The Music Man

7T6 Trombones 
With A Capital T

The Music Man
Directed by Morton DaCosta
USA 1962 
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone A 

I’d never seen one of my dad’s favourite musicals, The Music Man, before... although, of course, the song 76 Trombones is obviously a musical earworm to this day. Indeed, the film and stage show is such a well known piece that, even though I’d not seen it, I was easily able to recognise that wonderful parody of one of the songs and a character featured in The Simpsons episode about the monorail. 

So I finally saw it and was not only charmed by it... I immediately leapt onto the computer to grab one of the last remaining copies of the movie version soundtrack from that well known website named after a tribe of women who used to cut their own breast off in order to improve their use with a bow and arrow (more coverage of that in a future blog probably never but, I like to throw these little pieces of dubious info in from time to time). I had to source a copy of the film on American Blu Ray because there just seems to be a dearth of the genre available in that format in the UK at the moment. C’mon people... we want more high definition musicals!

Okay... so... adapted from the very long running Broadway smash by Meredith Wilson (and including many more songs which never made it to the stage version but were indeed written for it at one point or another), The Music Man tells the story of Professor Harold Hill... not a professor but, instead, a conman who goes from town to town selling the proposition of a boy band with instruments and music, swindling people out of dollars and keeping his neck out of deep water with a little bit of oomph and pizazz.

Hill is played by Robert Preston, blessed with more than a regular helping of that particular oomph and definitely a large side order of said pizazz, who made the show his own on stage but was nearly passed up for the movie by Warner Brothers, who wanted someone bigger. It apparently took Cary Grant to both refuse the part and furthermore tell Warner Brothers that he wouldn’t even go to see it in cinemas if Preston wasn’t in it, to seal the deal. 

Preston’s love interest, the target of his initially false affections until the con backfires on his emotional wellbeing, is Shirley Jones (pregnant at the time with young Patrick Cassidy, of TV fame) who does a wonderful job. Preston’s friend, in on the con, is Buddy Hackett and, playing Jones’ very young brother, is the then seven year old Ronny Howard. Yep. The same red headed kid who would grow up to star in films like American Graffiti, hang out with The Fonz in Happy Days and, of course, be a major modern film director, still, at time of writing. 

And it’s all just wonderful. Shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the film is very well designed with frames based, as far as I could see, on vertical rectangles in the composition to divide up the screen to highlight elements of the story. Not to mention some wonderful transitions where, towards the end of a scene, everything apart from the principal actors will suddenly fade to pitch black, revealing the artifice of the stagey setting in what I can only describe as a ‘soon to be’ Godardian manner. Although, I guess at that time, it’s probably more akin to Brechtian theatre? Lars Von Trier would cerrtainly know, I suspect. ;-)This technique is also used to softly pull frames out and set them aside each other in a kind of masked split-screen, so songs and their counterpoint can be put together and shown from different scenes simultaneously, at one point. 

And Robert Preston is just amazing in this. What a vibrant personality this guy has, as he fast talks his way out of everything and then makes a little, throw away hand-dusting motion every time he gets over a little hurdle in his con game. Talk about buckets full of charisma. 

And the songs are... well, you always get a couple of duds... but the majority of them are not just great, they’re multilayered with the lyrics doing an abnormally large amount of heavy lifting when it comes to plot exposition, Which sounds bad but it in no way makes them any less charming. On the contrary many of them are very clever and... I’m guessing very hard to learn with some of the dense sets of layers bounding off each other. There must have been an awful lot of rehearsals in this production.

And, yeah, I’m not going to say much more on The Music Man, I’m just going to leave it for you to discover for yourself if you haven’t already, except to say that as much as Meredith Wilson made from this show, the film and the profit percentage... it was actually surpassed by the amount of money he made from The Beatles cover version of ‘Til There Was You from this musical... which is not a song I like but, there you go. But, yeah, give this movie a go because it’s very cool. 

Wonka

J Arthur

Wonka
Directed by Paul King
USA/UKCanada 2023
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

As I write these words, Wonka is still just about in the UK top ten cinema attractions, even though I watched it on its official Blu Ray release. Which is no mean feat after over three months in the charts... it would be fair to say that the film has somewhat surpassed any expectations the studio had of it, I should think.

Now, I hated the film Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory and didn’t think much better of Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory either, for that matter (although the score was nice on that one). The reason being that I loved both of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka books as a kid... Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator (which carries on directly from the end of the first book, where Wonka, Charlie and the others burst through the roof of the factory in the elevator and go into adventures in outer space).

Now, I bought Wonka, sight unseen, because I thought it would be a nice family movie to watch over Easter, what with its implied chocolaty theme and, truth be told, I didn’t hate it. True, the moustached and bearded Wonka of the books is still, bizarrely, clean shaven in this film but, at least the film-makers had an excuse for that this time around, seeing as it is a prequel to the original story and Wonka is a much younger chap. I think I am forgiving it a lot because I don’t have to compare it to the original literature on this one. However, buying it for Easter was a mistake because, as it turns out, I was the only one in the household who didn’t think it was pretty terrible.

Now, there are things wrong with it and I think the real problem is nothing to do with the actors... Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Colman, Calah Lane, Sally Hawkins and co are all great but I think the writing, in terms of the story, is possibly at fault here. To explain... the characterisation of a young Wonka seems to me, certainly in terms of his dialogue and thought processes, absolutely spot on. But, the story seems to kind of let things down and we have a film which, to my mind, starts off strong with some good ideas and some acceptably agreeable musical numbers... which then kind of gets weaker and weaker until it kind of fizzles out, for the most part, towards the end.

Chalamet and Hugh Grant (as one of... and indeed all of... the Oompa Loompas) are great, they carry the movie somewhat in places (even though Grant is barely in it) and the songs and score by Joby Talbot (of pop group The Divine Comedy... who I remember seeing as an unknown support act to the great Voice Of The Beehive in Kentish Town in the 1980s) is pretty good. It’s ‘blended’ both in scoring and the flat out restaging of two of the songs from the Gene Wilder film... Imagination and the Oompa Loompa Song but, that actually works quite well and gives certain sections of the movie a charming lift.

But there were times in the whole thing where I did, I confess, find myself quite bored and certainly wondering how it could be making anything like the staggering box office it has because, I would never have guessed children would have sat still for this for large amounts of time.

It looks nice though with some impressively ornate set pieces and a sense of scale which, I suspect, comes off rather better in the cinema than it does for home viewing (which, ironically, is always going to be how the film is remembered). So, yeah, there was much head scratching in this household as to why it’s been so successful but, it’s definitely a big hit with people and so I guess yet another version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, by way of a sequel (and thus rendering the references to the Gene Wilder movie redundant), can’t be far away. Wonka is not a big hit with me but, I am glad that it’s doing so well, for sure, because it’s obviously found it audience. So that’s alright then... I don’t have to ever watch it again.

Cinderella 2000

Ball Gown Down

Cinderella 2000
USA 1977 Directed by Al Adamson
Severin Blu Ray Zone A

Once again, Severin’s wonderful Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, highlights another movie by the genre chameleon that, while not exactly a masterpiece, is certainly something completely different to his other films. This is from a time when films such as Flesh Gordon and Alice In Wonderland - An X-Rated Musical Fantasy were making quite a splash at the box office and, while not a hardcore sex film, Adamson’s response to these films was the musical science fiction sex comedy Cinderella 2000. It hit theatres more or less within a week or two of the very first Star Wars film and, I don’t know if this was a successful production (probably was, knowing Adamson’s low budgets and box office takings) but I’m sure it wasn’t the huge cash cow that George Lucas’ similarly space themed epic was.

After the usual kind of animated title sequence of photos being moved around on screen, something which is standard for a lot of Adamson’s films, we have a shot which is reminiscent of the ‘procured shot’ in Adamson’s earlier Horror Of The Blood Monsters (reviewed here) in that Adamson freezes the frame so he can show a view screen on the image. Appearing in the telecast is The Controller of the 2047 society, reminding the people of the world about their rules and filling the audience in on the basic premise. A world where ‘fornication’ is illegal due to overpopulation and sex is only permitted, by computer generated lottery, with Tom Prince (played by Vaughn Armstrong)... this version of the tale’s ‘Prince Charming’, who looks pretty much like Flash Gordon, it has to be said.

We then see a couple of sex scenes broken up by law enforcer Roscoe The Robot, who takes two of the prisoners, wearing their restraining bubble wrap, to be shrunken down to doll size for six months as punishment for their sexing. Actually, it’s been so long that almost anyone in this society did the deed that the couple under arrest were studying stick figure drawings in order to work out how to do it in the first place. When the lady is shrunken down to small size, she is literally a Barbie doll in someone’s hand until you get the close up shot where she’s played by the actress again.

And then, midst this backdrop, we pretty much get a futurised, sexed up version of Cinderella, in a society where sex is outlawed by an impotent controller figure and people who get ‘the hornies’ are taken away to a clinic for treatment, where they get zapped by a ray for discouragement... unless it doesn’t work, in which case they just get sexed up. This, of course, makes no sense but I don’t think we’re supposed to be paying much attention to the plot anyway.

Into this we have main protagonist Cindy (played by Catharine Burgess), her two sisters Stella (played by Adina Ross) and Bella (played by Bhurni Cowans) and her mother, the widow (played by Renee Harmon)... who keeps coming down with ‘the hornies’. We also have Jay B. Larson playing the ‘fairy godfather’ who looks like he’s in his late 30s or 40s and, it’s kind of telling that his next movie was playing a lead ‘teenager’ in Adamson’s Sunset Cove (reviewed here).

And it’s a silly film with bad jokes (they even throw in the “Hey Stella” moment from A Streetcar Named Desire), cheap sets, a terrible temper tantrum robot and some truly awful sex scene choreography. I mean, honestly, one guy is riding a girl in missionary position and he’s completely missing the target by a mile, in fact... because of the angle of the camera, you can see his penis just scraping along a sheet when it’s certainly supposed to be somewhere else from the way the couple are acting. Also, the sight of this lonesome member does nothing to communicate that the character is performing his scene with any sense of enthusiasm, if you know what I mean.  

That being said, a lot of the girls make for some good eye candy and Burgess and Larson seem to be doing some good acting in this. Indeed, Burgess seems to be the only one acting really naturally here and Larson is just having a great time waving his magic wand (no, shockingly enough it’s is not a euphemism here) and fixing it so Cindy can go to the ball... or at least go down on a couple.

Another plus is that, despite the cheapness of it, some of the cinematography is pretty good. There’s a wonderful shot in the forest, for example, when Cindy is framed on the wide, scope aspect ratio in the negative space made from the overlapping diagonals of the jagged branches. There’s even a split screen sequence in one of the musical numbers, at one point. Also, the songs themselves such as Doin’ Without and We All Need Love are actually pretty good and catchy.  

Other things which are interesting about this production is that sometimes characters break the fourth wall... such as when Roscoe The Robot comments that “All they talk about in this movie is sex, sex, sex” before breaking into song. Or the scene where a turned on Snow White is moaning about not getting any attention before one of the seven dwarfs, played by Adamson regular Angelo Rossitto, moans at her that this isn’t her movie... before the other six dwarves all chip in to help Snow White fulfil her desires (yeah, it totally goes there, in its own softcore way). As an addendum to that, the fairy tale Cinderella does exist in this version, as the lead character is reading it in the forest scene.

It does get quite surreal at times but this isn’t a bad thing, although I won’t even begin to describe what I shall call the ‘human bunnies’ scene. It does get kind of ‘off putting’ sometimes, though, when one of the characters breaks into song and, more often than not, the person dubbing them sounds nothing like the actor or actress when they are speaking.

The film is not too hard to sit through, though and it’s even quite engaging at times as various shenanigans, sexual or otherwise, all lead to the final sequences where Tom Prince, after having sex with all the ladies of the land to find Cindy, his ‘perfect fit’ so to speak... is whisked away by the Fairy Godfather to see the controller, whom Cindy cures of impotence with the powers of her special blow job skills. Much rejoicing is held throughout the land, an earlier song is revisited in a montage of universal happiness and the credits roll.

I don’t have anything else to offer here other than I was disappointed that, bearing in mind it’s a musical, I couldn’t find any kind of commercial soundtrack release, on CD or otherwise, for this movie (which seems to be a thing with Adamson directed movies, to be honest, so far I only have two CD soundtracks from his films). Would I recommend Cinderella 2000... well, it’s certainly not for everybody but there are some people I know who would enjoy the heady mixture of the ‘so bad it’s good’ vibe and the buxom lasses seen frolicking in the movie. Maybe one to check out with your tongue stuck firmly in your cheek (or possibly someone else’s cheek, who knows?).

An American In Paris (stage musical)

Vive La Dance

An American In Paris (stage musical)
Original London Cast Dominion Theatre
25th April 2017

I don’t believe I’ve written a review of a stage musical before (unless you count the odd film score concert but... I don’t). So I wasn’t all that sure I was going to write this one up, to be entirely honest with you. There’s a big problem with this musical based on my and, presumably, other people’s expectations of it and, though I did have a nice and enjoyable time on the evening when I went and saw this with a special friend, I thought it best to maybe at least try and write something, no matter how little, to serve as a warning to people to leave their hopes at the theatre doors if they are assuming this to be a decent adaptation of the 1951 Gene Kelly, MGM musical An American In Paris.

So we arrived at the Dominion fairly early, both in anticipation of a night of cool song and dance. I remember seeing the original Star Wars at that venue when it was a top notch cinema at the tail end of 1977 and the foyer didn’t look all that different to what I remembered, to be honest. Less packed out with people, though. I was a little worried about how my favourite character, infused in the movie by the larger than life personality of Oscar Levant, would play in this show because, frankly, you can’t replace Oscar. So I grabbed a programme and then went over to the kiosk to see what merchandise they had on sale with which I could commemorate the evening. Alas, no pin badges were forthcoming but I  did spot a CD so I had a quick look at the track listing before I made my purchase. A transaction I’m sad to say I didn’t complete because as I started looking for my favourite song I found that, alongside many others, it was not present on the album. Instead, most of the songs had been replaced by other titles, which didn’t make any sense to me... other than that I presumed they were, at the very least, composed by George Gershwin.

So I didn’t buy the CD and entered the theatre in worrying anxiousness of how the performance would be. Due to my obsession with getting tickets for as near to ‘the right price’ as I could (where ‘the right price’ equals a fiver so... no joy getting anything like that here) we were quite far from the stage but, sometimes, it’s nice to take in the whole set in one go so I wasn’t too worried about that. Alas, the opera glasses all had little signs on them saying they only took the old £1 coins on them... I’d managed to divest myself of the old money so, again, found I was out of luck.

And then the show started and... yeah, it’s a nice enough show in some ways. Colourful and inventive with some top notch dance performances which I would have been happy to see under different circumstances. Those circumstances being if they would have called it something else like... I dunno... A Yankee in Montmartre or A Night At The Gershwin Club or some such. Alas, the show was proudly calling itself An American In Paris and that is where most of my troubles with it lay.

I love the original movie An American In Paris. Those MGM musicals are all pretty cool and that’s one of my four all time favourites made within a few short years of each other for that specific studio. I know the characters, I know the songs and I know the story and.... I love all of those elements. Alas, the only resemblance the characters had to the original here were their occupations (sort of), their names and... um... their ability to sing and dance. Set right after the Second World War it manages to channel the bleak depression and fallout of these turbulent times and insert them into the main text in a way the original couldn’t (and only touches upon very briefly, if memory serves). So we have a version of the Oscar Levant character, played very well by David Seadon-Young but written quite differently, who walks about with a limp from his war wounds and who is still slyly cynical but for overtly different reasons, carrying a darkness around with him on stage. More than that, instead of the film being about two men... Gene Kelly and Georges Guétary falling for the same girl, as played by Leslie Caron.... here we have Robert Fairchild and Haydn Oakley falling for Leanne Cope. This is fine of course and all the staff give credible and stellar performances but... for some reason the story has now expanded the situation to be a love rectangle rather than triangle, with Seadon-Young also trying to win the affections of the leading lady.

Not only that, but we now have undertones (which I didn’t notice myself so thanks to my friend for the heads up) of the possibility that the Henri Baurel character might even be a repressed homosexual thrown into the mix... so one has to wonder, since the girl is engaged to be married to him, why he even wants to go through with it all. So yeah.. the characters and story are all very different to the original but, to make things much worse and add insult to injury...

My worst suspicions were soon confirmed. The songs and music were stripped out almost wholesale and replaced with ‘other’ Gershwin standards. WTF? Why? Even the few they’d kept in like the classic I Got Rhythm and Stairway To Paradise (my least favourite piece in the original) were seriously tinkered with. Instead of Gene Kelly hanging out with a bunch of local kids on the street corner and going through the iconical version of I Got Rhythm we all know, we had a bunch of adults in a pub doing it and... I can’t even remember if the Gene Kelly character being played here by Robert Fairchild, is even in this actual sequence in the stage show. Probably yes but, if so, he wasn't the lead on the song. And as for Stairway To Paradise... the original, polished, professional show solo version as presented in the film was replaced with a comical two hander showing how unprofessional the Henri Baurel character is in regard to his show business side. Kinda preposterous the way that the writers had almost gone out of their way to completely replace  everything almost, it seems, for the sake of changing it and leaving their own scars upon it. So, yeah, I was not a happy bunny. Especially with my two favourites By Strauss and Tra La La La absent from the show.

The stage effects and transitions were all very good and imaginative as far as I was concerned. Although, having said that, my friend found them to be distracting and too much... like a bad Hollywood blockbuster that was so busy concentrating on its special effects that it forgot to find and express the heart of it's story and instead delivers a charmless mess, I guess.

So here I am right back to square one with this because, all in all, I had a fun night out at the theatre (I was in the very best of company)... but if you’re looking forward to seeing a version of An American In Paris on the stage then I would really lower your expectations of what you are about to see. Go for the energetically and skillfully performed dancing, the wonderful acting (including a turn by Jane Asher, no less) and extraordinary music... just don’t go in expecting similar dancing, acting or music. Or, like me, you’ll be sorely disappointed in the end result.

La La Land

Doo Lally

La La Land
2016 USA Directed by Damien Chazelle
UK cinema release print.

So it turns out that the new movie La La Land isn’t a great film... but it’s a pretty good shot at trying to shoot an old fashioned musical from a certain golden age of Hollywood’s history and, almost, really nailing it. I have a couple of reservations about it but I’ll bring those up in a minute.

I had the chance to see a preview of this movie at last year’s London Film Festival but I didn’t bother because a) I didn’t think too much of the lead actor and b) whenever someone tries to update the musical in a modern era, they usually fail abysmally. It was only towards the end of 2016, when I started hearing unqualified raves about La La Land on Twitter, that I got half excited about it and decided I’d probably check it out when it finally got a release over here.

Now, the film stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as the two lead protagonists. I’ve always liked Emma Stone and think she’s an extremely talented and engaging actress. Ryan Gosling, however, is someone I’ve previously had a problem with and it was all based on one film, Drive, which he did okay in, to be fair, but which I thought was best summed up if you stuck and ‘L’ on the end of the title. I’d only seen him in that one thing, by choice, until I saw him in last year’s The Nice Guys... which I loved. Now my review of The Nice Guys is here but, in a nutshell, I hated both lead actors but went to see it anyway, on the strength of the writer/director of that film. And Gosling did great in it... winning me over especially with his Lou Costello impression in one scene. La La Land marks the second time I’ve quite warmed to a Gosling performance so I think I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now. The jury is still out but it’s 2 -1 to him and I’ll give him a chance next time I see his name attached to a project.

La La Land is a musical which stars Stone as an aspiring actress and Gosling as an aspiring jazz musician... two perfect career goals for your characters if you are making a musical, methinks... marrying the potential careers of these two characters to the format of the movie itself. So the writer was onto a bit of a winner there, right off the bat.

The opening of the movie is an ambitious but not great musical sequence set on the highway which put me in mind of Alan Parker’s musical Fame more than the kinds of 1930s - 50s musicals the film seems to be inspired by. It’s a sequence which is cleverly cut to make it look like one long shot (instead of a few long takes which I suspect is nearer the truth of its actual genetic, cinematic make-up) but my first big problem with this movie is clearly shown here and it didn’t impress me, it has to be said.

The problem with this and a lot of sequences in the film is that the songs are just not strong enough, I feel, to support the quite technically accomplished performances given by the actors and the crew in the service of La La Land. I actually found myself being more appreciative of the actual musical score between the songs, if I’m being honest and, for a musical, that’s probably not a good thing. That being said, although the tunes aren’t instantly memorable, they are repeated enough throughout the movie that by the last third of the film they do have a certain familiarity and, I suspect, if I were ever to watch this movie again, I’d probably get more out of them than I did here.

That being said, it does have everything else a great musical should have in it and, for the most part, it’s quite successful in hitting the notes it aims for throughout the running time. I’m a big fan of the late 40s to mid 50s MGM musicals and there are definitive homages to the formula used in such movies as On The Town, Singin’ In The Rain, An American In Paris and The Band Wagon, to name a few of my favourites, to be sure. Now, some of these sourced out sequences don’t, I would have to say, quite make it. The midfilm romantic number you always get is a sequence which the makers of La La Land have set at the same observatory as seen at the opening of Rebel Without A Cause and its the obvious moment where the lovers finally get to know each other and act out their musical harmonies. The surrealist element of these kinds of moments... well, you know, more of a surrealist element than bursting into song every ten minutes... which is a key ingredient of the form, is a lovely concept and it has everything going for it... I just think the resulting sequence is a bit lame. Then again, I always did find that mid-romantic moment in a lot of those MGM musicals a bit lame so, you know, there’s a good argument here that the director really nailed it.

One big thing it has got going for it is the sheer talent of the cast and crew at getting a lot of hugely subtle things timed right. Gosling, Watson and some of the other actors are absolutely gobsmacking in terms of getting some quite complex stage direction absolutely right and one can only stand back in admiration when you see these things. It’s one thing to marvel at the timing of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire when they do some absolutely amazing things but when you get two leads here, for example, who are not noted for their ability to sing, dance or do some quite physically disciplined things... well I was pretty impressed by the performances, I must admit.

Now, in spite of these many jaw dropping moments, one of the things that makes La La Land a very good movie and not a great one, at least for me, is the lack of ambition to do something different with the form rather than just repeat it. Yeah, okay, there’s a certain wisdom in learning to walk before you can run but I felt like a lot of the sequences were trying so hard to get the atmosphere just right from those great musicals of yesteryear that they forgot to really add anything truly unique to the formula. which is a great shame but... well, combined with some musical numbers which don’t, as I said, have the strongest tunes and lyrics in the world then the film does feel kind of flat in some key places where I truly believe it could have shone. A lot of those musicals were pushing successive boundaries in their day and I would have liked to have seen something I hadn’t seen before here too.

However, that being said, by the last third of the movie I was blubbering uncontrollably at certain scenes and really cursing myself, I have to say, for having seen the trailer. All I’m saying is that, if you haven’t seen a trailer for La La Land before you see this movie... keep it that way. A certain shot in that trailer will telegraph a little ahead of time the kind of ending this movie has and... you wont’ want that. Every MGM musical I can remember from a certain period had a long, surreal and, for want of a better term, ‘arty’ sequence which would play just before the main plot elements resolve themselves. The movie makers use exactly the same tactic here but, well... there’s a point at the start of this sequence which you’ll be anticipating from the trailer and which will tell you everything you didn’t want to know about the ending which will be coming up later... which is a darned shame.

That being said, I’m not going to blame the director for that badly telegraphed ending... just the marketing people... and future generations won’t be lumbered with the trailer automatically before viewing like many people on the first release of a film are. So for future audiences this little wrinkle should iron itself out. At the end of the day, La La Land is a film that, although it starts of a little underwhelmingly, does build to a more immersive experience and there are enough visual movie references throughout the film to keep most cinephiles happy. It’s most important quality, though, is that it has a lot of heart and on that basis alone, not to mention the efforts of the hardworking cast and crew, I’d have to say that this one is definitely worth catching at the cinema if you fancy it. It doesn’t stand above many of the mesmerising musicals from Hollywood's furtive history but it can, with a pinch, stand alongside some of them and... that’s really no mean feat in today’s movie marketplace. It’s probably a good ‘date movie’ too so, you know, give it a go maybe.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Brit Israel

Jesus Christ Superstar
USA 1973
Directed by Robert Stigwood
Universal Zone B Blu Ray

“If you strip away... the myth, from the man,
you will see, where we all, soon shall be.”

You know, people who know me well know I could not be said to be a religious person. I have no problem with accepting the ‘possibility’ of a God in some form or another but in terms of religious belief... well, for all its variations and censorship issues, it’s just a man made concept designed to help keep the masses in order. Not my thing.

However, if you’ve never seen (or as importantly, heard) Jesus Christ Superstar because you think it’s in some way a religious treatment of the tale then you really need to think again, do yourself a favour and maybe read the rest of this review before you dismiss it. After all, how many pseudo-Religious epics do you know that have Romans wielding machine guns, drugs, prostitution and tanks rolling in as a calling card? Also, there’s a reason why members of the clergy were handing out flyers and trying to stop people going in to see various productions of this thing in its many forms, back in the 1970s... and I’ll get to the tone of that soon enough.

Jesus Christ Superstar started off life as a rock opera concept album by British composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber and lyricist Tim Rice. It was an amazing work in that it didn’t cow-tow to popular depictions of the roles in various religious texts over the centuries and instead looked at the myth (or however you want to describe it) as a down to earth study of the psychology of, primarily, the relationship between Jesus and one of his disciples Judas Iscariot. It very quickly became a sell out Broadway and London show based on that album and then went on, in 1973, to get the inevitable film adaptation by Robert Stigwood, with a screenplay by Melvyn Bragg.

Shot on location in Israel, the film starts with the overture, which brings some of the catchy themes into the foreground, as it pans through the ruins of a temple. As it really gets going we see a coach arrive. The players and crew, all in contemporary dress, exit the coach and get out, unload some equipment, get into costume and generally get ready for their unique version of the Passion play. The film then continues strongly with Carl Anderson’s Judas Iscariot, in an almost perfect left-of-centre composition, sitting on a rock watching them all set up while he starts singing the opening number, Heaven On Their Minds. This really sets the scene for the kind of alleyways this particular look at the legend goes, with hot lyrics in this number like “I remember when this whole thing began, No talk of God then... we called you a man” and “Well your followers are blind, Too much heaven on their minds...”

It’s a great song and the whole thing is done with panache, leading into great numbers like What’s The Buzz? and Everything’s Alright. Unlike some versions of the story, Webber and Rice have no problem calling a spade a spade when it comes to things like, for instance, Mary Magdalene being a former practitioner of the world’s oldest profession, as Judas is quick to point out with lines like “It’s not that I object to her profession... but she doesn’t fit in well, with what you teach and say.” Indeed, Mary, played here beautifully by Yvonne Elliman, is also quick to point out her history in what was one of many quite controversial lines in the show/album/film, contained in this case in her signature song I Don’t Know How To Love Him, when she sings “I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways...”

Jesus Christ Superstar is also not a version of the tale that’s afraid to show the cracks in the myth, or chinks in the armour of the religious pretension that binds it up. Indeed, when Judas criticises Mary’s use of 'fine ointments' on Jesus when it could have been used to raise money for the poor, Jesus, in actor Ted Neely’s wonderfully powerful vocals, sings a reply which sounds pretty much like something the current British Government would say... “Surely you’re not saying, we have the resources, to save the poor from their lot? There will be poor always, pathetically struggling, look at the good things you’ve got!” Hmmm, now who does that remind me of?

The whole thing is full of clever lyrics and little throw away lines that come back to haunt you later on as being really quite something special. Like the lines in the song This Jesus Must Die... “Singer 1: No riots, no army, no fighting, no slogans. Singer 2: One thing I'll say for him, ‘Jesus is cool!’.” And, of course, it really helps that a lot of the songs are just plain funky, catchy tunes with rocking guitars and amazing orchestrations going on with them. It’s a bit of a musical masterpiece, truth be told, and if Lloyd Webber had done nothing else, and I don’t like a lot of his stuff to be honest (although Cats and the original version of Tell Me On A Sunday are pretty amazing), then he would still deserve the kind of reputation he has these days on the strength of this one musical. The brilliance of both the lead characters in one song using the derogatory terms of each other’s names in the actual situation of them being what the words have come to mean, personified, is phenomenal...

Jesus: “You liar, You Judas!”

Judas: “What if I just stayed here and ruined your ambition. Christ, you deserve it.”

It’s pretty good stuff, when you reflect on it in the context of the song and in the moment. You really need to hear it to get the full weight though.

Anyway, this film also brings the visual elements ‘to the table’ to match the absolute cleverness of the lyrics and scoring. The syntax of those elements, often working with the score but sometimes cutting against them to push a point, is nothing short of brilliant and bits you would think an editor might not be able to get away with, work really well. For instance, following one set of dancers as they jump up and then actually freezing the frame for a beat before it cuts to another group of dancers in the same formation coming down. It’s great stuff and the freeze frame is rarely seen as a force for creative expression in film and TV but in this movie it really is used to great effect. Another, for instance, would be the throwaway chorus line in Hosanna, when the crowd sing “JC. JC. Won’t you die for me?” and the camera focuses and then freezes for a few seconds on Ted Neely’s face while the song continues, as if to highlight that this might be when Jesus begins to see the writing on the wall, as far as his final fate is concerned. It’s great stuff and, again, it shouldn’t work but it just does.

And slow motion, for goodness sake! It’s rare that you see slow motion used well in anything but here, Stigwood manages to use it in a way which actually enhances certain moments and, in some cases, brings the full weight of terror hiding beneath the lyrics and visuals to the foreground, despite the up tempo music which is underscoring the action. Mary dragged away as Jesus is being whipped to a phenomenal piece of scoring springs to mind as an example of this.

I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this one, I have to admit. The idea of bringing the contemporary elements with the coach, guns, tanks, planes etc is all great. The sobering commitment to not turn away from demonstrating the political agenda of Simon Zealotes who wants Jesus to “Add a touch of hate at Rome”. Even the sheer ‘weight of numbers’ as Jesus rejects the pleas of the lepers is actually quite overwhelmingly horrific, when you take a step back in your mind to think about it after the fact. Like I said, I’m not a religious person, but when Christ throws the pimps, prostitutes, money lenders, drug dealers and various trading stalls out of the temple, one has to think about modern churches and cathedrals like Canterbury and such like, which have cash exchanges and expensive gift shops residing within. You have to wonder, if a Christ figure did actually exist, what he’d think of all this going on now. I don’t think he’d be all that pleased with the idea that you can buy fudge and bookmarks in his alleged father’s name, to be honest. But I don’t think I’ll say more about that here.

So there you go. Not much more to say on this one other than it’s a bit of a masterpiece work... first as a concept album, then as a stage production (I remember seeing this when I was about seven years old in 1975... I think Paul Nicholas was doing it at the time) and then as this fabulous movie production. The visuals will have you spellbound and scenes like the sudden montage of religious crucifixion art suddenly popping up in the middle of a song will sober you up quick, even while the incredible musical score will still have you tapping your toes all the way through. If you’ve never seen or heard this one before and have been put off because you think it will be a preachy, religious experience... well, it certainly isn’t that and I’m sure many people will see it as the absolute opposite, actually. There are no miracles to be found in this version of the ‘story’ and no resurrection at the end... although there is a sequence which may or may not (you decide), take place in Jesus’ head as the angel of Judas sings the title number at him while questioning his judgement and actions. It’s good stuff. But don’t take my word for this one because it’s a pretty cool movie and you need to make your own mind up about it... and whether or not you want to see it, for that matter. I’d thoroughly recommend it and, frankly, it’s got some really cool guitar riffs and lyrics in this one. You know where I stand on this... it’s a work of art. And I like good art. Now where do you stand?