MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954)

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954)

Famous Stanley Donen/Michael Kidd musical is both celebrated for its rough & tumble dance sequences & trashed for its hormonally charged plotline. (7 brothers kidnap 7 intendeds. The End.) But it gets away with its non-PC story since Howard Keel ’s Adam, who instigates the abduction, gets exiled to a wintry purgatory, while the dancing courtships (to say nothing of the stylized back lot sets) turn the sharp angles of sexual threat into curvy romance. Paradoxically, it's that unsavory subtext (the plot is one big happy rape fantasy) that makes the story so memorably different than the typically insipid musical comedy formula. A bit less successful is Gene de Paul’s so-so score & Johnny Mercer’s sub-par lyrics. (Well, sub-par for the great Johnny M.) Michael Kidd's masterful barn raising challenge dance is one of the all-time great set pieces in any musical, but even the lesser elements show how the consistent style Donen brings to the material makes things add up to more than just the sum of their parts. And dig those orangy "AnscoColor" tints and the color-coded shirts on the brothers. A pox on your tasteful modern earth-tones.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Saturday, May 31, 2008

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE