsuspecting townsfolk. Hill is played by Robert Preston, who played the role on stage, however both Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant were offered the role with the latter turning it down saying nobody could play it as well as the man who did on Broadway. Hill is aided in his con by associate Marcellus who is the only one who knows him by his real name Gregory. As he is a showman he convinces the majority of the town to steer away the young folk from the pool tables and instead get them to take part in a band. His pomp and circumstance is infectious as the older women of the town form a dance group while the four men on the school board form a Barbershop Quartet, in actuality they are played by real life quartet The Buffalo Bills. Hill's main opposition comes from the town's mayor who wants his credentials and the local librarian Marian who teaches piano. I was a big fan of The Music Man before revisiting agan and what I like about it so much is in the little details from the opening number set on a train that has all the men in suits and hats complaining about Hill to the final reprise of '76 Trombones' with the whole town now kitted out in their band uniforms. The other songs are just as brilliant with the most famous being 'Till There Was You' however my favourite has to be the famous 'Trouble in River City' in which Hill convinces the people that the pool table is bad news. Both Preston and Shirley Jones are a great couple with support coming from the brilliant Buddy Hackett and a young Ron Howard. While this isn't going to win any points for originality it is still a fine old-fashioned musical and one of the last of its kind.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 153-154: Musical Madness

As we've seen in the 1950s thus far that the rise of Technicolor and cinemascope meant that a lot of big epics were being made as they now looked spectacular on the screen. Another genre that saw a rise was that of the musical and two big named musicals were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1955 and 1957 respectively. First up is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers a jolly musical film that features plenty of physical violence and the multiple abduction of women by the roguish brothers of the title. It kicks off with Howard Keel's Adam journeying from his mountaintop farm to find himself a wife a task he carries off with ease hooking up with the innocent Millie and taking her back to his house to live with his six brothers. Millie tries to hammer some civility into these boys and it works for a while as she gets them clean and learning proper courtship rituals but when they are provoked at a barn raising contest they lose their temper and get into a fight losing their girls in the process. Adam convinces his brothers to go and kidnap the women and indeed the townsfolk can't rescue them after an avalanche meaning that the girls and Millie end up taking the house banishing the brothers to the stables. However as is often the case the girls soften as the snow begins to thaw and as the title would suggest there is a mass wedding ceremony to end the film. Obviously as you can tell I really wasn't taken with the brutish nature of this film nor did I think that Millie did a particularly good job civilising the men or keeping the women from them. What I did like however were the songs and also the use of Technicolor in particular the pastel colours that the men wore and how they interlinked with the dresses that their intendeds were also wearing. The songs, of which Bless Your Beautiful Hide is the most famous, are also fairly catchy and there are some great little set pieces including the aforementioned barn-raising however as a film I didn't think it was particularly well constructed and I didn't warm to any of the characters.

The same cannot be said for The King and I which makes you feel for even the brutish King of Siam before it comes to its conclusion. This time we find Deborah Kerr as a widowed English teacher travelling to Siam with her young son to become the teacher to the children and wives of the king. Obviously when I think of this film it is Yul Brynner's King who tries to change his attitude to women and his subjects after meeting Kerr's Anna. In the more innocent 1950s I don't think you could use the term sexual tension but that really was what these two displayed as they went on in their shouting matches and eventually came to a mutual understanding. Obviously Anna becomes disgusted after the king won't let his 'present' the young Tuptum leave with her lover so she leaves the king but when he falls ill she journeys back. For me The King and I draws you in with its two lead performances with Brynner winning an Oscar for Best Actor with other awards going to the costumes, music and art direction. Someone who missed out on an Oscar here was Kerr whose strong yet warm Anna anchors the film but then Kerr still holds the record for the most nominations for an actress without a win despite the fact her male co-stars such as Brynner, Frank Sinatra and David Niven seem to come away with the statues. Again there are some great set pieces with Getting to Know You and Tuptum's show for the English being the highlights but for me romance doesn't get any more perfect than Brynner and Kerr's routine in Shall we Dance. Obviously my favourite of the two musicals by a country mile and one that lost out on the Oscar to a film which some say was undeserving but as I'm yet to see it I will reserve my judgment for now.