Black & White World

The Music Man (1962)

What better way to take the bitter taste of the disturbing Lust, Caution out of my mouth than to watch a good ol’ classic American musical?  Great antidote.

The Music Man is one of my all-time favorite musicals.  In most cases, I would prefer to sit and listen to the original Broadway cast album than watch the movie, for a couple of reasons:  first, the cast album is just performed better.  The singing in the movie, by and large, is mediocre and poorly recorded, and the energy level of everyone (Preston excepted, perhaps) is really low.  The cast album practically springs to life in front of you.  The movie also has Buddy Hackett, another reason to avoid it.

Still, you can’t sit down and watch the original Broadway production (how I wish I could, though!), so when I get the itch to actually see the show, I must turn to the movie.  The songs are 95% excellent (5% = “Being In Love"), and Robert Preston is a powerhouse as Harold Hill.  I don’t like the quality of Shirley Jones’s voice quite as well as Barbara Cook, but she’s a great choice for Marian the Librarian, just the right mix of feisty and uptight.  Paul Ford and Hermione Gingold provide many giggles as Mayor and Eulalie Shinn.  What little Ronny Howard lacks in pitch control he more than makes up for with enthusiasm.

One thing the movie does that bugs the crap out of me, though, and it happens during two separate songs.  First, during “Rock Island,” the patter song at the beginning between the salesmen, there are two insert shots of the train wheels clicking along on the tracks, TWO insert shots mind you, as if to tell the audience, “See?  They are chanting just like a train!” Actually, there are THREE of these shots, one is of the whistle, I think.  Then during “Pick-a-Little Talk-a-Little” they do it again—even though there are some excellent overhead shots of the ladies of River City in their feathered hats clucking away, the producers can’t seem to resist tossing in a couple of shots of chickens—random shots of chickens, mind you, these are not chickens that happen to be walking along the street or anything, this is an insert out of nowhere—in order to let the audience know, “See, these women are like old hens clucking away, do you get it?” That shows an extraordinary lack of faith in your audience.  If you can’t figure out that “Rock Island” sounds like a train without a picture of it, I doubt there’s much hope for you.

1. Awww....why don’t you like Buddy Hackett?

   Posted by  on  07/05  at  11:27 PM

2. Buddy just annoys me in general.  He’s particularly miscast here—to paraphrase Cosmo Brown in Singin’ in the Rain:  “He can’t act, he can’t sing, and he can’t dance.  A triple threat.”

   I liked Buddy as the voice of the seagull in The Little Mermaid.  Other than that, eh.

   Posted by  on  07/07  at  02:48 PM
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