South Pacific

since before internet and IMDb existed so I an unfazed by the snipping trivial criticisms here.

it is basically an very good, not outstanding, effort to show some of the romanticism associated with that terrible event, the war in the pacific.

there are 100s of thousands of islands in that great ocean, can we not believe a bali hai exists undiscovered somewhere, if only in our imaginations? the DVD which I just bought today has the Michner 60 minutes interview. he refused to let the film crew on the island out over the water in the distance. he wanted it to stay an idyll.

cant we all do that? France Nuyen is the most beautiful actress of her generation and a very talented and strongly principled and intelligent lady.

the racism angle has been flogged enough here, suffice to say it is handled fairly accurate in depicting the mood of the times.

and thank you to those who explained what 'road show' version meant.

This slush-fest version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's famous musical suffers on the small screen because of its constant use of colour filters during the songs. On a big screen, this looks great, but just looks odd on TV.

This aside, though, this film of 'South Pacific' has much to enjoy. Mitzi Gaynor is a bubbly personality and is clearly enjoying herself as Nellie Forbush, 'washing that man out of her hair' and so on. Rossano Brazzi is charming as Emile (the singing is expertly done by Giorgio Tozzi); we can have a pang of regret that Ezio Pinza was seen to be too old to play the role by the time the film appeared - his work with Mary Martin in the original cast survives in cast recordings - but Brazzi looks the part.

John Kerr is a bit of a wet fish as Lt. Cable, while Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary is excellent, and Ray Walston as Luther, and France Nuyen as Liat, make an impression in smaller roles. The musical numbers are done extremely well - 'Bali Ha'i', 'I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy', 'Some Enchanted Evening', 'Younger Than Springtime', and 'Happy Talk' and the rest.

Where the film does flag is in the sequences where Emile and Cable go to the island to report on the Japanese invaders. This was handled rather better in the 1990s remake, and also moves along better in the stage version. Here, it clashes a bit with the romantic overtones of the rest of the production.

The Broadway version of South Pacific was an amazing breakthrough in confronting attitudes that today's politically correct culture would consider completely racist. According to Mary Martin and others, she received death threats and the play was picketed regularly, which is hard to believe now.

I have to hope the Broadway version moved along a bit faster than the movie version, or there would have been a massive exodus from the unforgiving New York crowd. I can only guess that Josh Logan was feeling the humid heat of those islands, because the pace of the film is not just temperate, it's downright slow. I know it's hard to fit in songs when you're not used to doing musicals, but it only got worse from here for him (Camelot and Paint Your Wagon were just dreadful). If we're trying to get across that the machine of the military moved inexplicably slow, I got it, but I don't think that's it. I think it's Josh.

The music, of course, is wonderful. And I loved Mitzi Gaynor. I think she's perfect as light-hearted, silly Nellie, who lives within boundaries she's never even thought about, but suddenly finds some strength of character when she realizes that she loves someone without reservation. I'm not a fan of choosing the actor and having him lip sync, but Rossano certainly did so with feeling. Ray Ralston played his usual belligerent/con artist character. And who knew Tom Laughlin could act like a human being instead of just Billy Jack? Nice appearance there.

The colored filters are unfortunate. Good thing all the other directors saw Josh's mistake and didn't head down that rainbow road.

And I still find the job that Oscar Hammerstein III did of condensing James Michener's collection of short stories into this socially relevant (at the time) play truly amazing.

I gave the movie a seven because musicals always get five from me, the concept of the movie/play is great (if it gives us a reminder of where we've been), and the acting solid. I have to think that, in the hands of a better director, this movie might be dated, but truly wonderful.

The most obvious flaw is its running time, it's very long. I think it's longer than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Unfortunately there were other flaws with the movie, so I can't overlook what I've just said. Another flaw was the colour filtering;the orange and yellow picture did get a bit distracting after a while, although the Pacific does look beautiful. Rossano Brazzi, whose singing voice was dubbed, looked wooden, but was he ever not wooden? I must say though, the dubbed singer did a marvellous job.

However, there were a lot of truly excellent things about this movie. Mitsi Gaynor was a lovely lead, and she was wonderful in the musical numbers. She does get a little tiresome toward the end, but most musicals do have the same problem. But Juanita Hall was just perfect as Bloody Mary, I had absolutely no problem with her. The songs were absolutely outstanding. Rodgers and Hammerstein have given us some truly fantastic music scores, and South Pacific is among them. Ray Walston gives comic relief as Luther, I think, and the focus on the war was very endearing. The real star was the stunning choreography, that made the musical numbers so energetic.

All in all, an entertaining, but flawed film, that is underrated in my opinion. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This film is due to be re-released in 70MM for limited engagements next year. A new restored DVD is also being prepared by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment which includes scenes that were cut back in 1958. Somebody commented recently about the fact that "lap-dissolves" were used between many scenes in this film and this person obviously felt that this was some kind of fault. This was a common editing technique utilized in the past and was used usually to signify the passage of time. It is rarely used these days and obviously that person has not encountered this technique before and has assumed that it is a fault, but this is not the case.

I am curious to know if the new transfer will feature the Broadway continuity(the Emile-Nellie Plantation scene before the "Bloody Mary" scene)? I hope it is an anamorphic transfer?