Tag: movies

Reflections: The Sound of Music (1965 film)

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cover to the 50th Anniversary blu-ray edition of The Sound of Music

Like many people of my generation, I grew up seeing Sound of Music—or more often, parts of it—every year on TV. I loved the puppet show; I found the song “Edelweiss” hauntingly beautiful and moving without knowing why; and I liked (precociously) the romance between Liesel and Rolf.

Though the movie as a whole was sometimes too long for me then, and had a lot of stretches where I couldn’t see much happening, today I love it, especially the songs, which consistently make me tear up.

• Throughout the film you see the power of filming on location instead of in a studio, even after the soaring panoramic views of Alpine grandeur in the opening sequence.

• The people making this movie understood the power of silence and not forcing background music into every scene. Note especially the dead quiet of the house when Maria first arrives and is meeting the Captain.

• The fact that Julie Andrews has such a splendid voice and uses it so well makes it too easy to forget she’s also extremely good at being funny.

• Two early scenes use the children pretty unconvincingly. I don’t for a moment believe that any but the youngest two feel guilty enough to actually cry at the dinner table; unless we’re supposed to understand the older ones are faking it, maybe to lull Maria into a false sense of security.

Also I don’t buy that all of them are so scared of the thunderstorm they rush to Maria’s room for comfort, and huddle quivering with every peal. Now maybe the noise of the youngest children alerted the others, and they came mostly so they wouldn’t be left out, but I still don’t think they’d be bent over and shaking every time the thunder sounded.

• It took time for Maria to make all those clothes for herself and the children—their mountain outing does not take place on her second day. Maria and the children have had some time offscreen getting to know one another.

• During the “Do Re Mi” number, there are several changes of costume. This is not a continuity error, it’s not a movie-making conceit you’re supposed to overlook, and it doesn’t mean they’re so rich and sophisticated they have a different outfit for every occasion.

It happens in order to show time passing.

The action is a single song to us, but within the story it spans several days, and those days may not even be consecutive.

The children do not learn to sing in only one afternoon.

• With seven children it’s unavoidable that some are less prominent than others, but you can’t ignore Angela Cartwright, who would go on to be many viewers’ first TV crush on Lost in Space.

• When talking to Maria in her bedroom, the Baroness has a hidden agenda, pretends to a concern and kindness she does not feel, and uses manipulation to get her way. Yet she does it by telling the truth and without making Maria do anything under false pretenses. It’s sleazy, and yet Maria, in full possession of the facts from another source, would respond exactly the same way.

• There are many paths in life, and just because you think one is what you’re supposed to do doesn’t mean it’s where you belong.

• If you reset the story a few years before or after, or just skimmed over the real-life context, the movie would end with the wedding. But there’s another half-hour to go, because solving a problem like Maria is not the only thing to do here.

• Rolf was a favorite character of mine as a child, in part because he shared a name with one of my favorite Muppets (spelled differently, though I didn’t know that). I was shocked watching the film again as an adult: in my memory of the story, Rolf helped the family escape, although he did not go with them. Funny how you can rewrite things in your head to make them easier on you.

• The Sound of Music never shows us Nazis committing atrocities. They‘re overbearing and act like bullies, but little else onscreen. The worst action they take is hunting a man and his family after he refuses to be in their navy, yet the film makes no effort to show us why he refuses. We’re expected to know that Nazis are unacceptable evil and a genuine menace; the story doesn’t have to prove it to us.

• Nothing more is done with it within the film, so we don’t know, but there’s a shot of the Von Trapp butler looking out the window as the family quietly pushes the car to the street for a night-time escape. He looks disapproving. Or maybe just concerned? But I’m left with a feeling that he may have contacted the Nazis to tip them off. Then again, it could be nothing more than a sour face. We don’t know. And perhaps that is a message itself: one of the most destructive elements shared by totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, whether Nazi, Fascist, Communist, or something else, is making you wonder who around you is an informant, eroding your trust in people you’ve known your entire life. You’re left with fear and suspicion, set off by something as insignificant as somebody glancing out a window. So, indirectly, we do see another terrible thing done by the Nazis.

Reflections: Fantasia (1940)

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photo of the cover for the "Best of Mickey" blu-ray including Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, and Celebrating Mickey (Disney Movie Club exclusive)

When I was a child, I only wanted to watch Fantasia for one reason: to see the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment, which I enjoyed every time. Yes, the dancing crocodiles and hippos were fun, and the mountain monster near the end was impressive, if you could stay awake that long. But the rest of the movie was boring.

I’m afraid I’m not doing too much better as an adult: I have trouble enjoying the abstract segments because I‘m impatient to get to the “good parts” that have narrative structure. Alas, I too am a Philistine.

• The host introduces the first section (Toccata and Fugue in D Minor) by essentially saying, “First you’ll see this, and then you’ll see that,” and I want to tell him, “Get on with it! You don’t have to tell us what we’ll see, just show it and let us judge for ourselves!” Then I realize, when Fantasia first appeared he DID need to explain what audiences were going to see. It was too new and different.

Now when he explains the plot of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” right before we see it—that IS ridiculous.

• I doubt there are many films with a soundtrack so consistently first-rate. Even movies that use a lot of classical pieces will usually have incidental background music that’s not particularly noteworthy or memorable. But it’s the nature of Fantasia that virtually every second of non-verbal sound is of the highest quality. 

And yet for some reason when I think about Fantasia, the first music that springs to my mind is the March to the Scaffold from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique . . . which is nowhere in the film.

• The host said The Nutcracker was seldom seen, but we would probably recognize the music. Was he making a joke or is it only since his time that The Nutcracker has become ubiquitous across the U.S. every December?

• We see:
– sultry fish doing veil dances
– dancing mushrooms that are just adorable if you manage to not think of them as racial stereotypes
– cute seasonal pixies that make leaves and snowflakes dance perfectly to Tchaikovsky

• Despite all the dramatic shots of volcanoes and dinosaurs, the “Rite of Spring” segment really drags.

• Who thought of pegasoi as waterfowl?

• I really have to think these two female centaurs have something going on.

two female centaurs from the wine-pressing scene of Fantasia's Pastoral Symphony sequence; one is giving the other a rather significant look
two female centaurs from Fantasia dancing together
two female centaurs from Fantasia dancing together on their way offscreen

• Right, there are ostrich ballerinas too. (A brilliant choice.)

And not just ONE hippo ballerina. Because that wouldn’t be enough.

• The early part of “Night on Bald Mountain” uses a creepy-marvelous effect for the rising ghosts, like curled paper wisping above the background.

• The early part of “Ave Maria” shows the beauty of the multiplane camera, as we look through the trees at the procession. 

• The movie as a whole just might possibly perhaps be a smidge too long. Just maybe.

Reflections: The Music Man (1962 film)

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cover of the blu-ray for the 1962 film The Music Man

I’ve seen this joyfully satirical movie multiple times and can’t get tired of it.

Shirley Jones and Robert Preston are too far apart in age, but they’re both absolutely perfect for their roles otherwise.

And here’s another old movie telling audiences that being smart, educated, and assertive does not make a woman undesirable (though it might make people criticize her). I’ll just try to overlook the movie’s wrong-headed assumption that a woman is more attractive when she takes off her glasses.

Like many older movies, The Music Man is void of diversity in the cast. Unlike many older movies, it takes place in a setting where the lack of diversity is plausible: an all-white small town in northern Iowa in the early 1900s is not so far-fetched. Still, there’s one tiny reference to Tommy (what passes for a bad boy in River City) belonging to those “Nithlanians” living south of town, and this gives a hint that people who are “other” might be excluded from the town proper and exist on the margins. And yet whatever Tommy’s exact background, it’s still European.

The staging of the scene where Tommy puts a firecracker behind Eulalie Shinn seriously needed more work. He walks right up on the floor in front of the entire room, in plain view. Nobody could have missed him planting this little explosive, yet they act surprised and ask who did it. These people aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they’re not that stupid. So maybe we’re supposed to assume 99.5% of the town wanted to see this woman blown up (even a little), so they pretended not to notice.

I forever love watching the four school-board members go from being embittered enemies to singing together as a quartet. The start is as simple as “Ice cream!” and it just keeps rolling.

Does the song “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little” dip into negative stereotypes of women? Well, yes. But the movie is crystal clear that it has in mind a particular sort of woman, and not women in general. Standing in contrast there is obviously Marian; there is also Marian’s mother; there are a score of young women who care far more about dancing than gossiping; there are frequent background women whose faces and movements suggest they are not particularly thrilled with Eulalie Shinn and her close group of elites and may even find them ridiculous. Also the song is a counterpoint to the earlier men’s talk in the “Rock Island Line” sequence, where instead of chickens they talk like a train (“Whattya talk, Whattya talk, Whattya talk?”), and these men are gossiping every bit as much as Eulalie’s band.

Although, yes, interspersing “Pick-a-Little” with footage of actual chickens—twice—was a trifle unnecessary.

Why on earth do they place Amaryllis in the stable to overhear “The Sadder But Wiser Girl”? Out of all the songs in the movie, why this one? Hill is cheering for “lost virtue” and Hester winning another A, and there’s the little girl standing on the edge of the screen by the horses, grinning and listening to every word. Though I suppose in her context she’s already been brow-beaten enough with messages on decent behavior that the lyrics can be a corrective instead of completely warping her views on relations between men and women.

“Marian the Librarian” is my favorite song from The Music Man, but the scene itself isn’t perfect. People really ought to take no for an answer; you shouldn’t turn a library into a dance pit; and you don’t have to toss away your glasses to be fun and lovely.

I wish there’d been a scene showing Prof. Hill and Winthrop spending time together before the Wells Fargo song. You can fill in the blanks, but it would be nice to provide Marian with more on-screen reason to give Hill the credit for Winthrop’s new openness.

No song should ever be called “Shipoopi.” More importantly, no woman should ever be called that. I know that words (and parts of words) change connotations over the years, but was there really a time when calling a woman your “Shipoopi” could actually sound like a positive?

The anvil salesman might’ve had better luck making a lasting change in people’s minds if he hadn’t started out telling them how stupid they were. People have an incentive to go back to their old belief if doing so “proves” they really weren’t stupid.

Reflections: West Side Story (1961 film)

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photo of the cover for the 50th Anniversary edition blu-ray of the 1961 film West Side Story

• Urban grime plus vibrant primary colors and luscious pastels.

• I got reeeeally tired of the overture for West Side Story. (I didn’t mind the Oklahoma overture, which is just as long. Maybe the Oklahoma music is just more fun?) The background of hatch marks over shifting colors didn’t help; every time there was a dramatic color change I expected the movie to begin, but then nothing happened. I also wanted the marks to gradually accumulate, becoming more and more recognizable as the city skyline, but they don’t quite do that.

• The dances in West Side Story are never a suspension of the plot, they build it: the dance numbers are combat, fueling the tension, or they’re romance, slowing to let us bathe inside a feeling.

• I’m a fan of Natalie Wood, but it’s uncomfortable watching her pretend to be Puerto Rican. Some other Puerto Rican parts were played by non-Latinx whites too. It’s disheartening. Surely there were Latinx dancers around to fill more of these roles, and the idea of darkening people’s skin in order to fake (or emphasize) race is just cringeworthy, even when it’s not meant to make fun of anyone. That said, I don’t think the filmmakers were deliberately excluding anyone, the way so many other Hollywood productions did. I think they were focused on hiring great dancers, but had the mindset that painting white people brown was acceptable so there was no need to hunt harder to find Latinx dancers for all the roles. And either way the characters are shown as human beings with hopes and fears equal to those of the white characters.

And we actually get more of the emotional lives and everyday existence of the Puerto Rican characters—through the lens of Maria and Anita. Tony has a work life, but the Jets are always being Jets, and we know nothing of what their girlfriends do apart from them.

• The immigrant experience in West Side Story means dreams of opportunity confronted by closed doors, limited chances, frustration, and racist cops who hate all teens and all immigrants but hate the non-white ones the most.

• There’s prejudice everywhere in the film. When the police lieutenant breaks up the war council in the middle of the movie, he sends away the Sharks—and quickly proves he despises the Jets too, but thinks they’re on the same “side” in the larger picture. He tosses ethnic slurs and insults at the Jets, making clear he considers himself, but not them, properly American. Despite that, to him Puerto Ricans are a much greater threat, an invading menace that will take over everything if they’re not stopped. In his mind Poles and Italians and presumably other non-Anglo whites are beneath him but are still better than Puerto Ricans.

This police lieutenant’s family name is Schrank; he’s often accompanied by Officer Krupke. One might speculate that the two of them faced prejudice themselves during World War II by people accusing them of being German.

Tony’s given name is Anton. He goes by Tony . . . to assimilate.

The film has a prominent character who appears to be transgender. We don’t know for certain how this person would identify in today’s terms, but it certainly looks like what’s going on runs deeper than “I’m gonna act like a guy so I can hang out with the Jets.” This character is constantly reminded that “she” must play by the rules for females (like leaving when it’s time for “war talk”); dismissed with remarks like “Go put on a skirt!”; and told loudly, “You’re a girl!” None of this is necessary to the plot; this person’s place in the story could have easily, and more obviously, been filled by a comfortably male boy simply too young to be involved with gang business. Someone made a choice to show us identity difference.

• Early on, Anita is suspicious of Tony and doesn’t trust him—but gives him a chance for Maria’s sake. After the deaths, when she delivers the famous “A boy like that” lyrics, she sings to Maria, “Stick to your own kind!” (which is Anita’s own kind too). Even then, she is willing—with visible bitterness—to help Maria and Tony. But the near-rape in Doc’s store is too much. Even before she says it out loud, you know it: these white boys have proven everyone right about how bad they are. Their actions exemplify what Bernardo, her parents, and countless other people in her world have been telling her for years: these whites can’t be trusted, they’re brutes, they hate and despise anyone who looks like her, they will abuse her if given a shred of a chance. Now that’s all she’s going to see when she looks at them and people like them.

It hardly matters whether they meant to simply mime a rape or actually commit the act, because in that moment she could not know where they would stop. The effect on her is terrorism.

It’s a shocking scene, even from the side of the Jets. We’ve known from the first finger-snaps that these guys are tough, dangerous punks ready to fight, fully committed to intimidating people. But as a viewer I wouldn’t have believed they would violently handle Anita as they do. Verbal assault, yes, but not this. Yet at this point in the film they’ve been pushed past a limit. And she isn’t just a random Puerto Rican woman; she was Bernardo’s love, and they can’t forget what Bernardo did. Because of events they helped ignite, the Jets have turned into people who would do this.

One of the grand themes of the story is escalation.

• West Side Story is a tragedy not just of two lovers, but of two whole groups so concerned over so little, in a constant passionate struggle to cling to things that mean nothing to the rest of the world.

“Fighting over a little piece of street is so important?” asks Doc.
“To US it is!” is the answer.

“It’s all that I have,
Right or wrong,” says a song.

Reflections: Oklahoma (1955)

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cover of the blu-ray for the 1955 film Oklahoma
Not quite as high as a elephant’s eye, here.

My first exposure to the musical Oklahoma was to the soundtrack, which I’m sure is hardly unusual. The songs “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin” and “O-o-o-o-o-klahoma” were planted into my consciousness sometime before I was aware of it, just part of the atmosphere of growing up in U.S. culture (I was born in the mid-1970s; the songs are surely less omnipresent now).

I was in college (mid-1990s) before I became acquainted with any more of Oklahoma. A good friend of mine played the movie soundtrack on a long car trip, and I enjoyed most of it. I was kind of horrified, though, at “Pore Jud Is Daid.” Without knowing the storyline, I could only suppose they were singing at a funeral for someone who had died, and it just seemed monstrous to mock the deceased this way.

Of course, when I finally watched the movie (on VHS tape) I discovered Jud was not dead, he was just being sung to by his mortal enemy/rival, and was even one of the two voices singing the lyrics. It’s still pretty macabre, though, in context, and quite vicious in its humor.

Rewatching the movie on Blu-ray I was struck by how relentless the songs are in the first half of the film. They just keep hitting one after another, with barely any breathing room between, and each one could easily be a favorite because they’re all so well written and performed. (Well, okay, the five-minute instrumental overture might not be a favorite, but it’s still an enjoyable piece if you know the songs and aren’t impatient for the film to begin.)

The movie is two and a half hours long, and I kind of planned on watching until the intermission and saving the rest till the next night, but I couldn’t. I had to get to the end, despite having watched the film three times over the years. I knew what was coming, but I needed to see it to be at ease the rest of the night.

There are two main reservations I have about the movie. Both are problems you see in many musicals from the 1950s and 60s.

First, the seemingly endless, wordless dance sequence: fifteen minutes where the story screeches to a halt for a scene designed primarily to showcase the dancing itself. This time around, I actually found the first two or three minutes captivating, seeing how graceful and elegant the ballerina’s movements were, but again, it lasts fifteen minutes, not three. Oklahoma makes some effort to make this dance portion relevant—grudgingly I can admit that it shows the extent of Laurey’s feelings about Jud, and there is a need for that. But the sequence goes on and on and on. . . .

Second, true to its time, there is no inclusivity. Positive portrayal of divergence in sexual orientation or gender identity was unimaginable then; showing someone who had a disability was possible but doesn’t happen here; including a few ordinary people of other races should have been possible but again doesn’t happen. (Historically, by the way, there were African American and Latino cowboys.) The cast is entirely and utterly white. The most you can say about such musicals is that by not including anyone else, they avoid spreading demeaning stereotypes.

In Oklahoma there is a wrinkle: the character who calls himself Ali Hakim (pronounced “hack-um”). He’s a traveling salesman peddling things out of his horse-drawn cart who says he’s from Persia. This could be seen as yet another time some white guy plays somebody of non-European ancestry, denying a role to someone from that ancestry, made worse by the film-maker not even bothering to find a name that’s Persian . . . but this character is a con man. I’m pretty sure the audience is not supposed to believe for a second that he’s actually Persian, even if the other characters never mention any doubts. That means we’re expected to find this practice low and disreputable, the act of a huckster lying to make himself “exotic” and more memorable to his unsophisticated customers.

And there’s plenty of unsophistication around. The song “Kansas City” in particular takes delight in poking fun at the characters singing it. It has this marvelous aspect of suggesting that the awe expressed over the existence of 7-story buildings and “gas buggies goin by theirselves” is naive and provincial not just to the modern audience but also to people of the story’s time period who lived in cities. Poor Will is convinced progress has gone as far as it can go. Obviously we know better, but I’m pretty sure the folks he saw in Kansas City on his trip knew better too, even then.

There are three main female characters in the story: Laurey, Aunt Ella/Eller, and Annie. (There’s a fourth named woman, a man-stealer with a horrendous laugh, but she only has a few scenes.) 

Ado Annie is not exactly a positive portrayal of womanhood. You could look at her and see a flighty airhead easily swayed by sweet words and maybe too free with her affections. You could also look at her and see a woman unashamed of her own sexuality and desire, seeing nothing wrong with enjoying kisses (or more) as opportunities come her way. But it would be quite a stretch to make her a champion of female sexual liberation, because that kind of requires more intelligence in choosing your partners than she’s shown as having. “I will love who I want to, no matter what people think!” is not the same as “I’ll kiss anybody who asks prettily!”

The movie isn’t explicit about how far Annie goes with these multiple men she’s apparently diverted by. Is it only kissing she’s “guilty” of? Within her context, kissing around would be blameworthy, but perhaps not scandalous enough to make her socially unacceptable. And she still moves in polite circles and nobody blinks at her donating a food basket for the auction. Will, who wants to marry her, doesn’t act like he believes she’s sleeping around. It’s more like he’s mad at her for flirting when they’re just short of engaged.

And yet, maybe it’s significant that she isn’t inside the house with 98% of the other young women on their way to the social. And then there are rumors about her losing her bloomers. And she “cain’t say no.” It seems like the story wants to have things two ways at once, just as much as the character does.

Next, Aunt Eller. She’s resilient, determined, full of both good sense and endurance, and ready to have plenty of fun on the proper occasions. She might say “two women can’t run a farm by themselves,” but according to what we know about her life in the film, two women can make sure their farm gets run, without selling it or letting a man take over. If she and Laurey need a hired man to keep it going, well, they’re still the ones in charge and plainly doing well. (“It’s a good year for corn and there’s money in the bank,” Aunt Eller notes.)

Then Laurey, the female lead. When we first see her, her verbal sparring with Curly is delightful. It’s just fun to listen to them go back and forth. But . . . they go too far. It’s debatable whose teasing is to blame, but Laurey is the one who actually takes a step she can’t easily undo and has to regret it. But it’s not because she’s foolish or ditzy or trying to use some “feminine” trick calculated to make her man jealous; it looks for all the world like she’s just mad, and human, and she doesn’t need any time at all to realize the mistake. 

Later, in one of those great songs, Laurey proudly declares that she won’t weep and wail for a man who drops her; then she’s reminded the man she loves is right that moment outside with someone else, and she starts to cry . . . but doesn’t, and reasserts that she won’t. Later still, in a carriage with someone who tries to grab and kiss her against her will, she shoves him away and takes action—perhaps not the best action, since the horses go into a frenzied gallop that might leave the carriage, and her, smashed against a tree; but as soon as she has a chance she literally takes the reins herself and is then in control.

Laurey isn’t perfect or helpless either one. There are things to admire about her and things to shake your head over. She is, in that way, well-rounded and believable. She feels human.

I would like to caution her, though, that if the large, angry man you’re afraid of is heading your direction, the right response is not to walk into the shadows away from the crowd.

Finally, does Oklahoma pass the Bechdel test? I suppose it depends on how strictly you apply it. Near the end Laurey and Aunt Eller have a conversation which is occasioned by concern over a man’s fate, but what’s said is not specifically about men—it’s about bearing up and keeping on, and how life brings good and bad and you’ve got to face both.

Bottom line: Oklahoma has omissions characteristic of its time, it has a female character who’s arguably worrisome, and it includes a grueling ballet sequence, but otherwise it shines and makes me happy.