Stanley Donen (1954)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has the genuine vitality that Annie Get Your Gun so badly lacks: Stanley Donen’s direction is incomparably crisper than George Sidney’s but it’s the dancing that makes the difference and the film is unusual because the dance highlights feature men for the most part, and working men at that. Michael Kidd’s choreography is especially brilliant (and funny) in the acrobatic sequences at a barn-raising, somewhere in Old West Oregon, in which the backwoodsmen Pontipee brothers compete – then fight with – a group of townsmen. The highlight of the song score – music by Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul, words by Johnny Mercer – is, by some way, ‘Bless Your Beautiful Hide’. There are other jolly (‘Sobbin’ Women’) or pretty (‘Spring, Spring, Spring’) or unusual (‘Lonesome Polecat’) numbers but this isn’t a collection of immortal melodies. It is, though, an illustration of how witty lyrics, dance and direction can alchemise serviceable music. The screenplay by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich and Dorothy Kingsley (from a short story The Sobbin’ Women by Stephen Vincent Benet, which was based on the Ancient Roman legend of the rape of the Sabine women) is remarkably brisk: at the start of the film, the eldest Pontipee brother Adam strides into town, announcing he’s looking for a wife – he’s found one, a girl called Milly, before the day’s out.
Howard Keel’s straightforward affability is disarming at this stage – although, needless to say, the sexual politics of the piece don’t bear close examination and, even when Adam eventually learns his lesson and to love Milly (Jane Powell, in a good, nuanced performance), he’s never chastened enough to say sorry for his breathtaking chauvinism. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers also ends as expeditiously as it began with the sixfold shotgun wedding of Adam’s brothers and the town girls they kidnapped, some months back, from their homes one winter night. The six girls have a charming number (‘June Bride’) in their camisoles but, except for the amazingly wasp-waisted Julie Newmar, they don’t emerge as distinctive personalities. (The others are Betty Carr, Norma Doggett, Virginia Gibson, Nancy Kilgas and Ruta Lee.) It’s unfortunate that these actresses rather bear out Adam’s opinion that ‘one woman’s much like another’ – especially when the brothers, albeit with more material to work with, are more clearly distinguishable. They were a mixture of four dancers and two actors by profession. Russ Tamblyn is the youngest brother Gideon. He, along with Howard Keel, is noticeably more relaxed on screen than any of his siblings but Tamblyn has gymnastic skills too, and none of the other five brothers sticks out as either an actor who can’t really dance or a dancer who can’t act. For the record, Jeff Richards hadn’t danced before; Jacques d’Amboise (on loan from the New York City Ballet), Matt Mattox, Marc Platt and Tommy Rall hadn’t acted. Ian Wolfe plays the local clergyman, who is kept busy.
28 December 2011
