Now that was a great experience. We're kicking off a 'greatest hits' sequence here at the Quirky Muffin with one of the greatest, and now least talked of, musicals to ever roll out to theatres: 'The Music Man'. Yes, let's roll back to 1962 and this movie adaptation of the super-hit Broadway musical, both featuring the incomparable Robert Preston. The stage version of 'The Music Man' is the musical that Baxter tries to use as a date for Miss Kubilik in 'The Apartment' and was apparently a sensation, but you might be wondering how I eventually came to see it so late or at all. The stage version is well known, but the movie?
The obvious route into watching 'The Music Man' (TMM) is the star himself, Robert Preston, who featured very memorably in the great (and underrated) space adventure 'The Last Starfighter' as interstellar huckster Centauri. We'll get to that movie one day, and appreciatively, but it does serve as the classic genre route for getting to TMM. As a secondary route you can follow Paul Ford from 'The Phil Silvers Show' where he unforgettably played Colonel Hall in his continuously bewildered state. Getting back to hucksters, though, it's Preston's movie from beginning to end, befitting his status as the stage lead and the character's status as the eponymous lead, Professor Harold Hill the Music Man and travelling con man.
The movie is the story of Hill's visit to stubborn Iowa town River City, where he plans to repeat his longstanding con of pretending to set up a boys band before skipping town with all the money and not having taught anything musical. In short he's a charlatan, maybe one with a heart of gold, but it's buried so deep as to be invisible and only Shirley Jones as Marion the Librarian can dig deep enough to reach it. Shirley Jones is brilliant, and played her role on stage too. Her songs may tend to the annoying warble, but she's every inch the actress for the role, unbearably lovely, tough, and vulnerable once reached. A lovely performance. Preston lives his role as if he was born to play it, on the other hand, dancing around while high on life, and finagling for all he's worth. He plays the very model of the scheming trickster, and one supremely musically gifted while not knowing a note of music. He should have been in more things, and probably was on the stage.
The true test of a musical is in whether the songs and dances fit organically into the story or stop the narrative dead, whether they add anything or merely function as decoration, and whether they distinguish themselves from those in other musicals. 'The Music Man' has songs that hit in places that other musicals fear to approach, except for perhaps 'How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying'. TMM has a feel of locomotion to it, probably inherited from the opening number on the train, and pulls you along breathlessly when it goes into a quick number and manages to remain visually interesting when in the middle of a slow warbler. It also features the most wondrous sequence you will encounter in a film musical: A song and dance sequence in a library, which doubles as a seduction scene for Hill trying to steal the heart of Marion, madame librarian. A totally magical sequence only matched by one of the most still moments at the end, when Marion reveals ... Well, I won't say what she reveals.
A good musical oozes glee, a wonder at the sheer joy of being alive, and this is one of the best big musicals. It's just strange that I've never heard anyone ever refer to it.
O.
PS Great Honk! Ye Gods!
No comments:
Post a Comment