Oklahoma! (1955)

RKO/20th Century-Fox, 1955. Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Starring Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, Charlotte Greenwood, and Rod Steiger. Music score written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

Although most loyal fans of this irresistible 1955 musical would enthusiastically shout out each letter to the title O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A as they sing along to the upbeat score by Rodgers and Hammerstein, the words we are compelled to cheer while watching this film could only be G-O-R-D-O-N M-A-C-R-A-E! In this tale of the farmer and the cowman, and of the looming ratification of Oklahoma’s statehood, no one could fill the big screen or the vista of the golden prairie like the incomparable Gordon MacRae. The depth of his voice carries the audience from scene to scene, and during the sequences that do not feature MacRae, we often found ourselves eagerly awaiting his reappearance. Now, this is not to say that the Hollywood version of the musical does not provide any worthy match for its playful cowboy. On the whole, it offers a well-rounded cast, including the lovely and charming Shirley Jones (who here far outshines her most famous role as Shirley Partridge of “The Partridge Family”), Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, and Charlotte Greenwood. The film entertains throughout with sharp dancing, witty solos, and ensemble numbers to match the previous year's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

There is another side to Oklahoma!, however, that makes the movie stand out from more typical musicals and from the typical accusation that audiences sometimes rashly hurl at the genre: that musicals are just superficial dreamworlds arranged for the showcasing of stars’ smiles and musical prowess. Jud Fry, Aunt Eller’s farmhand (who is deftly played by Rod Steiger), throws a dark edge on the sunshine of Oklahoma!. In fact, the awkward transition between songs and violence that Fry’s character creates calls attention to the dynamics of collective social judgment and other issues not often touched on in such films. One unfortunate effect of this effort for substance, however, is realized in a dream sequence halfway through the picture. Unlike the powerful dramatic exchanges between Jud and Curly or Jud and Miss Laurey, this episode reveals the director’s indulgence in the melodrama of modern ballet, pseudo-Freudian dream suggestivity, and strange double-casting of characters. First of all, why can’t Shirley Jones and the rest of the cast play their own characters in this dream within a musical dreamworld? And second, why cram the serious artistic commentary of the film down the audience’s throats with a sequence like this? It is just not necessary in our opinions. The subtle performance by Steiger is much creepier and so much more effective.

Whether you are looking for a light sing-along or a provoking take on the molding of a state’s history and identity, Oklahoma! will not disappoint – so long as you strategically break for refreshments during the ballet!

Erin&Anton.

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Warner Bros./Vitaphone, 1927. Directed by Alan Crosland. Starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, and Eugenie Besserer.

Usually hailed as the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer is actually a part-talkie, that is, a silent movie that features some spoken scenes and a few songs. Nevertheless, it's a landmark in film history and definitely deserves a place of honor along with the best musicals ever made. Not that its plot is very complex, though: it tells the story of Jakie Rabinowitz, the son of a Jewish cantor who wants to educate him to take over that role in the neighborhood synagogue when he grows into adulthood. But Jakie's heart doesn't lie in religious music, so he decides to become a jazz singer taking up the artistic name of Jack Robin, something of which his father strongly disapproves.

The story is based on Samson Raphaelson's play The Day of Atonement, but it bears a clear resemblance to the real life of the great Al Jolson, the movie's main star. However, it seems that Jolson wasn't the first choice to play the lead in this film; that honor was originally reserved for another fine vaudevillian, George Jessel, who rejected the part. We have no doubt, though, that Jolson was tailor-made for this role. Billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," he'd been one of the most popular artists in the country for over fifteen years by the time shooting began for this movie. And, of course, his appearance fills the screen, and his exciting singing style and his larger-than-life stage personality make the film a success. This is clearly a movie for Jolson and about Jolson, and so it would be even if the events in the plot didn't resemble his real life story. In fact, the songs featured here—perennials such as "My Mammy," "Blue Skies," and "Toot, Toot, Tootsie"—don't serve the purpose of driving the storyline forth, but they are simply vehicles to showcase Jolson's matchless artistry. In our opinion, Al Jolson is a superb vocalist that is unjustly overlooked nowadays, and unfortunately, his movies fail to capture the sheer excitement that audiences must have felt at his bombastic personal appearances.

If you enjoy The Jazz Singer as much as we do, you won't want to miss other fine Jolson movies such as The Singing Fool (1928) and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933). In the mid-1940s, long after his retirement from stage and motion pictures, the biopic The Jolson Story (1946), featuring Larry Parks magnificently portraying Jolson, stirred a renewed interest in Jolson's music. This paved the way for a great comeback for Jolson, complete with re-recordings of his old hits and a good deal of radio work. We highly recommend that movie, along with its less interesting sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949), in the hope that new audiences will thereby discover and appreciate the magic of Jolson's art.

Anton&Erin.

Love Me Tonight (1932)

Paramount, 1932. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Starring Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charlie Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy, and C. Aubrey Smith. Music score written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

With his thick French accent, his ever-present smile, and his joie de vivre, Maurice Chevalier hit the bigtime in the United States in the early 1930s. By the time he made Love Me Tonight, he was the most successful entertainer in his native France, and his singing style and nonchalant approach to acting and to life in general went over extremely well with American audiences in a moment when musicals enjoyed great popularity.

In this free adaptation of the story of Sleeping Beauty, Chevalier stars as a tailor who shows up at the castle of a duke to claim payment for some suits that he has made. On his way to the castle, he meets Jeanette MacDonald, cast as a young widowed princess, and he falls in love with her. As usual in early musicals, the plot isn't the most interesting element of the movie, but the score by Rodgers and Hart is excellent and features such magnificent songs as the title track, "Mimi" (superbly sung by Chevalier), "Lover," and "I'm an Apache." The pairing of Chevalier and MacDonald sounds a little odd, since their singing styles are so utterly different, but it does work perfectly on screen, and the two actually made a couple more pictures together.

The great director Rouben Mamoulian explores all the technical possibilities of filmmaking at his disposal at the time, even making use of slow motion and fast-forwarding in some scenes, all of which makes the movie rather unusual. The opening scene, which precedes Chevalier's performance of the "Song of Paree," is really a gem. The camera follows all kinds of workers as they start their workday in Paris, and the noises that they make during their labor provide the music for this true symphony of urban life. Although it isn't extremely well known, Love Me Tonight is a very enjoyable musical, and in our opinion, Chevalier's performance adds to its overall charm.

Anton&Erin.

I'm Not There (2007)

Killer Films, 2007. Directed by Todd Haynes. Starring Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

It's true that Bob Dylan has gotten to be somewhat like a twentieth-century Don Quixote. Like Cervantes' famous knight-errant, he has taken on many different personalities and reinvented himself endlessly. In I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes tries to explore the many faces of the cultural icon from Minnesota, from his early years as a protest folksinger in the early '60s to his embracing of religion in the late '70s. Yet we think that, despite some fine performances by Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, and Richard Gere, Haynes fails because the movie comes across as a little too fragmentary, and sometimes very frustratingly so.

There are some interesting qualities to the screenplay, though: for instance, Haynes has six different actors embody six different sides of Dylan's life, and each one of these characters bears a different name, although they are all clearly Dylan. They all share enough common traits to ensure that the idea works, but at times, Haynes puts too much emphasis on aspects that don't seem to add much to the overall portrait of Dylan as a person and as an artist. We were constantly frustrated by the fact that once a story seemed to be starting to unfold, it was suddenly brought to an abrupt end, sometimes not to be picked up again at all.

One of the best elements of the film is clearly the soundtrack. The use of Dylan's songs in the film is satisfactory, even in the cases when it isn't his own version of the tune, and they are very well intertwined with the events in his life. However, we believe that not very much emphasis has been put on showing how the events in Dylan's life shaped his work; there are touches of that here and there, but Haynes seems to be more interested in American history than in Dylan's personal life as it influenced his songwriting. There's no doubt that those who are in the know about Dylan's biography will benefit from it as they watch this very different biopic, yet we sometimes felt that even being familiarized with the Dylan saga isn't a source of very much help.

All in all, I'm Not There paints a portrait of Bob Dylan's life as a sort of chaotic fragmentation, yet we're sure that there's way more to Dylan than just that. And perhaps, as in the case of Don Quixote, a single movie is incapable of containing all his greatness.

Anton&Erin.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

RKO, 1945. Directed by Robert Wise. Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, and Russell Wade.

It's sometimes hard to dissociate Boris Karloff from his career-making role as Frankenstein. But we believe that there is much more to Karloff as an actor than just his portrayal of the famous monster, and The Body Snatcher is one of the best examples of that. Not to be mistaken with the sci-fi classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), this movie is based on a tale by Robert Louis Stevenson and is one of the early works by the great director Robert Wise. It stars Karloff as a shady, cynical man who unearths dead bodies and sells them to a local doctor who uses them for his experiments.

The film is an excellent study of the relationship established between these two characters, and Karloff's performance is, in our opinion, one of the very best of his long career. Bela Lugosi, another actor who was almost always typecast in horror movies after his portrayal of Count Dracula, has a minor role in The Body Snatcher. He and Karloff apparently disliked each other, although they worked side by side in several films, and here they only have a couple of scenes together. Yet the main scene featuring the two of them is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the movie, a powerful, unforgettable clash of two Titans.

Director Robert Wise achieves a very fine contrast of light and shadow throughout the picture, and most of the creepiest scenes are handled with elegance and subtlety. Don't expect a low-quality B-movie like some others that Karloff and Lugosi made; this one is definitely the cream of the crop.

Anton&Erin.

Road to Morocco (1942)

Paramount, 1942. Directed by David Butler. Starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, and Anthony Quinn.

The series of Road to... movies, starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, won't go down in film history for their well-made plots. In fact, according to Crosby himself in his 1953 autobiography Call Me Lucky, many of the scenes were almost completely ad-libbed, and the plots --if such a word can actually be used to define them-- were very loosely strung together. Yet there's something very charming about watching Bing and Bob improvise: there's an almost timeless quality to seeing two old buddies having a good time, and that's precisely what makes these movies so enjoyable.

On this one --our favorite Road to... release along with Road to Rio (1947)-- Bing and Bob are stowaways on the North African coast who get a camel ride to Morocco, where they will get involved in many a funny situation as they cross paths with the Princess of Karameesh (Dorothy Lamour) and her suitor (Anthony Quinn). Along the way there will be some crooning on great songs like the title track and the big hit "Moonlight Becomes You," as well as plenty of joking and fooling around on the part of Der Bingle and Hope, whose interplay throughout the picture is absolutely hilarious.

Moreover, the film oozes with metafictional elements, constantly showing its awareness of the artifice involved in movie-making and exploiting the fact that the audience was well acquainted with Crosby and Hope's public personas. There's really no doubt that in this series of films, Bing and Bob are always playing themselves, no matter if their characters have different names, but that actually adds to the overall charm of the movie. In our opinion, with such magnificent artists as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, nonchalance works every time.

Anton&Erin.

The Happening (2008)

20th Century Fox, 2008. Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, and Ashlyn Sanchez.

Whoever told M. Night Shyamalan that it's acceptable to write a story without justifying the key elements of the plot? That's exactly what he does in The Happening: he proposes an interesting idea (people who, for some unknown reason, are drawn to killing themselves), but the idea never gets anywhere. The movie never explains the reasons why this happens, but rather prefers to leave it up to our own imagination: perhaps it's terrorism, or air pollution, or an evil coincidence, or maybe a combination of all of these. Nothing really happens in the movie, and everything seems to come out of the blue.

If you're hoping to see a well-developed film, with a beginning, a middle, and an ending, this is not the one for you. We went to see it at the theater and came out of the room with the feeling that we'd been swindled by the story. Its premises are interesting, but the possibilities that these premises offer are totally wasted away. That's not to say that Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel don't do a good job: they are good actors, but they are stuck in a story that is not only unbelievable, but that actually makes no attempt at verisimilitude. In our opinion, The Sixth Sense (1999) is undoubtedly Shyamalan's best work, and The Happening is a clear example that either he's run out of ideas or he's become a little lazy at screenplay writing.

Anton&Erin.

The Vagabond Lover (1929)

RKO, 1929. Directed by Marshall Neilan. Starring Rudy Vallee, Sally Blaine, Marie Dressler, and The Connecticut Yankees.

When Rudy Vallee starred in the film version of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1967), he had developed into a very accomplished actor. But The Vagabond Lover was made in 1929, at the peak of his success as a megaphone-toting crooner, and back then his Thespian abilities were still questionable. He sounds very stiff most of the time, as though he had been made to memorize his lines and repeat them like a parrot. There is no doubt that Vallee is upstaged by the fabulous Marie Dressler, and even some members of his band, The Connecticut Yankees, do a better acting job than he does.

It's also true that there isn't very much to the plot. TCM says that it's based on Vallee's own career, yet in case it really is, we believe it's very loosely so. But no matter, because the movie reaches its goal: showcasing Vallee's great singing at a time when he was one of the hottest singers in the country, only matched by other great names such as Bing Crosby, Gene Austin, and Russ Columbo.

Even if Vallee's stiffness makes it hard to really believe him as a romantic leading man, the music is excellent, and the movie is loaded with great songs like "A Little Kiss Each Morning" and "Nobody's Sweetheart Now." By the way, the title track, "The Vagabond Lover," written by Vallee himself, was one of his biggest hits, and that may be the reason why the picture is titled after it. Vallee doesn't perform the song during the movie, and it can only be heard over the opening credits. Overall, we think this film is only for diehard fans of Vallee's. We certainly love his music, and so we enjoyed it.

Anton&Erin.