(THE STORY OF/THE GREAT) GILBERT AND SULLIVAN (1953)

An expensive, celebratory flop on release (timed for Elizabeth II’s coronation season), this lightly sketched bio-pic on W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, the great Victorian comic opera team, was dismissed at the time as little more than a series of pretty stage postcards (but such pretty postcards!), interrupted by bits of personal drama.  Gilbert eccentrically difficult; Sullivan ambitious for serious fare/battling health issues.  And not helped in trying to cover their entire career.  Yet on a recent BFI restoration, Christopher Challis’s TechniColor lensing looks so dazzling, you may not care.  With Robert Morley, born to play Gilbert and Maurice Evans, unexpectedly fine as Sullivan, plus young Peter Finch as producer Richard D’Oyly Carte along with members of the then still-running 1953 company in generous stage excerpts.*  Think of it as addendum to Mike Leigh’s superb G&S bio-pic TOPSY TURVY/’99, one of the best films ever made on the creative process.  Here, Sidney Gilliat, normally partnered with Frank Launder, co-writes & directs, loading in witty visual transitions to make it feel more cinematic (good luck with that!), but generally unafraid to let the musical numbers speak for themselves.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, TOPSY TURVY/’99.  Watch it first.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/topsy-turvy-1999.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Ironically, Martyn Green, the great G&S ‘patter’ man of his era who plays George Grossmith, the originator of those roles, had just left D’Oyly Carte & Co. after nearly two decades having fallen out with current company owner Bridget D’Oyly Carte, the granddaughter of Richard D’Oyly Carte played here by Peter Finch.