Gil Hates Everything

The perils of movie soundtracks…

My head has just been compressed to the approximate size of a walnut by the singing voice of Giorgio Tozzi, the Met opera star who sang for the character of Emile. If you’ve never heard an opera star singing “Some Enchanted Evening”, with full dynamic range and directly into both your ears via headphones, then all I can say is, it’s an experience which leaves its mark on a man. There’s a lot of dubbing in this soundtrack. I think I’d rather have heard the actual show soundtrack. I particularly love the bad spatial effects – in the chorus numbers, some people’s voices are right there, others are remote.

However, in theory it shouldn’t matter too much, as they kept the songs – with, on the CD, none of those twelve reprises – even if they switched a couple of scenes around. So I ought to be able to tell you how the songs themselves make me feel. The answer is, thankfully somewhat less terrified than those of “The Sound Of Music” yesterday.

The overture is slightly interesting. At least in a movie you have more of an excuse for an overture, because you’re rolling the credits and probably showing some pretty long shots; on stage, just fucking get on with it! Here the orchestration vaguely reminds me of Vaughn Williams, which isn’t at all a bad thing.

But you have to wonder at the tolerance of people in 1949 (or 1958) for saccharinity. Let’s try something new and tackle every tune:

• “Dites-Moi”, argh, children singing cutely.
• “Cockeyed Optimist” is “I Have Confidence” ten years earlier – Nellie is somewhat like Maria in that respect, although she isn’t quite as tits-out bonkers.
• “Some Enchanted Evening” is quite nice, except when sung like this.
• “Bloody Mary”, bizarrely, sounds like it escaped from the soundtrack for “The Big Country”. Which is a mild recommendation, although don’t listen to the lyrics.
• “My Girl Back Home” is pretty pointless.
• “There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame” has a bunch of gruesome sexism, but that’s kinda (a) par for the course and (b) what the song’s about. At least it’s not a ballad.
• “Bali Ha’i” is horrible.
• “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” is a cute idea, and the repetition of the title works well – I’m pretty sure that “Really Sayin’ Something” is a ripoff of this song.
• “I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy” is musically harmless but lyrically clunky and therefore must die – in much of the song, every syllable is presented with equal weight, which you cannot fucking do; long lines have to be written and set with a lot of care and attention to emphasis.
• “Younger Than Springtime” is another grim ballad.
• “Happy Talk” – well, the way it’s sung in this context is pretty awful, it’s Magical Ethnic Character time, and it seemingly gets cut now and then because it’s in a dodgy pidgin-English stereotype, but this song has somehow managed to last… Captain Sensible (onetime member of punk band The Damned) covered it in 1982 with a notable lack of irony, and apparently Dizzee Rascal samples it, which I might need to hear.
• “Honey Bun”: just… no… this is a spoof comedy song sung within the show, but it doesn’t sound remotely funny.
• “Carefully Taught” – well this is slightly more like it, a lyric with some sharpness to it; it’s not exactly the only song about racism-is-bad that you’ll ever need to hear, but it’s an interesting angle… it’s just a shame the music is so perky here; it sounds like it was arranged by Gilbert & Sullivan.
• “This Nearly Was Mine” – nope, I got nothing here, I can’t get past the damn title, same as “Younger Than Springtime”.

Hammerstein again provides the occasional teeth-grindingly random lyric mixed in with some harmless and some effective stuff. He was clearly really into lists at this point, but a couple of the songs move through enough shapes to keep them interesting. The biggest problem is the overly ‘poetic’ phrases… I mean come on, “younger than springtime are you”? Do what? I’m not sure I could swallow characters singing like that during World War Two. The Napoleonic War, perhaps.

The overall effect is to make me think “There’s going to be an audience for this in 2010? Really? Really?” I can see why you would keep “Some Enchanted Evening” in the repertoire, it has a grand vision to it… and a couple of the lighter songs might raise a titter for first-timers, but for the most part its time has gone.

Random Panda awards “South Pacific” three out of ten pieces of bamboo, out of a vague tolerance for its perceived importance in the history of musicals.

(originally posted 2009)