cider in the ear
by Douglas Messerli
Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Ben Hecht
(screenplay, based on the musical by Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows, and Frank
Loesser from stories by Damon Runyon), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (director) Guys and Dolls / 1955
I have seen several stage productions of the great Frank Loesser
including the 1976 all black production in Washington, D.C. and the enjoyable
Jerry Zaks Broadway revival of 1992, as well as having seen, in concert,
Barbara Cook’s incredible rendition of the lead song—with all its lyrics! It is
hard to imagine a better reincarnation of the character Miss Adelaide than
Faith Prince in the 1992 production. But I still prefer Vivian Blaine’s
less-winkingly performed straight-forward satire in the film musical.
Despite its rather oddball casting, in
fact, the film version still stands up to all other renditions (I did not see
the original 1950 Broadway performance) I have experienced, in part because of
Mankiewicz’s brilliant pairing of musical legends such as Frank Sinatra, Vivian
Blaine, and Stubby Kaye with dramatic actors, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons,
who amazingly, he allows to actually sing in their own voices! Certainly there
are songs I miss in the film—“A Bushel and a Peck,” “I’ve Never Been in Love
Before,” “More I Cannot Wish You” and “Marry the Man Today”—but “Pet Me Proper”
as the early strip number almost works almost as well. And nothing can match
the high-voiced intensity of Brando’s warbling. He (as Sky Masterson) and
Simmons (as Sergeant Sarah Brown)—her voice expressing itself in a kind of
wavering soprano—manage to sell the lead rolls far better than the spirited
stage revivals, while offering a kind of honesty film musicals seldom proffer.
Mankiewicz clearly saw the possibilities of Brando’s and Simmons’
intense acting styles coming through their inexperienced voice boxes. Simmons
actually comes alive as a musician in “If I Were a Bell.” Brando is so
disarmingly charming that if you didn’t fall in love with his natural good
looks, you might want to take him home just for the high-piping incantations of
“Luck Be a Lady” and the repeated whiningly melodious “Your Eyes Are the Eyes
of a Woman in Love.”
Sinatra (Nathan Detroit), as always sings marvelously—although Loesser,
himself, thought his crooning not right for the role—but his acting is here
represented by a kind of grumpy bemusement: he’s in the doghouse for most of
the movie for failures to revive his “floating” crap games, nail-bitingly deep
in trouble not only with the police and his fellow gamblers but with his
long-lasting, sneezing and discontent life-long lover, Adelaide. At one point
he bemoans: “Everybody in the whole world who hates me is now here.”
Back to Vivien Blaine, whose “Adelaide’s Lament” is perhaps one of the
best musical numbers ever performed on stage and film. I’ve watched the film
performance of that song hundreds of times and it has never lost one instant of
its absolute wonderment:
So much virus inside
That her microscope slide
Looks like a day at the zoo
Just from wanting her memories in writing
And a story her folks can be told
A person can develop a cold.
Never has the Runyon style and upbeat vision of confirmed sinners—that is every man and woman who falls in love—been better realized in this wedding of the hot (Simmons) and the cool (Brando), or is it the hot (Brando) and the school-marmish cool (Simmons)? One can only ask, after the screen goes black, who was the sinner and who the saved? After all, Sky Masterson knows the Bible even better than his Salvation Army doll!
Los Angeles, August 11, 2012
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment