SOUTH PACIFIC (1958)

The main takeaway from this film adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s stage musical isn’t the songs, plot or perfs, but the infamous washes of color that tint the screen in various hues whenever a song threatens.  Joshua Logan, director on B’way & film, spent pages of his auto-bio apologizing.  Initially filmed both with and without the effect, Logan was mistakenly led to believe the lab could easily remove it in post-production.  (Latterly, the film has appeared in video formats with various levels of reduced filtering.)  Seen now, distanced from the WWII story, the ‘49 stage show and the late ‘50s film, it’s less distracting, an attempt to heighten stylization not so different than the use of music itself.  The sad truth is, this off-putting technique is just about the least of the film’s problems.  Those begin with Logan’s ineptitude as filmmaker.  A ‘40s & ‘50s legend on B’way, he never developed a feel for film.  Continuing with construction and peaking with what amounts to a second-choice/road company cast.  As a naively provincial, slightly racist nurse from Little Rock, stationed in an erotically charged Pacific Isle, Mitzi Gaynor is her usual perky self; voice & personality missing essential vocal undertones.  (Doris Day and Shirley MacLaine both unavailable?)  As the older French exile with a violent past, racially mixed-family and hopes of marriage, Rossano Brazzi is as Italian as Ezio Pinza was in the original stage production.  Pinza, a basso contante for the ages over three decades before ‘crossing’ to B’way, seemingly made an Italian-born Frenchman de rigeur as Emile de Becque.  Why not a French Frenchman?  Mais qui?  Charles Boyer fine, but a decade too old.  Yves Montand perfect (and with a voice), but too young.  Jean Marais?  As the young marine given a taste of island ecstacy before taking on a near suicidal mission, John Kerr looks the part, but sings with another’s voice.  And the love match basically has the virginal girl’s mother pimping her.  A bit icky.  (BTW, that’s Juanita Hall as Mom/Bloody Mary.  Dubbed in spite of doing the role on stage and singing again (stage & film) in R&H’s FLOWER DRUM SONG.  So many weird decisions.  The film still made a shitload of cash.  Hard to kill anything with that score.  On stage, they’re positively profligate with it, tossing out SOME ENCHANTED EVENING a mere ten minutes after the curtain rises.  Here, forty awkward minutes of beefcake tomfoolery and exposition on the beach before we get there.  To the film’s credit, a sequence of three character songs after the amateur Navy stage show (hometown blues for Gaynor & Kerr; anti-racist screed for Kerr, de Becque’s regretful solo ‘This Nearly Was Mine,’ painfully cut to half-length) show how this thing could have worked in spite of stiff megging.  (Check out an early office scene where Kerr meets his superiors to see just how bad Logan could be.  Or his use of matte paintings & cycloramas for long shots of forbidden island Bali Hai.  Sheesh!)  Logan’s next musical adaptation (FANNY/’61) dropped all the songs.  CAMELOT nearly bankrupted Warner Bros before PAINT YOUR WAGON/’69 tanked Stateside,  only to make pots of dough in Europe.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/06/fanny-1961.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/11/camelot-1967.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/paint-your-wagon-1969.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Best R&H film adaptations came first (OKLAHOMA!) and last (THE SOUND OF MUSIC).  Most in need of a redo: CAROUSEL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/oklahoma-1955.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-sound-of-music-1965.html