South Pacific

source: South Pacific

The most obvious flaw is its running time, it's very long. I think it's longer than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Unfortunately there were other flaws with the movie, so I can't overlook what I've just said. Another flaw was the colour filtering;the orange and yellow picture did get a bit distracting after a while, although the Pacific does look beautiful. Rossano Brazzi, whose singing voice was dubbed, looked wooden, but was he ever not wooden? I must say though, the dubbed singer did a marvellous job. However, there were a lot of truly excellent things about this movie. Mitsi Gaynor was a lovely lead, and she was wonderful in the musical numbers. She does get a little tiresome toward the end, but most musicals do have the same problem. But Juanita Hall was just perfect as Bloody Mary, I had absolutely no problem with her. The songs were absolutely outstanding. Rodgers and Hammerstein have given us some truly fantastic music scores, and South Pacific is among them. Ray Walston gives comic relief as Luther, I think, and the focus on the war was very endearing. The real star was the stunning choreography, that made the musical numbers so energetic. All in all, an entertaining, but flawed film, that is underrated in my opinion. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This is indeed one of the classics of musical theater but the use of the colored filters during many of the musical numbers was very distracting. I have this movie on laser disc and every time I watch it I want to choke whoever was responsible for giving the go ahead to this failed experiment. There they are in one of the most beautiful places in the world to shoot a movie and they use colored filters to take out most of the color during the best moments of the film. I also felt that with certain songs (particularly Mitzi Gaynor's) that there should have been considerably more dancing. Instead she sings 70% of most of her songs directly into the camera. Why did they hire a dancer for that role in the first place if they weren't going to have her dance?

Having read the original stage script for this show, I find the film version very disappointing. Much of the connective dialogue was axed for scenery shots and a rubber boat. Even the wonderful songs were hyphenated. Luciano Brazzi may be a 'hotty' for the ladies, but most of the time he wears a constipated scowl and does a lousy job of lip-syncing to songs. Mitzi Gainor is fabulous; a saving grace. The real culprit here is the director, Joshua Logan. From what I understand, an accomplished stage director, but it is very obvious he is lost in the film medium. Clunky staging and lonnnnnnng static shots abound. Emile crooning his love song of 'Some enchanted evening' to Nellie while his body language with his arm blocking her off makes me cringe. And don't get me started about those color filters! They actually work in the Bali Hai number, but later on in the love scene, well, as another reviewer wrote, "obviously, love is best served soaked in urine" There are good acting performances, however. Ray Walson, as Billis, is excellent, but a lot of his dialogue is axed and butchered, and that coconut bra stage dance is embarrassing, not funny. All in all, the movie is paced too slow, and with the connective dialog removed, has no flow. Too bad. This could have been a lot, lot better. I hope this movie will not stop people from seeing a good stage production of it. It is an excellent musical. On the other hand, if you like this movie, you're gonna LOVE a good stage showing.

Commence groaning as necessary for that summary, but at least prepare to be dazzled by R&H's most amazing, underrated musical of all time. The love story is between a spirited young Navy nurse and an older French planter who's afraid of losing anything. While that makes for some very groan-friendly moments, everything is forgiven when you peer through the weird, multi-colored lenses and pay attention to what's actually going on: a fantastic story (besides the romance) is unfolding. It's the story of a world where everything is changing, and the road down that way could not have been better. There's lots to love here, so don't be distracted by what you can use to maul this movie. The performances are great, the songs are probably the only songs I've never minded having looped in my head that weren't written by Richard O'Brien, and the beauty of the South Pacific is something that would be amazing to behold anywhere from a majestic silver screen to a tiny little kitchen-table TV set. As far as musicals go, this is one of my all-time favorites and should be the same for more people.

"South Pacific" would have us believe that it's indicting racism, but it pushes other kinds of racist beliefs. While it condemns bigotry, it still says that the people of the Pacific islands were a bunch of naive, backwards types who needed white people to civilize them. In other words, it was what white people wanted to think that anti-racism was. A real look at the south Pacific would look at how the US army forced the natives off the islands, carried out nuclear tests, and often returned the people to the islands, resulting in high incidences of birth defects and cancers among the Pacific islanders. It's no accident that in 1979, Palau passed the world's first anti-nuclear constitution. Among the cast, the only people who caught my eye were Ray Walston and the recently deceased Tom Laughlin. Ray Walston is known to recent generations as Mr. Hand in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". As a result of Jeff Spicoli's (Sean Penn) repeatedly coming to class stoned, Mr. Hand thinks that EVERYONE is high!* Tom Laughlin is best known as Billy Jack, the half-Indian Vietnam vet is forced to take the law into his own hands to defend the Indians from the ranchers. Point is, "South Pacific" is NOT a realistic representation of that region's history. *The best scene remains the one guy's fantasizing about Phoebe Cates.

This film is due to be re-released in 70MM for limited engagements next year. A new restored DVD is also being prepared by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment which includes scenes that were cut back in 1958. Somebody commented recently about the fact that "lap-dissolves" were used between many scenes in this film and this person obviously felt that this was some kind of fault. This was a common editing technique utilized in the past and was used usually to signify the passage of time. It is rarely used these days and obviously that person has not encountered this technique before and has assumed that it is a fault, but this is not the case. I am curious to know if the new transfer will feature the Broadway continuity(the Emile-Nellie Plantation scene before the "Bloody Mary" scene)? I hope it is an anamorphic transfer?

Spoilers herein. Many comments here strike me as rather peculiar -- in criticizing the distance between this film and the successful play as if filming the play would faithfully convey the play. I'm a very tough grader, and I rate this film high because: --The story is much edgier than any other musical I have seen: prejudice and war, and places each generatively in the other in a way that comes closer to intelligent comment than we might expect for the period. More effective than contemporary `drama.' It is hard to project one's self back in time to postwar afterglow, years before the civil rights movement. Pretty remarkable if you consider the context. --I love the cinematic vision, and yes, the use of color (and smoke and focus). It _is_ intrusive. It _does_ misdirect from the beauty of the setting. That's the point! Start with the self-conscious staging and lighting of Gauguin (`Where Are We Going?') and then distort the colors in precisely the same way! The point of the story is how defects in vision distort natural beauty (love, honor). The mapping of this to the Gauguin myth (which concerns the same matter) and the framing in an acutely self-aware camera is brilliant. The viewer is _supposed_ to be disturbed on occasion, folks. But this is placed in a context of staging that is carefully placed between reality (as much as tropical settings can be called real) and the literal stage. I cannot think of a better middle ground than this. We are reminded of the `real' stage by the show within the show. It's just all too intelligent an eye to not admire. --I do like these two women, probably for the same reason their careers never took off. Raw natural sex, not preening glamour. --I also like the subdued music. It clearly is not the go-for-the-rafters style one got in the broadway original, and that will put off some who should probably just listen to a record. Tastes differ, but I want to watch a successful film, and I think the toning down of the musical exuberance is a wise move. Much closer to a `Victory at Sea' feeling.

I did a significant amount of my courting to this film.It was on for so long at the "Astoria",Brighton that I must have taken at least 5 different girls to see it during its run.It may even have moved to another cinema in the town later,my memory is a bit hazy about that,but by the time it was taken off at the "Astoria" I had become a little more sophisticated and was going up to West End shows (15 shillings on "The Brighton Belle"),but I knew all the words to "There is nothing like a dame". Based on James Michener's "Tales from the South Pacific "it has some of Rodgers and Hammerstein's finest songs blended into a stirring tale of love,prejudice,redemption and heroism in wartime.Everything a 1958 audience could wish for,simple people that we were. The world is now a much smaller (and scarier)place,and what to us was exotic is now the everyday.We have lost our sense of wonder,become blase,what once evoked a gasp now merely evokes a yawn. To make any meaningful criticism of "South Pacific" we must regain our lost innocence. In 1958 American Culture was universally coveted.The American Way was the way everybody wanted to go.The idea that U.S. military personnel were ordinary decent human beings(now considered laughably naive) was widespread. Lt Cable,then a legitimate target for a mother with a beautiful daughter would now be a legitimate target for a suicide bomber. Of course the movie seems trite and laboured,disingenuous and clichéd in 2006 if viewed with nearly half a century of hindsight,but,please believe me,it wasn't always so. Rossano Brazzi was impossibly handsome and sophisticated,Ray Walston your wisecracking All-American noncom (homoerotic subtext?you're having a laugh,surely?).OK so John Kerr was a bit of a milquetoast but he was from Princeton N.J.And France Nguyen.......surely no child was ever more beautiful. I was a bit puzzled as to why Juanita Hall was dubbed because I had an L.P. at home titled "Juanita Hall sings Bessie Smith" and she sounded pretty good to me.But that was showbiz;they'd dubbed Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in "Carmen Jones" hadn't they? And Mitzi Gaynor,surely one of the most underrated song and dance women in movies."I'm as corny as Kansas in August......"brilliant. If I'm ever on one of those endless white beaches looking out to sea and shielding my eyes against the sun,I shall fully expect Nellie Forbush and her fellow nurses to come running through the surf towards me and then I'll know I've died and gone to heaven.

With musicals, people are very subjective. The film might be a decent one; the story might be pretty good, but if the viewer doesn't like the songs, he or she is not going to like the movie. That was the case here with me, which is why I changed the headline from "The Good & Bad" to "Likes & Dislikes." LIKES - Unique cinematography gimmick using orange or yellow filters....Mitzi Gaynor as " Ens. Nellie Forbush" was pretty and had some figure! Wow! A couple of songs everybody (even me) likes: "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair." Overall sets and production values pretty high. DISLIKES - Rossano Brazzi, as "Emile de Becque," didn't strike me as a great actor or singer; Juanita Hall's character, "Bloody Mary," gets really annoying after awhile. (I do like her name, though.)....at almost three hours, this is WAY too long.....Gaynor's character whimpers too much; Brazzi .....story now seems dated...overall did not like the songs.