Pace a few previous reviewers who try to argue the contrary, the story in this movie is of no interest. Kern didn't have an interesting life. He just went from one success to the next. Unlike with Cole Porter or George Gershwin, a heterosexual love story didn't have to be invented here. Kern fell in love with an Englishwoman early on, married her, and that was evidently the end of that story. This movie begins with a title card that says that the real story of Kern's life was in his music, so that is what the movie focuses on,
And there is a lot of it.
Some is sung very well, some rather blandly. My big complaint about a fair amount of the musical numbers is that they are staged blandly. The featured performers were all great. This movie has a phenomenal musical cast. But many of them seem to be held back by some directive that said "Easy does it. Don't upset the elderly lady at the 2:00 matinee."
This is nowhere more obvious than in the opening staging of scenes from Showboat, which was a revolutionary musical for its time because of its social commentary. You'd never guess that from the way the scenes are staged here. The chorus and everyone on stage just sways back and forth, over and over, as the baritone reprises Old Man River. These are the most well-behaved starving and poor Black people a white audience could ever have hoped to meet.
The same is true at the end of the movie when Old Man River is brought back for an encore - the only number to be performed by two different singers in different parts of the movie. It's irrelevant that this second time it is given to a white man - Frank Sinatra. What's surprising is that he, who could do pretty much anything with a song, sings it almost as a lullaby, dressed in immaculate white. If ever a song, a great song, could be castrated, this staging seems to do it. But I don't think it was Sinatra's doing.
Similarly, Dinah Shore is given "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and sings it beautifully, but you'd never guess it was about the Nazi occupation of the French capital. Watch it as Ann Southern sings it in "Lady Be Good," made by the same studio as Americans were waiting to see if we were going to be drawn into the war - we were, three weeks after that movie opened - and you can see the difference. That movie's presentation of that song won the Oscar that year for Best Song. With all due respect to Dinah Shore, she is not allowed to give the song any power in this version.
I could go on and on. Why does Lena Horne have to remain motionless while she sings "My Man" from Showboat? Etc. What is the fascination with spotless white in the long finale, with a set clearly copied on that in the same studio's The Great Ziegfeld, but not used anywhere nearly as well?
Yes, all these composer biopics from the 1940s whitewash their subjects. Porter is no longer gay, Gershwin is unambiguously hetero, etc. I guess I can live with that, more or less. But why make the music in this movie so "pretty" and harmless - whitewashed, as in the finale - when some of it is so much more than that?
And there is a lot of it.
Some is sung very well, some rather blandly. My big complaint about a fair amount of the musical numbers is that they are staged blandly. The featured performers were all great. This movie has a phenomenal musical cast. But many of them seem to be held back by some directive that said "Easy does it. Don't upset the elderly lady at the 2:00 matinee."
This is nowhere more obvious than in the opening staging of scenes from Showboat, which was a revolutionary musical for its time because of its social commentary. You'd never guess that from the way the scenes are staged here. The chorus and everyone on stage just sways back and forth, over and over, as the baritone reprises Old Man River. These are the most well-behaved starving and poor Black people a white audience could ever have hoped to meet.
The same is true at the end of the movie when Old Man River is brought back for an encore - the only number to be performed by two different singers in different parts of the movie. It's irrelevant that this second time it is given to a white man - Frank Sinatra. What's surprising is that he, who could do pretty much anything with a song, sings it almost as a lullaby, dressed in immaculate white. If ever a song, a great song, could be castrated, this staging seems to do it. But I don't think it was Sinatra's doing.
Similarly, Dinah Shore is given "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and sings it beautifully, but you'd never guess it was about the Nazi occupation of the French capital. Watch it as Ann Southern sings it in "Lady Be Good," made by the same studio as Americans were waiting to see if we were going to be drawn into the war - we were, three weeks after that movie opened - and you can see the difference. That movie's presentation of that song won the Oscar that year for Best Song. With all due respect to Dinah Shore, she is not allowed to give the song any power in this version.
I could go on and on. Why does Lena Horne have to remain motionless while she sings "My Man" from Showboat? Etc. What is the fascination with spotless white in the long finale, with a set clearly copied on that in the same studio's The Great Ziegfeld, but not used anywhere nearly as well?
Yes, all these composer biopics from the 1940s whitewash their subjects. Porter is no longer gay, Gershwin is unambiguously hetero, etc. I guess I can live with that, more or less. But why make the music in this movie so "pretty" and harmless - whitewashed, as in the finale - when some of it is so much more than that?