South Pacific starts out with good energy, bogs down in slow-moving melodrama, and then peters out in a choppy and anti-climactic last section. There's great potential here, with its exotic and beautiful island setting, two interesting romances, war-time adventure, comic relief, and music from the great Richard Rodgers, but the movie never really comes together. Joshua Logan's directorial pacing grows increasingly uneven, with overly long and unexciting passages mixed with crucial scenes that go by in a flash. The worst case by far concerns the fate of the two male leads. What should be the most important event of the movie, its emotional and dramatic climax, is not even shown but rather told to us in a dull, almost off-hand manner by another character. Very strange.
Another major problem, as many people have mentioned, has to do with the color filters used during the original production. We can only assume that this effect worked better on 1958 movie screens than it does today on video and DVD. Interesting at first in a campy kind of way, the technique becomes incredibly irritating by the end of the film. What's sad is that the parts of the movie shot in regular Technicolor are so luscious and vivid - the deep greens of the tropical island, the blue sky, and the bright yellows, reds and oranges of some of the costumes all work together splendidly.
Mitzi Gaynor does fine in her role as Nurse Forbush, though it's difficult to know why a cultivated Frenchman like de Becque would ever be interested in her. Brazzi, as de Becque, also does okay, but why couldn't the producers find an actual Frenchman to play this part? Why not Yves Montand?
He was active in Hollywood at that time and was a wonderful singer with experience in musicals. John Kerr generates almost zero screen excitement as Lt. Kerr, and his dubbed singing voice is the worst match of all among the many awkward dubbing jobs in the film. Only Gaynor actually sings her own songs. I don't understand why Rodgers and Hammerstein utilized such wonderful singing actors for their stage productions but relied so heavily on dubbing for their films. It's annoying to watch the obviously fake singing on the part of the actors, and it seems totally unnecessary. Even Juanita Hall, who played the role of Bloody Mary in the Broadway production, doesn't sing here. For me, the only real acting delight in South Pacific is Ray Walston as Luther Billis, a butch-effeminate sailor with his shirt undone and a huge tattoo of a clipper ship on his belly who's a bit of a black marketeer and gets into various kinds of trouble. Having seen Walston in many other films and TV shows, I wasn't expecting such a campy and hilarious role in a musical. He even shows up as a tropical-island drag queen in a Thanksgiving show for the troops - the movie's only attempt at a dance number. It's all very weird. As the film wore on, growing stodgier and stodgier, I kept hoping to get back to Walston for some much needed comic relief.
Compared to other Rodgers and Hammerstein films, the music in South Pacific is some of their least interesting or memorable. "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Our of My Hair" is a great tune, and the scene is one of the more lively ones in the film, but Logan cuts it off quickly. The other entertaining number comes at the beginning of the movie, with Walston and his campy sailors singing "There Is Nothing' Like a Dame." This sets you up to believe that the film will have a somewhat zany, fast-paced feel to it - a kind of musical "Operation Petticoat" or something - but, alas, it's not true. Logan never pursues the comic elements of the film like he could. Nor he does he pursue the action/adventure elements that could have helped with the overall pacing. They are in the story - he just ignores them. We are left with a lot of plodding or overly melodramatic scenes that circle around but never quite capture the tension and emotional resonance of the two romantic relationships. The tunes that accompany these scenes also seem plodding and melodramatic, with "Some Enchanted Evening" and "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" being the best of an otherwise drab lot. This latter tune was fairly radical in its message of racial tolerance in 1958, and it's about the only moment in the film that John Kerr (Lt. Cable) shows any emotion.
All in all, South Pacific isn't a bad musical; it just drags on too long and never really feels like a cohesive whole. There are some good moments, but it doesn't reach the heights of something like "The King and I" - Yul Brenner's tour de force acting, the brilliant set designs, or the adventurous dance sequences - or "Oklahoma." And it doesn't come anywhere near the cinematic and musical power of "The Sound of Music," which remains the best Rodgers and Hammerstein film by far.
Another major problem, as many people have mentioned, has to do with the color filters used during the original production. We can only assume that this effect worked better on 1958 movie screens than it does today on video and DVD. Interesting at first in a campy kind of way, the technique becomes incredibly irritating by the end of the film. What's sad is that the parts of the movie shot in regular Technicolor are so luscious and vivid - the deep greens of the tropical island, the blue sky, and the bright yellows, reds and oranges of some of the costumes all work together splendidly.
Mitzi Gaynor does fine in her role as Nurse Forbush, though it's difficult to know why a cultivated Frenchman like de Becque would ever be interested in her. Brazzi, as de Becque, also does okay, but why couldn't the producers find an actual Frenchman to play this part? Why not Yves Montand?
He was active in Hollywood at that time and was a wonderful singer with experience in musicals. John Kerr generates almost zero screen excitement as Lt. Kerr, and his dubbed singing voice is the worst match of all among the many awkward dubbing jobs in the film. Only Gaynor actually sings her own songs. I don't understand why Rodgers and Hammerstein utilized such wonderful singing actors for their stage productions but relied so heavily on dubbing for their films. It's annoying to watch the obviously fake singing on the part of the actors, and it seems totally unnecessary. Even Juanita Hall, who played the role of Bloody Mary in the Broadway production, doesn't sing here. For me, the only real acting delight in South Pacific is Ray Walston as Luther Billis, a butch-effeminate sailor with his shirt undone and a huge tattoo of a clipper ship on his belly who's a bit of a black marketeer and gets into various kinds of trouble. Having seen Walston in many other films and TV shows, I wasn't expecting such a campy and hilarious role in a musical. He even shows up as a tropical-island drag queen in a Thanksgiving show for the troops - the movie's only attempt at a dance number. It's all very weird. As the film wore on, growing stodgier and stodgier, I kept hoping to get back to Walston for some much needed comic relief.
Compared to other Rodgers and Hammerstein films, the music in South Pacific is some of their least interesting or memorable. "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Our of My Hair" is a great tune, and the scene is one of the more lively ones in the film, but Logan cuts it off quickly. The other entertaining number comes at the beginning of the movie, with Walston and his campy sailors singing "There Is Nothing' Like a Dame." This sets you up to believe that the film will have a somewhat zany, fast-paced feel to it - a kind of musical "Operation Petticoat" or something - but, alas, it's not true. Logan never pursues the comic elements of the film like he could. Nor he does he pursue the action/adventure elements that could have helped with the overall pacing. They are in the story - he just ignores them. We are left with a lot of plodding or overly melodramatic scenes that circle around but never quite capture the tension and emotional resonance of the two romantic relationships. The tunes that accompany these scenes also seem plodding and melodramatic, with "Some Enchanted Evening" and "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" being the best of an otherwise drab lot. This latter tune was fairly radical in its message of racial tolerance in 1958, and it's about the only moment in the film that John Kerr (Lt. Cable) shows any emotion.
All in all, South Pacific isn't a bad musical; it just drags on too long and never really feels like a cohesive whole. There are some good moments, but it doesn't reach the heights of something like "The King and I" - Yul Brenner's tour de force acting, the brilliant set designs, or the adventurous dance sequences - or "Oklahoma." And it doesn't come anywhere near the cinematic and musical power of "The Sound of Music," which remains the best Rodgers and Hammerstein film by far.