Carousel

The strategy of relocating the musical from the artifice of the stage to the real world rarely works and this Cinemascope adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein hit is no exception, the film shifting from back-projected studio sets to naturalistic settings with uneven results.

Although well-received in its day, the highly sanitized treatment of the story of a no-account carnival busker (Gordon MacRae in a role originally intended for Frank Sinatra) who returns from heaven to visit his wife (Shirley Jones) and daughter, in its hearty brainlessness is heavy going when unmoored from the values of the Eisenhower years. Neither MacRae nor Jones are particularly engaging, their characters, and indeed the film, scripted by Henry and Phoebe Ephron, being rather static, dramatically doing very little but filling in the gaps between the songs.

Beginning with Oklahoma (originally staged in 1943 but only filmed in 1955) Rodgers and Hammerstein were highly influential in shifting the stage/film musical away from the Busby Berkeley/Astaire Rogers catchy toe-tapping style to something more high-flown and Carousel is a good example of their work. The choreography is balletic and the songs have more of a light opera feel, although with the exception of "You'll Never Walk Alone" none being particularly memorable. Perhaps this might have been appropriate to the Ferenc Molnar play on which the book was based but seems rather incongruous within the context of the setting of a 1870s Maine fishing community.

Director King treats it with a great deal of straight-faced self-importance although these days its hard not to laugh at the double entendre of a song like "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" or the datedness of lines such as when Julie, referring to a theme which runs through the film with an odd persistence, tells her daughter that it is possible that "someone can hit you, hit you hard and it not hurt at all".

 

Want something different?