Movie Review #12: South Pacific - Rodgers and Hammersmonth

South Pacific (1958)
Director: Joshua Logan
Writer(s): Paul Osborn
Starring: Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr

History lesson: after the successes of Carousel and State Fair, Rodgers and Hammerstein decided to make their most ambitious musical yet. Allegro opened on Broadway in 1947, a minimalist production intended to reveal the plight of the average man in the ever-changing world. To date, Allegro is perhaps the most divisive musical ever. Some critics think it is one of the best the medium has ever produced; others consider it a pretentious, slipshod mess. I'd love to offer my own thoughts, but there is no Allegro movie for me to review. Also, since Allegro bombed at the ticket office, few productions and revivals have been seen since. Thus, I have not seen it. The financial failure of Allegro was such that Rodgers and Hammerstein went back to the drawing board and decided to create a more conventional musical. The result was 1949's South Pacific, made into a movie in 1958.

Critical appraisal: South Pacific isn't very good.

My opinion on this matter doesn't so much extend to the actual 1949 musical as it does to the 1958 movie. But, being honest with myself, I would have been unsatisfied with South Pacific barring even the flawed film-making. The songs just aren't as powerful or memorable as those of Carousel or even Oklahoma!. The characters are not engaging. The story and themes are neither groundbreaking nor timeless. Throw into this several moronic filming decisions and South Pacific feels as if a manipulative, monotonous, and malodorous movie.

South Pacific takes place on an island in the South Pacific (duh) during WWII. United States Marines and navy men have a base on site, on which they have a lack of women. A new officer arrives in Lieutenant Cable (John Kerr), sent as part of a spy mission against the Japanese forces. He seeks aid from a local, refugee Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi), who refuses the offer due to his trying to make a new life with an American nurse, Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor). But problems emerge, as Emile has two half-Polynesian children from a previous marriage, and Cable falls in love with a Polynesian girl. Nellie, raised in the then-racist Little Rock, Arkansas, has severe difficulties with Emile having those children. Various hijinks and adventures commence in the islands of the South Pacific.

Now, South Pacific is usually cited as one of the musicals that dared tackle the issue of racism. It was a pioneer of its time, being one of the first, if not the first, to say racism is wrong. The musical number, "You Have to Be Carefully Taught," is about the systemic development of racism in America. This would be a tremendous accomplishment in South Pacific's favor, if not for its poor development. By the end of South Pacific, the only real message is "racism is wrong." We already know this. Now, more tasteful movies like Do the Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and The Defiant Ones challenge us with the racism plaguing America; they draw out the problem and explore the causes and consequences. When characters ultimately reject racism, they have grown significantly. The characters in South Pacific turn from racist to non-racist within the span of a single jump cut. Furthermore, I'm skeptical of whether or not South Pacific was really the best context to examine issues of race. Perhaps anti-Polynesian tendencies were far worse than I realize, but it seems as if discrimination against the Japanese would probably be a more daring starting point.

Not to mention, any attempt to salvage this message is ruined by the film's... disturbing undertones. Lieutenant Cable falls in love with the daughter of one of the natives. The girl looks as if she is under 16 years old, while Cable is clearly over 25. The music number they share is called "Younger than Springtime." They make love in their very first scene, without even having a conversation prior to this! By the second act, these two want to marry! I know the point of this story is to break down the race barrier, but the AGE barrier between the two is a big problem. I didn't want these two to get together. I wanted Cable to be put under a restraining order. Oh, and the girl has no purpose other than being a telos for Cable. Brilliant.

Granted, it is not as if Cable is much better. Cable is Curly without the singing voice; he has no purpose other than being a knight in shining armor. Rossano Brazzi does a fair enough job as de Becque, easily the best character in the show, but I'd be lying if I said an Italian playing a Frenchman wasn't distracting as heck. His French accent is terrible, and there's no mistaking the Italian origins of his baritone. Mitzi Gaynor plays Nellie with some spunk, but her character comes across as remarkably superficial. The woman turns on a dime. Her racist tendencies turn her away from Emile briefly, but the mere act of giving her flowers is enough to bring her back. Nellie basically contains every negative female stereotype rolled up into one package: total domestication, inability to function outside of her relationships with men, ditziness, and emotional hysteria. The only other character I had a soft spot for was Ray Walston as Luther Billis, a snide soldier who manipulates his officers in order to get what he wants. He did bring up quite a few laughs, so I'll give credit where it is due.

But the music must be able to save the movie. After all, Oklahoma! suffered from bad character work, but the music was able to redeem it. Sadly, that's not the case. "Some Enchanted Evening" is unimpeachable, but nearly every other song in the movie feels shallow and rushed. "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" are annoying and even somewhat sexist. Some of the numbers ("A Cockeyed Optimist; "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught) are barely two minutes long: not enough to leave an actual impact. Either tons of music was cut out for time, or Hammerstein didn't write enough lyrics to leave a sufficient impact. The result is "drive-by musical theatre": the movie comes along and sprays us with songs that have no real purpose. South Pacific favors quantity of songs over quality of songs. Plus, they happen in such quick succession that the music almost becomes background noise.

And don't get me started on the backgrounds. During some of these musical numbers, the studio decided to drastically change the color saturation on the film. There are points where the screen turns almost completely yellow. I'd love "Some Enchanted Evening" so much more if I could actually see Emile singing it. It would be one thing if this only happened during the songs, but entire scenes are shot in the same yellow filter. At other points, the studio went the cheap way out, adding in a blue filter instead of shooting a scene at night. That is not symbolic; that is lazy. Directors can get away with those techniques on a stage, but movies demand effort.

That is what South Pacific lacks: effort. The characters, with only a few exceptions, are lazily written. The songs are thrown in and are of little consequence. The cinematography is horrible. The sound mixing is amateur. The themes are tepid. The pacing is inconsistent. South Pacific is a bad movie. I'm sorry, R&H, but this film gets a complete thumbs-down.

Recommendation: Watching South Pacific is a movie experience I wholly regret. It's something I wouldn't want to subject anyone else to. If you are a die-hard Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, I guess there's no stopping you, but for anyone else, this is a definite skip. I will say, though, I would not be opposed to go seeing a stage production of this. Maybe the actual, physical show is better. Fingers crossed.

I give South Pacific 2.4 stars out of 10.