Oklahoma (1955)

Until you have seen a troupe of tap-dancing men in chaps, you haven't seen anything - no I take that back - until you have seen an interpretive-ballet gunfight, you haven't seen anything.


I knew almost all the songs from Oklahoma, thanks to my best friend and, well, the whole world. But up till today, I'd never seen the movie. My good friends gave me a Rodgers and Hammerstein collection for my birthday, so I figured it was high time I watched it.



At first I thought that this movie seemed so gay because the song "I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No" seems made for a drag queen to sing. Until the next song...which also seemed so camp it was asking to be remade in drag. That's when it dawned on me: I had seen this movie before - or parts of it. One night in a gay bar, between two pieces of fascinating hard-core gay porn, was this even more fascinating mash-up of electronic dance music and the ballet numbers from Oklahoma. And it's instantly recognizable as Oklahoma - cause what other cowboy musical is there?

Initially, we thought the DVD player was broken, because the volume was turned down and it seemed stuck on a title card. But once we turned the volume up it turned out that the first five minutes of the movie is a title card that says "Oklahoma Overture". This is followed by five minutes of credits and a long slow tracking shot through a cornfield. Obviously they wanted to pay homage to the theatrical score. Also, during intermission, there is a title card that says "Oklahoma Entre' Acte" useful if you need to pee and can't find the pause button on your DVD player's remote. Finally at the end is a card reading "Oklahoma Exit Music" so you have a score as you walk off to bed.















If that is not enough to bore you, there are also two or three very long interpretive ballets. In one of them, the two main characters are replaced by dancers who stand in for them as they act out the entire plot. At this point you could
a) opt to watch only the ballet-within-a-play and skip the rest of the movie
b) skip the ballet because you'd like to watch the rest of the movie
c) skip the ballet and the rest of the movie

I would not recommend option a unless you are a fan of pantomime. A BIG fan. The only reason I would recommend b over c is the closing number, Oklahoma! gives me chills. It is just an awesome musical number. One of the best of all time, I'll wager.

Other than that, there are some fun moments, outrageous costumes, the great character Annie - unprecedented as far as I have seen - a stubbornly silly girl who stubbornly stands up for her right to sleep around.



I like the female lead, but the male lead is one of those full-grown men playing a young man that never seems quite right. Also the leads have a habit of singing "graahnd" as if they were brought up in Boston and then singing "I keer" in a bastardization of an Oklahoma accent. It's awkward, if not outright offensive.

I did enjoy the movie, but less than I had expected, based on the music.

Two stars, one for the costumes, one for the title number.

Now, Voyager (1942)

FOUR STARS!!!
First, there is the fact that the story opens with a heroic psychiatrist sympathetically coming to the aid of a grossly misunderstood woman.


I have to admit, I was a little terrified at this point that the entire movie was going to be told as one sad, doomed flashback of a woman driven insane by unhappiness. UGH. I was not interested in watching that movie. Luckily, this is not that movie!

The psychiatrist springs the woman from her oppressive home for a weekend in the country (which can fix anything, as we have already established in COUNTLESS other movies), and he quotes Walt Whitman to inspire her to start new life: "Untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, / Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."

And boy does she!



I liked this photo the best of the ones I could find - most of them show her looking aloof and glamorous, but Davis does such a great job of revealing Charlotte's anxiousness in every shot (Kim said "when she looks nervous, she makes me feel nervous") that I wanted a still that would show that nervousness. She is a girl's scared heart inside the body of an old maid...which of course is something just about every woman has felt at some point. Which is why this movie is perfect.

Yup, I said it, perfect - despite the untraditional ending (not happy or unhappy, but not disappointing, either) - this movie perfectly captures the sweetness and sadness of unfulfilled love. It's also a perfect little portrait of a woman's life before and after liberation - from forced and miserable self-sacrifice to independence, to a tentative peace with life, then to a voluntary and fulfilling self-sacrifice.

If this sounds like nonsense, you've got see it for yourself - I assure you there is a lot of fun stuff to look at while you're making up your mind about the moral of the story...there's the stiff and stern Boston Brahmin mother, the cheeky niece, the generous and glamorous sister-in-law, the awesome clothes, the grand house, the cruise and the scenery of Brasil, as seen on the back lots and California by-ways.

And need I remind you of Paul Henreid, aka Victor Laszlo (I was more than halfway through the movie before I could stop thinking of him as Victor Laszlo from Casablanca - it's a hard character to shake) and the over-enthusiastic tour director or the mysteriously Italian Portuguese cab driver? And of course there is always the wise, witty Dr. Jaquith - if only we could all have a psychiatrist like that!

It's pretty much all good here, will definitely watch again - although after I hoarded the DVD for six months without watching it, I'm sure I won't be able to borrow it from Anastasia ever again!