On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is a musical about ESP, reincarnation, telepathy and hypnosis. These subjects would be better suited for an episode of Star Trek. The film was produced and written by Alan Jay Lerner, part of his three picture deal with Paramount. Lerner's other film for Paramount was the disaster, Paint Your Wagon. On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is one of those one hit musicals, where only one song in the entire score had any kind of popularity, this was kind of a dubious way to spend millions of dollars, witness Hello Dolly.
Yves Montand was another in a line of European film stars who attempted off and on to start a Hollywood film career. After taking on Marilyn Monroe's diva like behavior in Let's Make Love he apparently was looking for a rematch with super diva Barbra Streisand.
No one would ever say that Barbra Streisand can't sing, but she really belts out every song. She also repeats her Fanny Brice neurotic Jewish bit from Funny Girl, just not a lot of subtlety in her. Full credit should be given to the cinematographer Harry Stradling, an old MGM cameraman, who knew how to take a woman like Streisand and photograph her very carefully.
A very expensive production, back when studios believed that musicals were going to save Hollywood. With the exception of Mary Poppins, most of these musicals were mediocre rehashes from Broadway like Song of Norway, Camelot, Sweet Charity and Man of La Mancha.
129 minutes, screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner.
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