The Real Brave Sir Robin

Film: The Adventures of Robin Hood
Format: DVD from Bolingbrook Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

The Adventures of Robin Hood has a unique distinction. It’s safe to say that almost everyone knows the story, but virtually no one has actually read the book. I know that saying this will probably mean that I’ll get at least one comment from someone who will claim to have read the book. Yeah. Good for you. That’s why the word “virtually” is in the sentence above—I’ve been writing long enough that I can cover my bases.

Anyway, you hear the words “Robin Hood,” and unless you have lived under a barrel your entire life, you don’t think of Kevin Costner or Cary Elwes or Russell Crowe. The quintessential Robin Hood is Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Even if you haven’t seen it, you still know the basic story. But, just in case you do call that barrel home, here it is in a nutshell.

King Richard the Lion-Heart (Ian Hunter) has been captured in the crusades and the throne usurped by his brother John (Claude Rains). Working with Prince John are Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and the High Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper). Robin of Locksley, a.k.a. Robin Hood (Flynn) rebels and gathers a group of men in Sherwood Forest and fights oppression. His main go-to guys are Will Scarlett (Patric Knowles), Little John (Alan Hale) and Friar Tuck (the always magnificent Eugene Pallette). Robin fights for the true king, to free the Saxon people, and for the love of the beautiful Marian (Olivia de Havilland). We’ve also got a couple of comic relief characters, specifically Much (Herbert Mundin), who is saved at the start of the film by Robin and Will and Bess (Una O’Connor), Maid Marian’s handmaiden.

Okay, so you know the basic story, and that story is a classic. There’s another reason to watch this film, though. The Adventures of Robin Hood has the true classic Robin Hood scenes that are either referenced, spoofed, or remade in other versions of the film. We have, for instance, Robin’s entrance into the feast with a deer across his back and his daring, swashbuckling escape. We have the quarterstaff fight with Little John on the bridge. There is the meeting with Friar Tuck, the archery tournament, and his daring escape from the gallows. Oh, it’s all here because all of it started here.

Y’know what? I could be a cynical bastard and talk trash about this film, but I’m not going to. I really enjoy the hell out of this film because it’s a tremendous amount of fun. It’s Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood as a swashbuckling pirate, which has made Robin Hood a swashbuckling pirate in the minds of virtually everyone. Flynn plays the role with decided relish. He’s having a good time swinging a sword around and firing arrows and climbing ropes, and who can blame him? It’s the very thing that made him famous, and this time he gets to do it in Technicolor.

The film also benefits from a tremendous supporting cast for Flynn’s antics. We can start with Olivia de Havilland and we could just as easily end there because she’d be enough. Fortunately we don’t have to end there, though. We also have Basil Rathbone and Claude Goddam Rains as our main bad guys. I also have a soft spot for Una O’Connor, who frequently played this sort of shrill comedic harpy. And Eugene Pallette, who could do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is fun. It’s melodramatic and overacted, and it’s also great fun and completely entertaining. The ending is a foregone conclusion, of course. There’s no real possibility that Robin will swing from a noose or that the bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them. There’s no chance that Robin and Marian won’t end up together (and on a similar note, no chance that Bess and Much won’t end up together, either). We know this going in because it’s a film from 1938 and that’s the way films worked back then. We know we’ll get the Hollywood ending and the good guys will be triumphant because nothing really bad is going to happen to all of the characters that we like. And we watch anyway because it’s just so damnably fun and worth watching.

So yeah, I like this movie a lot. There’s a real sense of boyhood adventure in this film that is impossible for me to get past, and so I no longer try. I just enjoy it for the spectacle that it is. You should, too.

Why to watch The Adventures of Robin Hood: Errol Flynn was never better and because there’s swords and arrows and stuff.
Why not to watch: Because you already know the story.

Four Years in the Making

Film: Tokyo Orimpikku (Tokyo Olympiad)
Format: DVD from Arlington Heights Memorial Library through WorldCat on kick-ass portable DVD player.

There was a time in my life when I watched sports. Since I haven’t spent any time watching sports in several years, it’s actually sort of hard for me to remember when I cared about such things. When I was a kid, I was a complete sucker for the Olympics, too. There was magical about the Olympics to me. While there were sports I knew about, of course, there were also strange athletic contests that I saw only once every four years. I never really understood as a kid why someone would train for years for this one shot; I hadn’t figured out that these sports had other competitions throughout the years and that in many ways, the Olympics was just another contest in a string of contests.

Tokyo Orimpikku (Tokyo Olympiad) comes from a time when there was still a level of purity in the Olympic games, a purity that has since been lost and will likely never be regained. In 1964, the Olympics still required amateur status for competitors, meaning that we didn’t send a collection of NBA All-Stars over to another country so we could watch them do Harlem Globetrotter impressions and beat up on teams from Cameroon. There was a sense of competing for the joy and challenge of competing, not as a chance to get another endorsement. I’m not someone who lives in the past or thinks the past was a golden age, but there are some things that have gotten worse with time, and the Olympics is very much one of those things.

So, as it comes from a time of relative purity, at least in terms of professional participation in amateur games, the film tends to focus not on the personalities of the participants, but on the actual competitions themselves, the victories and heartbreaks, minor triumphs and major disappointments. Director Kon Ichikawa is smart enough to let the events essentially speak for themselves. The commentary we get is very much akin to the sort of commentary we would have watching the event on television. Most concerns the sport itself with occasional asides about one or more of the competitors.

Any Olympics takes place over multiple days, of course, and even a film of nearly three hours in length can’t come close to showing everything. Instead, Ichikawa gives us snapshots of the competition. We see some of many of the events, but by no means all of anything. For instance, we spend a little time with the shooting sports, but we see only the 300m rifle, skipping all of the others. We spend some time on the Pentathlon, but see only still photography of the first four days of the event, learn a story of an unnamed competitor, and do not learn the identities of the medal winners.

Ichikawa is remarkably even handed in his treatment of events. We see a montage of gymnastic performances around the middle of the film without learning anything of the medal winners. It’s moments like this that lend a sense of authenticity to the film—Japan is frequently dominant in men’s gymnastics, and was in 1964, and yet we aren’t given an unending string of Japanese athletes or made to revel in their success. We learn some medal winners and others we do not, giving the film even more a sense of attempting to create a feel of the Olympic games rather than a compendium or almanac of these particular games.

In not giving us everything, Ichikawa has picked and chosen for us. He has given us this particular and specific experience with this particular and specific Olympics, allowing us to experience more than we would had we actually attended, but still limiting our experience. In a sense, we are told that we will have only some of the full experience of the Games. We may not even get the most compelling or tragic stories. We will, however, get some stories.

This scattershot approach is one of the film’s great strengths, but also one of its greatest weaknesses. Unable to cover everything, Ichikawa attempts to cover as much as he can, and a number of sports are virtually or totally absent from the film. There is, for instance, no diving and no mention of the decathlon. Water polo, yachting, rowing and several other sports are on screen for a minute or so of screen time; fencing gets two, but even there it’s just the women and just the foil. The decathlon doesn’t appear in the film at all, which seems like a huge oversight. Diving is missing, too. We spend more time with the oddly-gaited racewalkers as we do on those aforementioned sports combined. I mean, I’m not a huge water polo fan, but I’m going to remain that way if I don’t see their technique and understand the skill of the game. Stories like Joe Frazier’s gold medal in the premier weight for boxing are ignored completely. The scattershot approach gives us that taste of many of the games, but loves so much room for more.

The photography is the real triumph here. The sports are shot with love and with an eye for giving the viewer a better chance to understand the sports themselves. We see a great deal of slow motion, for instance, showing the athletes’ in competition, their muscles straining, faces at times contorted in moments of agony or ecstasy. It’s a film that learned much from Riefenstahl’s Olympia, but has managed to present it to us without the hammering and yammering of nationalism, racism, and other “-isms.” Even for a non sports lover, there is much here to see and appreciate.

Tokyo Orimpikku is by no means perfect, but it is also one of the best sports and sporting life documentaries ever made. Criterion needs to bring this back from its out of print status. I went through too many hoops for a film this good.

Why to watch Tokyo Orimpikku: The glory of sport in a time when the glory was all the athletes competed for.
Why not to watch: No decathlon, no diving, and many sports given very short shrift.

Du Liebst Mich, Ich Liebe Dich Auch

Chip Lary at Tips from Chip recently gave me a Liebster Award, an award for notable blogs with fewer than 200 followers. I'm honored and probably not deserving, but hell, I'm a sucker for an award.

Accepting the award means spreading the love and giving it to five other people as well. So, I'm going to do that. Those I mention below are welcome to accept this award by putting the logo above on their blog somewhere and presenting the award to five other people who have fewer than 200 members of their blog.

So, thanks, Chip Lary, for putting my name on this. I'm going to offer up five more of these, steering in part away from film blogs so that my nominees have places of their own to go. If I didn't nominate you, it's not because I don't love you. Really. There are plenty of people I want to nominate, but I also don't want to get greedy.

In no particular order:
1. BigHominid's Hairy Chasms: I've known Kevin virtually for years. He's politically right of me by a country mile, but his writings are good and show careful and subtle thought. And, he's often really funny. Expand your mind.
2. A Taste of Ipecac: Politically to the left of me, Ip's writings are filled with a mixture of surprising common sense and outrage.
3. The Velvet Café: Jessica is thoughtful and patient with film, and is smart enough to give herself the room to be expansive on the films she writes about. This is a relatively new blog, but one of my favorites.
4. Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob: Nick, of course, is my podcasting partner. His blog is always entertaining, sometimes unexpected, and he offers legitimate modern perspective on a huge variety of films. Read and enjoy.
5. The Film Vituperatum: The home of the 1001 Films Blog Club, this site has become a clearinghouse of reviews of the films on The List, a sort of Rotten Tomatoes of important films.

Freddy Vs. Jason...Sort of

Film: The Black Cat
Format: Internet video on laptop.

It’s interesting to look at movies that are 80 years or so old. Some of them translate really well and others just flat out don’t. I’ve been told by a few sources in the past that The Black Cat is a film that belongs in the pantheon. It’s the first time that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff appeared on screen together—sort of like a Freddy Vs. Jason for the Depression set. But I’ve also been told that it brings the creeps in a big way. Maybe it did in 1934, but today, well…

We have a young American couple that is, for some reason, honeymooning in Hungary, because evidently nothing says the culmination of romance like Carpathia. Peter Alison (David Manners) is a writer of detective novels and his wife Joan (Julie Bishop) seems to have no personality aside from him. In fact, through most of the film, she is merely referred to as “Mrs. Alison.” Regardless, they are cuddling close in the train when they are interrupted by the entrance of a new passenger, Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi). As it turns out, the couple and the doctor are traveling to a similar location.

They later share a cab/trolley/vehicle which suffers an accident. Joan is hurt in the crash, and they are forced to seek shelter at the nearest house, which stands on the site of an old battlefield. Living in the house is Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), the man Werdegast holds responsible for his own long imprisonment and a few other tortures as well as the architect of the house they are in. There’s evident bad blood between the two which soon is made obvious. Werdegast belives that Poelzig forced him into imprisonment to steal his wife and daughter. Poelzig doesn’t deny this, and in fact takes his old friend/enemy to see his wife. Naturally, she’s dead, but Poelzig has preserved her, lending a sort of necrophilia vibe to the proceedings.

And a few more things become evident. First, Werdegast’s daughter is not dead. In fact, after marrying the mother, Poelzig married the daughter, Karen (Lucille Lund), but he is not going to share this fact with her father. Second, Poelzig worships the black goat of hell. Yep! He’s a Satanist, because that’s what bad guys do in old movies. We discover this when he goes to bed one night and tucks himself in with a little light reading about a ritual performed to honor Lucifer. Me? I prefer a little non-fiction.

Anyway, everything starts to come to a head when Joan Alison becomes a pawn in the game played by the two men. Poelzig wants to sacrifice her, and Werdegast would prefer that she live, making this a rare film in which Lugosi plays something more akin to a hero than a villain. And through it all, black cats appear at opportune times, particularly because Werdegast is an ailurophobe.

So let’s get down to the nitty gritty on this one. I know this is a film from 1934 and I really shouldn’t judge it on modern film principles, but in some cases, I have to wonder what Edgar G. Ulmer was thinking when he made this. Claiming that this film was in some way connected with the Edgar Allan Poe story is at best a joke. The director’s name being the same as the author’s and the presence of a black cat are all that connect the two.

And there are other problems, too. Lugosi’s character is perhaps the only one who really sounds like he is from the region in question. Karloff’s accent is decidedly British despite his trying to be passed off as Hungarian here. And Karen Werdegast Poelzig sounds like she’s from Kansas despite having spent her entire life in Hungary.

I’ll admit that the ending is pretty good. There’s a real sense of maliciousness and sadism in the last few minutes of the film. It’s surprisingly gruesome for the time. But that’s really about the only thing that works here. When the better of the creepy, scary dudes is willing to torture someone to death for revenge, you know there’s quality involved.

This is a morbid little film, but it’s not one that I’m convinced begs to be watched. Then again, it was the biggest money maker in 1934, so what the hell do I know?

The biggest innovation in the film is that it has an almost continuous musical score, which was rare for the time. That score, though, often feels completely inappropriate for what is on the screen. While Poelzig reads his Big Book O’ Satanic Witchcraft, for instance, the music is rather jaunty and light. Much of the rest of the time, the music feels like it belongs in a Little Rascals short.

Sadly, The Black Cat fails on almost all fronts for me. The male hero is pasty, stupid, and aggressively wrong, his wife is a virtual non-entity, and the two creepy “foreign” guys do little but glower at each other until the end, and then get into a fist fight. I was bored through most of it, and that’s saying something for a film that runs only an hour.

Why to watch The Black Cat: Lugosi and Karloff on the same screen.
Why not to watch: The promise versus the reality is sort of like the promise versus the reality of an old comic book advertisement.

Historical (In)Accuracy

Film: Good Morning, Vietnam
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

When looking at a film like Good Morning, Vietnam, you have a few options. You can assume that Hollywood played with it a little, but that it’s basically accurate. You’d be wrong to do that, but you could do it. You could also get really bent out of shape that there’s little similarity to the Adrian Cronauer depicted in the film and the real guy—a life-long Republican who worked within the guidelines of military edicts for his entire career. Or, and this is recommended, you can forget about historical accuracy and look at this simply as a movie and judge it on that basis. That’s the best idea because there’s nothing in this film that complies with history.

Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams) is brought to Vietnam to help build the morale of the troops as a radio performer. He’s been called in from Crete mainly because he’s very good at what he does; he’s funny and the troops seem to like his brand of humor and his taste in music. He’s greeted at the airport by Edward Montesque Garlick (Forest Whitaker), who is a bit of a nerd and worried about getting into trouble, but also sees problems in the army around him. We’re also quickly introduced to Marty Lee Dreiwitz (Robert Wuhl), who thinks he’s funny and isn’t (a statement true of both the character and of Robert Wuhl himself). On the “bad guys” side, we have Lieutenant Steve Hauk (Bruno Kirby) who is supremely unfunny and a martinet and Sergeant Major Dickerson (J.T. Walsh) who has a massive stick up his back porch. These two take an immediate dislike to Cronauer and do everything they can to keep him off the air, morale be damned.

Cronauer is immediately fascinated by Vietnamese women, and focuses on one in particular, who refuses to talk to him. As a method of getting to know her, he takes over her English language class and, as a precursor to getting the girl, meets up with her brother, Tuan (Tung Thanh Tran). Tuan doesn’t trust Cronauer, but over time learns to, and eventually arranges a meeting between the American and his sister, Trinh (Chintara Sukapatana).

Much of the time is spent in Jimmy Wah’s, a local bar/restaurant run by the eponymous owner (Cu Ba Nguyen), who is flamingly and overtly gay and has a fetish for Walter Brennan. As the film progresses, the relationship between Cronauer and Tuan takes a darker turn. Tuan, for instance, pulls Cronauer out of Jimmy Wah’s moments before the place explodes, and Tuan also seems to be able to move through Viet Cong territory with relative ease.

The film essentially becomes a battle between the disc jockeys—Cronauer in particular but also the other working stiffs in the unit—and those more dedicated to living by the book. This includes Hauk and Dickerson mainly, but also includes the Army censors (Dan and Don Stanton who look so much alike that it almost seems like a camera trick instead of identical twins). Cronauer clashes with the brass on a near-daily basis, which leads to his being pulled from the air and replaced by the supremely, dreadfully unfunny Hauk in one of the film’s best moments.

Good Morning, Vietnam isn’t quite sure of what it wants to be. Is it a comedy about dealing with the brass and people without a sense of humor? Yes, it is in part, and these sequences tend to be the strongest in the film. Is it a drama about relationships, racism, and nationalism? Yes, it’s that too, especially as we delve into the relationship between Cronauer and Tuan and Cronauer and Trinh. Is it about inefficiency and stubbornness, and playing things too close to the book instead of living? Yes to that as well. Because it is all of these things, it’s also none of these things completely, and as much as the film tries desperately to gel into a unified, complete story, it never really does.

It’s still a strong performance from Williams. The best scenes in the movie are those in which he is able to improvise and work with a very loose script and material he’s been given as a starting point. His radio rants are staggering and manic, offering glimpses of comedic genius, improvisational skill, and excellent timing. Similarly, his immediate responses to jabs from his superiors are funny and delivered perfectly. It’s elsewhere the film seems to break down. Williams can certainly pull off relationships in film, but here, it doesn’t seem to work as well as the straight comedy does.

Good Morning, Vietnam also seems to mark a slow slide into sentimentality for Williams, comedic films that seem to have a moral message that never quite pans out or that comes out not as heartwarming and real but as sap and cheese. It was a long, slow slide through films like Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, Hook, Toys, and Jack, finally culminating in the diabetes-inducing Patch Adams that marked a frequently unfunny, unentertaining slide in the man’s career. That he’s broken out of this in the main is a good thing. And while his performance here is a strong one, there’s no mistaking that his dozen-year, face-first slide into sappy sentimentality started here.

Watch the movie for him, for Forest Whitaker, and for Bruno Kirby. Williams is at his comedic best here, at least in the moments he is allowed to be funny. When the relationships shows up, fast forward, or go make yourself a sandwich.

Why to watch Good Morning, Vietnam: When over-the-top Robin Williams works, it really works.
Why not to watch: History is tossed out the window for dubious dramatic effect.

Tales of the New West

Film: The Naked Spur
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

The Western is a genre I still find something of a mystery. It’s a genre that perhaps more than any other has evolved over time. Aside from the setting, there is very little to connect a classic Western from the ‘40s (say, Destry Rides Again) to those of the modern era (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Early Westerns tend to be idealized in many respects, particularly in the characters. Winchester ‘73 changed all of that. The Naked Spur picked up a few years later right where the first film left off.

In fact, the ‘50s were something of a landmark decade for Westerns that didn’t fit the traditional mold. The Naked Spur fits in with this idea as well as any other. Saying that it follows in the footsteps of Winchester ‘73 is not just saying that—Anthony Mann directed both, and James Stewart stars in both, making this film the natural son of the other.

As with a lot of Westerns, the plot is pretty straightforward, with the only real twists and turns coming from the fact that the genre was starting to change. This big change is the idea that heroes aren’t specifically heroic in all things, that they are real people who aren’t completely idealistic or morally perfect. Howard Kemp (Stewart) is a man on a mission; he’s looking for an outlaw named Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), wanted for crimes committed in Kansas. Before meeting Vandergroat, he encounters a couple of other people who will be important in the plot.

First is an unlucky prospector named Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell, who was also prominent in Winchester ‘73. Howard hires the prospector for $20 with an eye toward catching his fugitive. Jesse immediately assumes that his new riding partner is a lawman, and Howard does nothing to change this idea. The pair then come across Lieutenant Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), recently discharged from army for being morally unfit. The reason, implied with force, is that he carried on with the daughter of a native chief.

Not too long after this meeting, the trio meets up with their quarry and discover that he’s not traveling alone—he’s riding with Lina Patch (Janet Leigh), the daughter of his former partner. Lina is convinced of Ben’s innocence. It’s also at this time that we discover a few important things. Howard Kemp isn’t a lawman; he’s just someone looking for the substantial bounty on Ben Vandergroat.

We discover more as we go on. We learn, for instance, that Roy is running east because he is being pursued by members of the native tribe. When the tribe catches up, he sets up an ambush during which the natives are killed; during the fracas, Howard is shot in the leg. It’s here that we learn the truth of his story—he went to fight for the Union in the Civil War, and deeded his ranch to his fiancée while he was gone. During that time, she sold the ranch out from under him and ran off with another man. We also see some of the intense anger in Howard as he pistol whips a native to death when his gun runs dry.

Really, the five main characters already mentioned are the ones who carry the whole film, and there’s not much need for any others. The film becomes a mental game between the four men in particular. Ben tries to play the three off each other, telling each that if there were fewer bringing him back, each share of the reward would be greater. In particular, he works on Roy and Jesse, telling them that Howard can’t buy back his ranch without the complete reward. Through all of this, Ryan plays Ben as a man in the middle of a joke he’s very much enjoying. Any dissention in the group causes him the greatest pleasure. He knows he’s headed for a rope, a short drop, and a sudden stop, but he’s still plainly convinced he can get out of it one way or another.

Stewart carries the picture, of course. It is he that we are essentially forced into sympathizing with. His sudden bursts of anger and his frustration serve not to make him less of a hero, but more realistic and believable as a character. He’s not so perfect that we are forced to root for him (and in many ways, Jesse is a more entertaining character), but he is a character who is completely believable. Just as worth watching here is Robert Ryan, who is joyfully malevolent and vicious. There’s a sadistic pleasure in him that is surprisingly entertaining to watch.

If I have a complaint, it’s that at least some of the conclusion is foregone as soon as we are introduced to all of the characters. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a few surprises, particularly at the end, but it’s hardly a spoiler to suggest that Lina will end up falling for Howard and vice versa. That is, after all, how the genre goes, even in cases that attempt to break the mold.

Having grown up with James Stewart in films like It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and Vertigo, it always surprises me just a little when I see him in the lead role of a Western. I don’t know why this is, because he’s always worth watching in the genre, no less here than anywhere else.

Why to watch The Naked Spur: The continual refinement of the Western genre.
Why not to watch: It’s still a bit formulaic in places, although less so than you might think.

And the World's Happiest Caterer

Film: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

I suppose if I really think about it, I knew what I was getting into when I decided it was time to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is, after all, a musical from that classic era of Hollywood when every other film seemed to be a musical. And that means giant dance numbers, people singing what they think to each other with a full orchestra background behind them, color-coordinated outfits, misunderstandings, and stereotypical division of the sexes. But, I’m committed to it, so I may as well push my way through it.

Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) rides into town one fine day to trade for some goods and to find himself a wife. And, wonder of wonders, he finds one. That very day he meets, proposes to, and marries Milly (Jane Powell). He fails to tell her that he lives with his six brothers and that he fully expects that she’ll take care of all of them. Fortunately for her, the brothers are conveniently named alphabetically and Biblically. After Adam comes Benjamin (Jeff Richards), Caleb (Matt Mattox), Daniel (Marc Platt), Ephraim (Jacques d’Ambroise), Frank (short for Frankincense and played by (Tommy Rall), and Gideon (Russ Tamblyn). Of course, she’s having none of this and she sets to civilizin’ those boys right quick.

Everything comes to a head at the barn raising where the six unmarried brothers meet six girls from the local town and are immediately smitten with them. They are, paired up the same order as above, Dorcas (Julie Newmar), Ruth (Ruta Lee), Martha (Norma Doggett), Liza (Virginia Gibson), Sarah (Betty Carr), and Alice (Nancy Kilgas). Of course, in the Oregon Territory, there are more men than women, and each of the six already has a suitor.

What we get is a dance-off, essentially as five of the brothers in particular (Benjamin was played by a non-dancing ex-baseball player, evidently) battle it out with the girls’ dates, and it’s evident that the girls prefer the tall, red-haired, and studly Pontipee men to their current beaus. Those beaus take it out on the Pontipees by physically attacking them in small ways as the barn sides start going up. Eventually, the Pontipees react and a huge fight breaks out (which is actually quite entertaining) and at the end, the entire barn comes crashing down. Naturally, everyone blames the brothers and they are essentially run out of town on a rail.

But now the brothers are distraught over their missing girls. So, when winter comes, Adam relates to them the story of the Sabine Women (which he mistranslates as the Sobbin’ Women) and convinces the boys that their best course of action is to ride into town and kidnap the girls. They do, and on the way back to their farm, they cause an avalanche so that no one can follow them, at least until spring. Unfortunately, they’ve managed to forget to bring the pastor with them, which means no marriages. This is to say nothing of the fact that the six girls are naturally quite upset about being dragged off into the wilderness by six large and horny men. The actions also cause a rift between Adam and Milly, and Adam goes off to the trapping cabin.

Big sigh. The brothers are forced to live in the barn and the six girls vent their frustration on them through the winter until by the spring it turns out that (of course) they’ve fallen for the strapping young boys. And, because it’s a musical, everything works out in the end just like you knew it would from the first moment Howard Keel started singing.

My biggest complaint here is not that everybody sings and dances. It’s that the women are so compliant in the whole thing. This isn’t a movie about love or marriage, but the Stockholm Syndrome, complete with a frontier underwear catfight. It’s actually pretty insulting. Milly complains that Adam doesn’t understand her, or women, or love, but it seems like he’s got it pretty much on target for what this film tells us. Capture a woman like a caveman, drag her away from everything she knows and keep her prisoner for a few months, and just like that, you’ve got a bride who will be completely devoted to you. Better romance through criminal behavior.

Another issue is that with a couple of exceptions, the brothers are pretty much interchangeable. It’s easy to spot Adam because, well, he’s Howard Keel. And Russ Tamblyn is considerably smaller than the other brothers, so he’s pretty easy to spot as well. But the other five may as well be given numbers instead of names for as much sense as I could make of them. Even the fact that the brothers end up conveniently color-coded from the barn raising on, I still couldn’t really tell them apart.

It’s also evident that wherever they are in Oregon, the woods get snowed in for a good seven or eight months per year. It’s cozy!

It’s interesting that it’s taken me this film to really understand what my problem is with many classic musicals. It’s the sexual politics of these films. Women have no meaning or purpose without men, and seem to be willing to endure any sort of mistreatment from the men in their lives simply because they are the men in their lives. It’s not the sort of lesson I’d prefer my daughters learn from things that they see. I understand why people like these films and I even understand why this message was there in 1954, but it doesn’t mean it’s a lesson that belongs in the world any more.

Why to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Because the barn raising scene is really worth seeing.
Why not to watch: Stockholm Syndrome is not a healthy basis for a marriage.