1961 - WEST SIDE STORY, in 70mm on the big screen, accept no substitutes.

West Side Story is part of a 70mm film series that is being screened at our revival theater The Heights located in Columbia Heights Minnesota prior to the release of The Odyssey.  The 70mm print was in very good shape and it played to a packed house.  The film definitely has it dated aspects but this is film making at a very high level.

The film was directed and produced by Robert Wise.  The choreographer Jerome Robbins received co-director credit but was fired during the production on the film.  Apparently somewhat of an arrogant perfectionist Robbins went a month over the allotted schedule.

 

This film was a high point in the career of Robert Wise an excellent director. He had one of the best production teams in Hollywood working on the film.  Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, Daniel L. Flapp was the cinematographer, Boris Levin was the production designer,  Saul Bass was a visual consultant responsible for the titles and most importantly Thomas Stanford did an outstanding job editing this film.  These craftsmen were working at the top of their creative abilities. 

 

The film was an important role for Natalie Wood.  She had started her career as a child actress and moved into adult roles.  She was a total professional on about any film she worked on.  It's well known that she didn't like her leading man Richard Beymer during production but you would never know it watching the film.  Rita Moreno had been stuck playing stereotypical Hispanic parts early in her career.  This was her big breakout but it didn't really do much for her career.  Russ Tamblyn was more an acrobat than dancer but he didn't seem to have any problem with the strenuous musical numbers in this film.

 

West Side Story was a big commercial and critical success and an award winning film during it's initial release.  Viewed 65 years later what really stands out are the impressive musical sequences.  Steven Spielberg for some reason remade West Side Story in 2021.  It was a critical success but a commercial failure.  I suppose I'll have to give his version a look.

The running time is 152 minutes 

1942 - YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, Cagney brillantly plays George M. Cohan

James Cagney usually remembered for gangster roles had been a "song and dance" man in his early days in show business.  He can be seen in the Busby Berkley film Footlight Parade performing with lead footed Ruby Keeler.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is the high point in the dancing part of his career.  This film is very loosely based story on the legendary Broadway performer George M. Cohan with Cohan's best songs integrated into the plot.

Made during World War II, Yankee Doodle Dandy is an extremely patriotic film with the emphasis on extremely.  As much as it spotlights Cagney's musical numbers there is an awful lot of cornball flag waving throughout the film which you kind of have to roll with.  Still Cagney dominates the film with his great performance and that kind of weird stiff dance style he had.

 

The film was directed by ace studio director Michael Curtiz. At his peak Curtiz could make a film in about every film genre be it swashbucklers, horror films, gangster films and in this case musicals.  Curtiz was aided by a superb production crew.  James Wong was a legendary cinematographer especially when working in black and white film.  The film was edited by George Amy.  Editors never get enough credit for pulling a film together.  But above all Michael Curtiz really moved this film along.  Each scene is very well paced.  It's nice to see a filmmaker who actually knows how to make a film.

 

The cast is from the familiar Warner Brother's stock company.  Walter Huston is Cagney's father, Joan Leslie (age 17) plays Cagney's wife, Rosemary DeCamp, George Tobias, S. Z. Sakall (aka Cuddles Sakall) and film director Richard Worfe as Cohen's business partner all show up.  This bunch was in a lot of Warner Brothers films in the 1930's and 40'a.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is certainly a high point in professional Hollywood film making.

The film was written by Robert Busckner and Edmund Joseph, the running time is 126 minutes.    

1955 - THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, a Michael Powell short ballet film

Kind of a weird one off in the career of Michael Powell.  Hein Heckroth who had been the art director on a lot of Powell and Pressburger films.  He approached Michael Powell to film a version of the famous Goethe story which had also been the basis for Disney's Mickey Mouse segment in Fantasia.

There isn't a lot of information available about this short film.  It's a ballet performed for the Frankfort Opera.  It was filmed for a German television network and apparently broadcast for television.  This version has an English narration.

 

Besides art director Hein Heckroth, Powell's go to cinemagrapher Christopher Callis was part of the production crew.  Future cinematographer and horror director Freddie Francis was the camera operator.  The editor Reginald Miles had worked with Powell and Pressburger on The Tales of Hoffman.  Still it doesn't appear that Powell had a lot of input the film, probably he was just a gun for hire.

 

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is not without interest, the sets and wide screen photography are bizarrely interesting.  The film was originally 30 minutes long but for some reason it was cut by 16 minutes so who knows what was lost.  Still it is a film directed by Michael Powell and it's not without interest.  Powell usually knew how to combine music and photography into an interesting viewing experience.

The narration was written by Dennis Arundell, the running time is 13 minutes. 

1978 - THE WIZ, the legendary bad musical

Writing about this film is like swatting a fly with a jackhammer.  Whatever is said about it today was covered in negative reviews of the film when it was released and they were very negative reviews.  A lot of the criticism of the film was focused on Diana Ross who was able to use her status as a superstar performer to get the role of Dorothy Gail the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz. In the original story Dorothy was a 6 year old girl. The role was rewritten for Ross to play a young insecure woman in her 20's.  Diana Ross hadn't seen 6 years old in a while much less 26 years old.  She was 33 when she played this role and she looked it.  However in spite of the disastrous participation of Diana Ross there was plenty of blame to go around.

For a film that wanted to channel the Black American experience there sure were an awful lot of white people behind the scenes calling the shots.  The director was Sidney Lumet who was known for filming tough dramas about New York City in particular.  Lumet's last film had been Network and there wasn't a dance sequence in that one.  Lumet had never directed a musical before and it showed.  Almost every number is shot in boring wide angle shots apparently more to show off the sets than the performers.

More white people behind the scenes.  Joel Schumacher another white guy wrote the screenplay.  Schumacher's claim to fame was as the director who took over for Tim Burton in the Batman series and ran that into the ground.  The cinematographer Oswald Morris was British.  The editor Dede Allen had cut Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, again not a lot of singing in those films.   The costume designer Tony Walton was another Brit.  Quincy Jones was the music supervisor on the film and he apparently was not very impressed with the songs which probably didn't help matters.

 

The Wiz was a film with an all black cast and it's failure commercially and critically gave Hollywood executives an excuse not to finance any films which featured black performers and stories a fairly lame excuse considering all the under performing films featuring casts of white people that really suck. 

The film's running time is an unending 133 minutes.       

1958 - APPALACHIAN SPRING, a record of choreographer Martha Graham's ballet.

Martha Graham, a choreographer and dancer and a woman who literally worked until she died was persuaded to allow one of her most famous ballets Appalachian Spring to be filmed.  Graham had apparently been very resistant to photographing her choreography but this performance turned out very well.

Graham had conceived the ballet in the 1940's and composer Aaron  Copland in collaboration with Graham wrote the music.  It was one of her most successful productions.  Graham was considered to old for the main lead the young bride at the time of the filming but she was insistent that she dance the part.

 

The story of the ballet is supposedly a tribute to the pioneering spirit of America as a young couple dance on their wedding day. Copland's music intermixed with variations  the old song Shaker song " Simple Gifts" into the ballet.

The minimalist set design was by another frequent Graham collaborator Isamu Noguchi.  Appalachian Spring was very well photographed in black and white.  It would probably be of interest to people interested in ballet and dance, this presentation this is very well done.

The running time is 30 minutes. 

1940 - DOWN ARGENTINA WAY, musical in blazing 40's technicolor

If the dreary Broadway Melody of 1940 was almost redeemed by the final dance number with Astaire and Powell, Daryl F. Zanuck's production completely exceeds expectations in the entertainment genre.  Down Argentina Way shows Fox Studios delivering a highly entertaining musical without lingering over any thing so mindless and boring as a plot.

And speaking of the plot here we go.  Don Ameche sporting a rather shaky South American accent is a horse breeder in Argentina.  On a trip to the United States he falls in love with a horse breeder played by Betty Grable.  It's the usual light weight love story that's frequently found in light weight musicals.  But the writers and producer Zanuck made sure to stay focused on the good looking leads and add enough entertaining subplots to keep things moving along at a rapid pace.

This was a big breakout film for blonde Betty Grable who would go on to be one of Fox's biggest stars surpassing Alice Faye who was the big blonde big deal prior to Grable's ascent.  Grable had actually been in the entertainment business for 11 years before finally hitting the big time.  She was one of those Hollywood stars who apparently everyone could get along with.

Don Ameche's career started in radio and he had a long one working into the early 1990's.  Also featured in Down Argentina Way were the Nicholas Brothers an amazing dancing specialty act who Fred Astaire commented were the best tap dancers he had ever seen.  Mention should also be made of Carmen Miranda who was probably the only actual Hispanic in the cast.  She's in a couple of specialty numbers which for once don't bring the film to a halt.

 Down Argentina Way moves at a quick pace,  Zanuck liked his films to move.  The film is literally bathed in early bright and stunning technicolor which is really something to see.  This film cries out for a 4K remaster as it is it's really a visual treat.  This 1940's musical is over 80 years old and is still highly entertaining.

The film was written by Karl Tunberg and Darrell Ware and probably with some input from Daryl F. Zanuck, the running time is 89 minutes  

1940 - BROADWAY MELODY OF 1940, yet another innocous MGM musical

The biggest studio in 1940's Hollywood MGM was also the biggest at putting out really bland films only made watchable by the talented performers and technicians who worked on them.  Broadway Melody of 1940 has some amazing dancing by two of the best hoofers in Hollywood, Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire.  It also has one of the most tedious plots to sit through.  This is the usual hooey of a story of mistaken identities with at times gratingly low humor.

To be really brief, Astaire and his partner played by future Senator George Murphy end up getting involved with a Broadway star as she auditions for a new stage partner.  There's lots of tiresome confusion as she mixes up the identities of Astaire and his partner which just seems unending.  Throw in Frank Morgan, (the Wizard of Oz) for some really dumb humor about his being pursued by a beautiful woman for some reason.  Because the plot is so paper thin there are also specialty acts throughout the film.  A female juggler show up and, a guy on a unicycle bikes around for some reason.  All this just adds to the running time of the film and drags things out until the final musical number.  But frankly without these stupid specialty acts this film probably would have run less than an hour.  

 

However everything leads up to the splashy Begin the Beguine production number towards the end of the film.  Here is where MGM's production technicians really excel.  The film is expertly staged and photographed in dazzling black and white.  Most impressive in this number is the dancing of Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire at the top of their abilities.  Just watching them execute this number you can't help but think about the amount of time they rehearsed it to get it just perfect.

 

In fact the Begin the Beguine number has been excerpted a few times particularity in the MGM clip compendium That's Entertainment, it's really about the only reason to sit through this film.  You can see them perform this number on YouTube which will save you the time of sitting through this film.

This film was written by Leon Gordon and George Oppenheimer, the running time is 102 minutes.  

1979 - ELVIS, made for TV film on the life of Elvis Presley is really long

Probably not a lot of people know that John Carpenter's followup to his slasher film Halloween was this made for television film on the life of Elvis Presley.  Carpenter might have seemed like an odd choice for a film like this but he was a musician and had grown up in the South.  This was also Carpenter's first collaboration with Kurt Russell who was transitioning out of those Disney kid movies and into more mature film roles.

The cast for this film is interesting. Shelly Winters in all her hammy glory has the role Elvis's mother Gladys.  Bing Russell a character actor mostly in westerns and the father of Kurt plays the father.  Season Hubley is Priscilla Presley.  Hubley and Russell must have clicked because in real life they got married, well for a while anyway.  Also another favorite character actor Pat Hingle shows up as the legendary Col. Tom Parker.

 

This version of Presley's life was one of the most popular films on network TV.  It beat out showings of Gone With The Wind and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on the other networks much to the surprise of everyone.  As a film this was a very respectful tribute to Elvis and left out the more troubling aspects of his life, i.e. his drug use.  The first half of the film is best with Carpenter doing a good job moving the story along.  However Carpenter seemed to lose interest in the second half of the movie.  He appears to be going through the motions to get to the end of the story Elvis's comeback in Las Vegas.  At the time Elvis was called the ultimate Vegas lounge act by the critics.  Even for John Carpenter who worked with tight budgets early in his career, this film must have been an intense production.  He had 30 days to shot what was essentially a three hour film a major challenge for any filmmaker

 

This was an important film for Kurt Russell it gave cred as a film star.  He moved into more adult roles and working with Carpenter again in films like Escape From New York and The Thing toughened him up in the eyes of movie going public.  Elvis isn't really a great film but it does have some decent scenes and Kurt Russell certainly doesn't embarrass himself in the title role.

The film was written by the producer Anthony Lawrence, the running time is a mind bending 168 minutes.

1992 - THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, finally a version of A Christmas Carol I can get through

If you are looking for the definition of overexposed look no further then Dicken's A Christmas Carol.  I'm sure when Dickens wrote it he didn't expect it would probably be the story he would be remembered for.  A Christmas Carol is 182 years old and still going strong with many variations and that's putting it mildly.

 There is the stage version performed in my hometown at the Guthrie Theater which they role out every year a guaranteed fund raiser.  The actor Patrick Stewart does a one man version.  A musical version was performed on Broadway from 1994-2003. An LBGTQ version Scrooge and Marley apparently exists.  Mickey Mouse got into the act with Mickey's Christmas Carol.  Probably the best film adaptation is 1951's Scrooge with Alistair Sim which played up the horror elements of the story.  Believe me the list is endless.  I'm not even going to get into the other TV and film versions of this story although I will single out the Will Farrell version Spirited as particularly loathsome. 

 

Well let's get to The Muppet Christmas Carol which was filmed after the death of Jim Henson by his son Brian.  This is a surprisingly well thought out version which is mercifully under 90 minutes. Henson had the advantage of a supporting staff of technicians and performers who had been working together for quite a while.  The cast of these felt puppets assumed the various character roles.  Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit, Gonzo is Charles Dickens, the Marley's are played by Statler and Waldorf to name a few.  Paycheck actor Michael Caine takes on the role of Scrooge and if he's not exactly trying hard in the role at least he's British or in his case a Cockney to be precise.

The OK songs are by Paul Williams, the photography, sets and special effects are very well done and the idea of having these sock puppets play Dickens's characters really takes the sting out of a story that has been adapted more than it ever should have been.  

This version of A Christmas Carol was written by Jerry Juhl and old hand at writing material for the Muppets. The running time is 86 minutes. 

1937 - ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL aka 100 MEN AND A GIRL

Deanna Durbin one of the big three child stars of the 30's and 40's the other two being Shirley Temple and Judy Garland, was a popular star of family friendly films.  She frequently played a little miss fix it up as she went about righting wrongs and solving problems for clueless adults.  One Hundred Men And A Girl was one of her most popular features. 

Durbin plays the daughter of out of work trombone player father Adolph Menjou.  Durbin also befriends famous conductor Leopold Stokowski playing himself.  She schemes to get her father and his out of work musician friends work.  After the musicians form an ad hoc symphony orchestra Durbin tricks Stokowki into conducting them.  Not much plot in this movie.  Stokowski was a fairly well known symphony conductor and is best remembered for appearing in Disney's Fantasia.  For a musician who wasn't a trained actor he actually gives a decent performance. 

 

Anyway Durbin races around town good deed doing and more importantly singing, singing singing.  Durbin was a lyrical soprano and her films have her warbling lots of audience friendly musical selections.  In this film she sings Mozart's "Alleluia", "A Heart That's Free", "It's Raining Sunbeams", and for good measure,  "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." 

 

This film was made during the Depression and if it has one theme to it, it's don't give up hope.  When things are the darkest hope is personified by the perennially chipper Deanna.  This is the kind of take the family to a movie that won't remotely offend anyone.

This fluff of a film was written amazingly by three writers Charles Kenyon, Bruce Manning, and James Mulhauser.  The running time is a painless 85 minutes.    

1937 - A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, odd Fred Astaire musical

Filmed during Fred Astaire's run of musicals at RKO during the 1930's,  A Damsel in Distress is one oddball film.  Usually in these RKO musicals Fred Astaire was teamed with Ginger Rogers.  Unfortunately the box office performance of the Astaire/Rogers series was starting to diminish.  The studio got it into their head that Astaire needed to be separated from Ginger Rogers and picked as his romantic lead Joan Fontaine a performer who couldn't sing or dance which was kind of a problem for a musical.

The story has Astaire as a musical comedy star performing in London where he falls in love with snooty Lady Alyce Marshmorton played by Fontaine who is very pretty but struggles to act.  Frankly the story in this film is really a big nothing even for a film like this.

  

What this film has going for it are some excellent musical numbers.  Astaire's dancing partners are none other than George Burns and his wife/partner Gracie Allen a couple of performers who started out in vaudeville and whose careers ran all the way to the dawn of television.  They were seasoned comedians who were actually fairly credible dancers while performing with Astaire.

 

The songs were by George and Ira Gershwin, the director was George Stevens.  The story may be weak but this is a top grade production with excellent numbers particularity a dance with Astaire, Burns and Allen using whisk brooms of all things and an amazing sequence in a fun house set.

The film was written by, P.G. Wodehouse, Ernest Pagano and S.K. Laauren, the running time is 98 minutes.

1999 - FANTASIA 2000 - sort of a follow up to FANTASIA

Fantasia 2000 was made due to the involvement of Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt and a major shareholder in the company.  To say that the other Disney executives were not enthused about this project would apparently be an understatement.  Still Roy Disney was a big deal at the Disney company so this film which was basically an update of Fantasia went forward.

Once again the Disney company marshaled their creative and technical staff.  The format was to be the same, musical segments were based on compositions from classical composers such as Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, Elgar and Stravinsky.

 

The plan this time was to hire a series of performers to introduce each segment to make the film seem more "hip."  Steve Martin opens the film with a rather tiresome comic bit.  Quincy Jones shows up in his introduction for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  Magicians Penn & Tellar do an already dated magic trick.  "Darth Vader" himself James Earl Jones gets a bit and finally Bette Midler introduces some segment which I can't recall.  Sticking all these actors into this film smacked a little like desperation.

The animation was at a very high standard.  When the Disney Corporation put their minds to it, nobody could produce more stunning traditional animation and in his case aided by computer enhancement, than this talented group.

 

This film like the previous Fantasia also did not do especially well with the general public.  The film lost money.  The critical reviews were all over the place and it was clear this wasn't going to be the animation masterpiece Roy Disney had hoped for.  The problem with Fantasia 2000 was that it was for the most part a very boring film.   No amount of elaborate and stunning animation was going to help this film.  Nice try but no cigar as they say.

The film's running time is 76 minutes.

1940 - FANTASIA, Disney's classic animated concert film.

Fantasia was two years in the making. Walt Disney along with conductor Leopold Stokowski decided to aim very high with an animated film that consisted of musical segments created by the Disney organization's talented artists and craftsmen.  The musical segments were to be drawn from  a selection of classical music composers.  At this point the Disney company was at the peak of it's creative powers.  Fantasia was an expensive production with perfection set as the goal.  It was a big ambitious risk for Walt Disney.  

Besides pushing animation to a high level of artistic creativity, Walt Disney also developed an early stereophonic sound system to go with the film which further drove costs  up.  A lot of money was spent on a sound system that had to be installed inside theaters showing this film.  Again, Disney wanted nothing less than perfection for the finished soundtrack in the animated segments.  The excellent live action color photography of Fantasia was photographed by one of Hollywood's top cameramen, James Wong Howe who is surprisingly not credited for his contribution to the film.

The end result was a unique film which featured visual interpretations from composers, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Mussorgsky and Schubert.  If not all of the musical segments come off (the Beethoven Mount Olympus segment is kind of silly), they are all  spectacular with the animation and special visual effects perfectly blended together.  

 

The plan for the release of the film was to add and replace musical segments every few years which would keep the film in circulation.  Unfortunately the film was so expensive that the initial run didn't really bring in the box office results Disney was looking for.  World War 2 didn't help things as it closed off a lot of foreign markets that would have generated revenue.

Still even with CGI and all the latest technological mumbo jumbo junk that the entertainment industry can muster today.  This film is an amazing achievement when you compare it to the current cookie cutter animated films that are released.

The story credit is given to Joe Grant and Dick Huemer although you can be sure this film is also the result of input from the creative artists and the producer Walt Disney as well.  The running time is  126 minutes.

2024 - WICKED, it's long it has a lot of songs

The big hit musical for the holiday season is now showing up on streaming.  Wicked as everyone knows is based on a popular Broadway musical of the same name.  The film was very expensive to produce around $150 million.  It has big sets lots of dancing and two charismatic female stars, it is also very mediocre.

In a musical it should be all about the music.  However in this film I don't think there was one memorable song in the entire film's long running time.  The production team tries to cover this up with lots of big sets and elaborate computer image special effects but after a while it's all just viewer overload.

 

As far as the cast goes Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are certainly talented enough but as an old boss of mine once said you can only put so much "lipstick on the pig" to cover all the problems with this film.  The other cast members well what can you say.  A special song has been dedicated to the original stars of the musical, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth who are showcased in a scene that goes on and on.  Bowen Yang has been carving out a career as a comedian on SNL plays the stereotypical bitchy gay guy which is apparently the best character the writers could come up with.  Michelle Yeoh is also in the film and continues to appear in a lot of films as she enters the "paycheck performance" period of her career.  Jeff Goldblum plays the Wizard of Oz as Jeff Goldblum. 

Wicked is supposed to be a revisionist story of The Wizard of Oz but this film has also decided to be about racism (the green skinned witch) and the social prejudices of the citizens of Oz in this case  talking animals because after all they are different from us (get it).  

I guess the director Jon M. Chu should get some credit for orchestrating all of this junk into a film.  He had to deal with two probably diva stars, lots of overblown special effects and a completely unwieldy screenplay.  By the end of this movie the credit comes up "end of part one" god help me.  To paraphrase my niece the only people who should get awards for this film are the marketing team that sold it to the public.

The film was written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, who have sort of been hinting at parts 3 and 4 to this film.  The running time is 160 minutes.

1958 - THE TRAPP FAMILY IN AMERICA, a sort of sequel.

 I doubt fans of The Sound of Music are aware that it is actually a remake of a German film called The Trapp Family (1956)  that version of the singing Von Trapp Family also made a lot of money.  The German studio Gloria Films just like their Hollywood counterparts knew a money making machine when they saw it and went ahead and released the further adventures of the Von Trapp Family as The Trapp Family In America.

The story is basically about the Von Trapp Family traveling around America by bus performing their dreary religious song repertory.  Not unlike Julie Andrews, Maria Von Trapp is a goody two shoes who realizes that the paying American public wants to hear music they can relate to in this case a chorale version of "Oh Suzanna" apparently. The Von Trapps eventually end up in Vermont where they buy a farm which I believe is still owned and managed by some of their descendants.  That's about all this film is, a bunch of people riding around on a bus, a bunch of kids singing and Maria Von Trapp as her smiling happy self.

 

I suppose a couple of things to note.  Maria Von Trapp was played by an actor named Ruth Leuwerik who was a big star in Germany in the 1950's.  The real Maria Von Trapp wrote a book about her experiences and eventually sold it to Gloria Films while signing away her rights to any profit participation in the film.  This sequel apparently made quite a bit of money.  Much like American audiences, there is sometimes no accounting for taste when it comes to the German movie goer.

Overall this film is mighty dreary.  There really is no conflict and there is a whole lot of singing the viewer has to sit through.  As with any "based on a true story" film the “facts” are mighty wobbly compared to the real story of these singing songbirds.  This is not much of a film, The Trapp Family In America is more of a curiosity than an interesting story.

The film was written by what else an ex Nazi named Herbert Reinecker, the running time is 103 minutes.

1965 - THE SOUND OF MUSIC, on the big screen

Revisited The Sound of Music at a revival theater on a fairly big screen, a few thoughts.

The film received bad reviews when it was released in 1965, apparently the combination of singing nuns and Nazis was just a little much for the critics to endure for a musical.  The film is incredibly saccharine and at times difficult to stomach.  Julie Andrew's character of Maria frequently grates on the nerves with her goody two shoes personality.  However I doubt any other actress could have played this part.  Christopher Plummer's sly performance as Captain Von Trapp does a lot to take the sting out of all the sentimentality and corniness of the film.

The film was produced and directed by Robert Wise and a production team that was basically the same group that had worked on West Side Story with him.  If anyone deserves credit for the success of this film, it's probably Wise who used just about cinematic trick in the book to put this film over.  Cinematography, editing and the on location filming all contributed to the success of the flm.

 

The screenplay was by a real pro Ernest Lehman,  Lehman had written North By Northwest for Hitchcock and the screenplay for the original version of West Side Story.  Lehman apparently performed some real surgery on the film's book taking out a lot of the real hackneyed stuff.

 

The Sound of Music saved 20th Century Fox Studios after the financial disaster of  Cleopatra.  However Daryl F. Zanuck got it in his head that family musicals were the future of the film business. He went on to greenlight, Hello Dolly, Dr. Doolittle and in particular Star the Julie Andrews musical disaster.  These musicals financially crashed and burned the studio yet again.

The running time is 174 minutes.

1967 - MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, The Beatles make a home movie

Clearly a tie in for the record that was released around the same time, Magical Mystery Tour is sort of a free form collection of skits and ideas The Beatles supposedly put together.  The Beatles were certainly going for the auteur title in this film because along with a writing credit they also take a director's credit.  The result is a real amateur's mess of a home movie.  Probably the person who should get top credit on this film is the editor Roy Benson who had to take 10 hours of rushes and cut them into a 50 minute film.

Paul McCartney was apparently the driving force behind this film with a few contributing ideas from the other band members.  John Lennon was supposedly responsible for the silly spaghetti shoveling scene.  McCartney is in the dumb military scene but real actor Victor Spinetti kind of steals that scene as an insane drill sergeant.

I suppose it should be mentioned that the so called plot involves The Beatles and some other people riding on a bus called unsurprisingly the Magical Mystery Tour.  Ringo sits next to woman who is playing his Aunt and they do some lame comedy shtick.  John Lennon looks completely bored and I can't even remember if George Harrison actually does anything on the bus although I think he's seated next to Lennon.   Now that I think about it Harrison looks like he would like to be somewhere else and who can blame him.

The Beatles perform a couple of decent songs including "I Am the Walrus", "Magical Mystery Tour" and "The Fool on the Hill." The film is known for being broadcast on the BBC in black and white although it was filmed in color since hardly anyone in England at the time had color television sets.  Needless to say this mess was not beloved by the critics or the public. 

The running time is a "thank god it's not any longer" 52 minutes.