Reviews by JxSxPx

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison plays like a lukewarm reheating of The African Queen, with most of the energy and wit comes through the performances of Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, and not John Huston’s weirdly sleepy direction. Normally a dark wit with a peppy sense of pacing and tone, Huston seems entrapped by the earnestness of this piece, and it’s straight up hokum that needed a slightly trashier take to give it some oomph.

But by this point Huston was an old pro, and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison stills works relatively well. It’s a handsomely made production, it’s just clearly a second or third-tier entry in his work. Much like the superior The African Queen, this film is primarily a two-hander of mismatched would-be lovers; this time around, a soldier and nun trapped on an island in the South Pacific during WWII as Japanese troops slowly encroach upon them.

Where the treatment of this story gets frustrating is in the ways the military and church as institutions requiring complete surrender to their ideologies get only surface-level exploration. The feverish erotic yearnings between the two of them are demurred, and I wonder what a possessed, traumatized catholic could have spun from this material. Huston was too much a rascal to dig deep into this fertile ground, and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison eventually settles into movie star watching.

This still leaves Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison with enough charms to recommend a viewing as Kerr and Mitchum deliver very fine work here. Kerr was a stronger all-around actor than Mitchum, and she fares better here with the thin material. She seemed to excel in roles that demanded her to repress her sexuality, although nothing comes close to ripe hysteria of The Innocents or the slow burn of Black Narcissus. Kerr and Mitchum develop a believable chemistry, and her lady-like charms mesh well with his alpha-male brusqueness.

It’s enjoyable, but lazily rendered with nothing approaching the specificity of the desert in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or the jungles in The African Queen. There are a few great scenes, some enthralling movie star charisma, but Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is more dutiful than anything else. It’s lightweight, it’s fun, but it doesn’t rival any of the canonized masterpieces in Mitchum, Kerr, or Huston’s various bodies of work.

I cannot muster up much in the way of poisoned-pen enthusiasm for this one, in fact, I cannot muster up much of anything for it. Cheaper by the Dozen sticks its three major stars in thankless roles, has them acting out less than amusing vignettes, and feels much longer than its meager 85 minutes.

This was once considered a crown jewel of family entertainment, and I suppose changing tastes have rendered it a dated, faded relic of a by-gone era. Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy are parents to a never-ending brood of overly precocious brats, with Jeanne Crain stuck in the blandest role of her career as the narrator and eldest daughter. The only time Crain gets to emote is when she understandably goes into lusty contortions over the dreamy Craig Hill throughout the film.

Other than that, there’s no true through line or plot to this, just a series of sitcom-level gags and stories strung together. A particularly unfunny one involves Mildred Natwick as a planned parenthood advocate becoming the joke of this ever-breeding family unit. Director Walter Lang is impersonal with his craft here, as if he knew he had a dead weight and tried his best to just power through. Webb and Loy, ever the consummate professionals, give their all, but we’ve seen Loy deliver perfect housewives in better films, and Webb’s monomaniacal behavior was put to better ends in Laura. Cheaper by the Dozen really lives up to its title, as there’s about a dozen short stories strung together to make this.

24-karat cynicism at its most entertaining. Chicago is a solid racehorse of a movie musical, and it feels more classic in its presentation than many of its contemporaries. It loads the cast up with movie stars (a mixed bag, but mostly successful), glittery costumes, and grandiose production numbers. It might skirt some of the deeper thematic material at play, but it gives us, as crooked lawyer Billy Flynn sings, the old razzle dazzle and has us begging for more.

Chicago tells the story of a dreamer with questionable talent but titanic ambition, Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger), who is arrested for the murder of her lying lover and goes on to some amorphous level of fame thanks to playing the media. Pushing the limits of the phrase “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” the merry murderess brushes up against the fallen vaudeville starlet Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the prison matron Mama (Queen Latifah), and her lawyer (Richard Gere) on her way towards the Jazz Age’s equivalent of reality star fame.

The relationship between Roxie, Velma, and Billy is the diseased heart of the piece, and if some of the acid from the Broadway show has been demurred, then it smartly tries to copy pieces of Bob Fosse’s style in translating it from stage to screen. Director Rob Marshall is no Fosse though, and a few of his editing choices are just frenzied and strange, lacking the organized chaos of Cabaret and All That Jazz. Still, Marshall borrows a few of the smarter ideas that Fosse created with Chicago, like the surgical removal of a bulk of the musical numbers from the narrative proper, and plucks them down into Roxie’s imagination.

The musical numbers work less as narrative propulsion then they do as running color commentary on the various characters and plot developments. A few of them are quite clever, like the brief moment in “All That Jazz” when Roxie mentally replaces Velma on stage, or when Billy turn the press and Roxie into puppets during the press conference setting of “We Both Reached for the Gun.” “We Both Reached for the Gun” is the wittiest part of the movie, in a movie filled with biting wit, as it lays bare the culpability of the press in turning murderers into folk heroes and transforming journalism into pulp fiction.

Those pulpy headlines are a battleground between Roxie and Velma, as they try to achieve fame, or infamy depending on how you look at it, through the press, and their ability to manipulate it into spinning highly melodramatic, largely fictional variations of their stories. Velma becomes something a pitiable figure, as she starts off as the big girl on the cell block before having to make fake-nice with her rival. This culminates in “I Can’t Do It Alone,” Velma’s solo ode to the joys of working in a duo, and Zeta-Jones’ dancing is an athletic wonder.

In fact, throughout Chicago Zeta-Jones steals the damn show with her long legs a few seconds away from a high-kick, her face framed in a flattering bob, and filling every frame with a dominating, lusty sexuality. She earned her Oscar by then end of “All That Jazz,” which is the opening number, and only solidifies her win by playing moments up for camp, high-concentrated bitchery, or a shocking tenderness in quiet moments. She’s the clear highlight of the piece, but she’s not alone in giving a great performance.

John C. Reilly as Roxie’s dim bulb husband Amos, a soul too pure for the world of this musical, makes for a perfect sad sack. His “Mr. Cellophane” is a moment of quiet emotional truth in a story obsessed with artifice and what we would call “branding” nowadays. Then there’s Renée Zellweger as Roxie, who is clearly not a dancer, but is surprisingly warm as a singer, and comes across as more vulnerable and hungry than I remembered previously. She sells the hell out of “Roxie” and “Funny Honey,” but her technical limitations are evidenced in “Hot Honey Rag,” as she’s editing to the point of being anarchic while trying to dance next to Zeta-Jones. Still, her rough edges work well with the character, who is more dreamer than talent.

Even better is Queen Latifah’s Mama, as she belts out a fun, double entendre filled number, “When You’re Good to Mama,” and she leans in to the queer aspects of the character. So does Christine Baranski as reporter Mary Sunshine, going full drag queen in her minimal screen time. Richard Gere is the lone star that left me a little cold. He’s fine in the dramatics, but his vocals are occasionally reedy, and his big dance number is all 101 steps and difficult, so he never gets his big, glory moment in a musical that gives them to everyone else. He does fine supporting work, but he seems a little out-of-element in his musical numbers at times.

At a little under two hours with fifteen musical numbers, Chicago is a conventionally filmed musical that works like gangbusters. No fancy trickery is needed for this story, but the discordant editing hurts at times more than it energizes. It’s still one of the best recent movie musicals, and one hell of an entertaining ride with a perfect sense of pacing, as it just keeps going at a pleasing rhythm. It captures the vibe of sex and moral sordidness that marked the Jazz Age, and that audaciousness makes Chicago great.

Heavily indebted to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ in its combination of reality and fantasy in exploring the artistic mind and temperament, All That Jazz is a reflective, energetic movie about a genius director/choreographer grappling with impending death. For such weighty material, All That Jazz feels incredibly alive, joyous even in its combination of self-examination and mordant humor.

Bob Fosse was one of the greats. Whether talking about choreography or directing, Fosse must be mentioned in the pantheon of world-class level masters of the craft. His film career got to a bumpy start with Sweet Charity, but his next feature, Cabaret, was a work of absolute greatness. He changed the musical not only on stage with works like Chicago and Pippin, but in the movies, with the game-changing editing tricks of All That Jazz and Cabaret.

Fosse turns his camera into a scan of his own brain, body, and soul. All That Jazz is littered with self-reflective choices, from storytelling beats, character relationships and interactions, to casting choices. Based on the time in Fosse’s life when he was editing Lenny and prepping Pippin for its Broadway debut, the film follows the trials and tribulations of Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), as he juggles his directing duties with his relationships with his ex-wife (Leland Palmer), his girlfriend (Ann Reinking), his daughter (Erzsebet Foldi), and the angel of death, Angelique (Jessica Lange).

Love and death are eternally twisting and contorting around each other, and Gideon/Fosse are constantly reflecting, or deflecting, their own mortality and moral culpability. Palmer’s Gwen Verdon stand-in has an equally complex relationship with the fictional Fosse, as she is starring in his new stage show as a mea culpa from him for his years of philandering. While Reinking is doing a spin on her actual life at the time, and her presence is no less complicated as she is one of the three muses who chastise and celebrate him during his hospital hallucinations.

The most obvious example of this moral and mortality, love and death geometry are the frequent cutaways to a hallucinatory mind palace where Gideon flirts, argues, and makes a case for his life with Angelique. Lange’s natural coolness is used to tremendous effect here as she mostly sits impassively and calls him out on his bullshit, appearing almost charmed and entertained by his continual copping out.

All That Jazz never asks for us to like Gideon, only to try and understand him even as he exhibits self-destructive and questionable behavior. He’s a fascinating, complex character, brought to fully lived-in life by Roy Scheider, in a performance that should have gotten him an Oscar but he was up against Dustin Hoffman’s more likable protagonist in Kramer vs Kramer. Scheider’s cracked handsome face can project a tremendous amount of emotional range and complexity with relatively little movement. He does a tour de force of minimalistic acting in “Bye Bye Life,” an extended death rattle in Gideon’s imaginary life.

For all of Gideon’s obsession with his mortality, given a not-so-subtle hint in his morning ritual of eye drops, Alka-Seltzer, Dexedrine, ever-present cigarette and daily dose of sex, turns his imaginary life into an Ingmar Bergman-like confessional. We trace his history, his penchant for mordant humor, and cathartic peace making with the important individuals in his life. For all the obsessive flirtations and ruminations on mortality, All That Jazz is the liveliest tango with death you’ll ever watch.

The sweaty bodies in geometric patterns and angular movements of Fosse’s choreography are all there, and his dancer orgy is one of the great extended dance sequences in cinema. Yet what really lingers in Fosse’s dark humor, or the way he undercuts his brilliant choreography with a punchline. After the erotic dance is completed, his backers are in a frenzy of complaints about its vulgarity. Or how he cross-cuts between his beautiful imagination, and his open-heart surgery. Or how he drops in a meeting with his backers learning that if he dies, and they let the show die, they’ll walk away with a fortune, in effect allowing Angelique to get a two-for-one special. But no joke is quite as dark as the final image, with Gideon’s body getting wrapped up in a bag as Ethel Merman belts out “There’s No Business Like Show Business” over the soundtrack. It’s a sick joke, but it’s also a brilliant bit of editing.

Viciously honest, All That Jazz is a masterpiece of the artist at work, at the end of his life, and a dazzling piece of eye candy. But there’s more to it than its sweaty, grimy, beautiful, and haunted surface textures, as the narrative is a bounty of rich, dense dramatic material. Fosse only made five films, two of which are pinnacles of the movie musical that completely changed how we viewed their editing and emotional tactile senses. This is the movie that Nine tried to be.

Inexplicably the highest grossing movie musical ever, Grease is a soulless, synthetic experience. There's no real personality here to speak of, just an indifference to style and substance. This is normally not a huge problem with musicals, as they make up for a lack of heavy substance with an abundance of style. Grease offers none of that.

I know I’m in the minority here, as Grease is insanely popular, a cult film that just won’t have the good taste to not infect itself upon our pop culture consciousness every chance it gets. There’s something understandable about its omnipresence though, as it’s entirely appeal is that of pure nostalgia. A scrubbed clean version of nostalgia in which the social, economic, and political realities is nowhere to be found, and only the outward lies of the images and memories of the era are presented.

But that still doesn’t entirely explain away its continued popularity. It is empty calories, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as plenty of beloved films are pure artifice and joyous, but Grease can’t even bother to populate its musical with actors who can sing, singers who can act, or numerous players who can dance. Many movie musicals are shining, happy artificial escapist entertainments, and they’re memorable for moments like flirtatious tap dance between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or Gene Kelly’s impressionistic ballets in his 50s output.

Grease doesn’t have any of that, as the editing cuts away to hide the fact that many of them can’t dance, but there’s no disguising the fact that they can’t sing. John Travolta is an obvious offender for this, as his entire vocal performance is a poor Elvis Presley impression, and those high notes in “Summer Nights” are painful. Olivia Newton-John sings marvelously, as well she should since that was her main profession, but she’s not an actress. Many of her scenes feature a blank-eyed stare, or a general sense that she’s looking just slightly off camera at someone giving her a thumbs up/down in response to her emoting.

Even worse is that Grease is supposed to be a teenager rock and roll movie, and all of the cast members are clearly ten to fifteen years older than their respective characters. Most of them are indifferent to performing, and it becomes distracting to watch someone pushing thirty playing a wide-eyed, horny eighteen-year-old. The only performance of any worth is Stockard Channing’s Rizzo, the most dynamic character in the entire piece. This is highly ironic as Channing is the oldest of the cast members, but she’s the only one who can breathe life into her role.

For a rock and roll pastiche, many of the new songs sound more like seventies soft rock than the appropriate era. The clearest example being “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” a guilty pleasure to be sure, but it wouldn’t sound out-of-place on a Debbie Boone album. Even worse is how lackluster so many of the musical numbers are. “Hopelessly” is supposed to be a swoony romance, and the staging isn’t terrible, but the direction is lacking in energy, wit, or any emotion. It torpedoes this number, but it’s not the only one.

Director Randal Kleiser turns a randy teenage musical into an antiseptic experience. Many of the hornier jokes are presented flatly, with no irony or camp or joy. You’re seriously going to just present a hotdog jumping into a bun during Danny’s lovesick number without a punchline? Or the “Hand Jive” that obviously looks like a pantomimed hand job, but it filmed as straight-faced as possible. There’s no personality to Grease, and when you strip away much of the bawdy humor you strip away something central to the piece. In spite of this limp, smile-plastered tone, only the veteran players (Joan Blondell, Sid Caesar, Frankie Avalon, and Eve Arden among them) leave a positive lasting impression. It doesn’t matter how much I rail against this dumb, lumbering thing, as its promise of eternal summer optimism will continually be eaten up. If Rydell High is where you want to hang out for two hours, I won’t stop you. But you can find me at the Kit Kat Club.

I came across Cabaret the first time at a highly formative time in my life. I was around 11 or 12, and I found it on cable. Clearly, I didn’t understand every single nuance, yet the content spoke to me on a very deep level. As time has gone on, Cabaret has only solidified in my mind as the obvious choice for greatest movie musical ever made.

This isn’t your typical musical, as it takes place in a very recognizable real world, with all of the musical numbers mostly kept to the Kit Kat Club, and the various musical numbers providing diegesis commentary. Then there is the ambiguity of the ending, which could almost be read as defiant and hopeful if it weren’t for the pan across the crowd in the finale revealing an audience comprised of Nazi youth.

Taking place at the exact time when the Weimar Republic was ending and the Nazis were gaining more power and traction in German society, Cabaret lives up to Sally Bowles’ “divine decadence” philosophy of life. Presenting a society of corrosion and perverted sexuality, with Bob Fosse keeping a cool distance from the proceedings. Other musicals are easier to swallow because they’re warm and inviting, they’re wholesome and filled with emotional uplift, but Cabaret stands in opposition to them.

Much like Christopher Isherwood’s impassive, documentary-style writing in The Berlin Stories, Cabaret is made up of acutely realized details and character developments. Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories are filled with memorable characters, and many of them are translated from page-to-screen with great success, but none quite as brilliantly as Sally Bowles.

In the novel (and stage show), Sally Bowles is an obviously untalented drug addict, and she’s not quite that here. Part of the change in character comes from Liza Minnelli, a thoroughbred performer with a raft-shaking voice and phenomenal dance talent. This version of Sally is all artifice, a commitment to exuberance, life’s many thrills, and an addiction to nihilistic pleasures of living solely in the moment. She makes “Cabaret” into both a declaration of self, and a defiant anthem of desperation. This Sally is no less self-destructive, but if she could get her act together she could become the top-billed shining star she dreams of. That’s never going to happen, and when the smiling mask cracks, Minnelli reveals the swirling, tortured, ugly emotions forcing Sally into chasing joy at all costs. Hers is one of the best Oscar wins, ever.

Sally’s psychic torment in pursuit of merriment is a microcosm of much of the film, with the Kit Kat Club being the diseased soul reflecting back what she’s showing us. Led by Joel Grey’s grinning imp of an emcee, he leads us through not only the cabaret, but through the story, as the film constantly cuts back to the Kit Kat Club and the emcee either performing or introducing a performance. He becomes something of a twisted narrator and guide. He’s also the first major character we meet in the opening number, “Willkommen,” which is something of an omen of things to come.

That opening number reflects back on the cosmopolitan nature in its death throes of the era. These numbers don’t necessarily propel the story forward, so much as they act as running commentary stripped from the storytelling. “Mein Herr” is Sally’s first number, and not only does it introduce important aspects of her character, but it hints at the demise of her relationship with Brian (Michael York) one scene after they’ve been introduced to each other. “Two Ladies” makes explicit the ménage a trois between Sally, Brian, and Max (Helmut Griem), and it’s also an absolute laugh riot of lascivious and bawdy humor. And “If You Could See Her” ends with a punchline about a person being Jewish right when the Nazis are appearing more and more often after only having been on the periphery for so much of the film. It also makes the film audience a duplicitous member of the laughing cabaret audience.

The one musical number to not take place in the Kit Kat Club, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” is a haunting, waking nightmare. As a blond Nazi youth begins singing, the crowd in the beer garden is met with a tense unease at first, before the crowd gives in and starts singing along. The sequence ends with Brian and Max driving away while the entire beer garden stands in solidarity with the Nazi youth, and it is terrifying. It’s also a perfect symbolic gesture for the rising antisemitism of the era.

All of this is so memorable because of Bob Fosse’s expert direction, which is electric in energy and unique in editing choices. Most musicals edit on the beats of the score, or to capture the energy of the dancers. Fosse and David Bretherton’s editing is dynamic and rhythmic, but also completely original. Chicago is obviously indebted to Cabaret’s cross-cutting techniques and surgical removal of the musical numbers, but it can’t compete with the greatness on display here.

Cabaret ends just as Nazism is taking its stranglehold on the country, and these sexually amorphous, gender-bending, and deviant characters will either be flushed out of the society or escape of their own volition. Glamorously broken, this is a film that presents a subterranean group in its final cries of despair, masked as they are by subversion of emotional and political truths. It’s at times hard to explain the sheer depth of feeling and artistry so evident when you watch Cabaret, but it’s one of the greatest films we’ve ever produced.

As a star vehicle, Funny Girl is top of the class, as an actual movie, Funny Girl is a great star vehicle. It’s a towering monument to Barbra Streisand’s reading of Fanny Brice, and there’s more than a hint of Barbra in Fanny and Fanny in Barbra. Not enough good things can be written about Streisand’s performance, which is still her finest hour as a movie star, but this doesn’t cross over into the rest of the film.

Like many other musical biographies, Funny Girl plays fast and loose with the accurate details of Brice’s life and romance with Nick Arnstein. The first half, in which the romance takes a backseat to Brice’s career drive, ego, and indomitable vocal talents, is the clearly superior one, as the second half is leaden romantic melodrama. There’s visible sparks between Streisand and Omar Sharif, but Sharif is left without much of a character to play and whole chunks of narrative and character development feel left out post-intermission.

There’s a whole mass of supporting characters, but none of them are developed. Rose Brice and her friends play out like old world Jewish caricatures, there for a few laughs and broad accents but nothing more. Walter Pidgeon gets one or two memorable moments as Florenz Ziegfeld before he’s thrown overboard to keep the spotlight on Streisand. Someone must have decided that Sharif was handsome and charming, and that was enough development for his character, because that’s about all we get.

So what’s left is Streisand, and the songs, which are a mixed bag but fall into the memorable territory more often than not. It’s easy to forget just how natural a comedienne Streisand can be, given her self-serious and driven nature. Those qualities lend themselves well to Fanny, but Streisand also knows how to play Fanny for moments of intelligence and as a screwball heroine. Think of the range she exhibits in between the comedic “I’m the Greatest Star” and the proudly defiant “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” or the pathos she exudes from “My Man” and the flirtation of “You Are Woman, I Am Man.”

Eventually one has to concede that Funny Girl is simply a 160 minute Streisand special, and it is better if you approach it that way. Naturally the film comes to a close with Streisand really singing and acting the hell out of “My Man,” and it’s a thrilling moment in which she reaches beyond merely acting into some strange level of performing. The serendipity of the character and actress meld beautifully here, and throughout. Shame that the rest of the movie couldn’t match, as it is merely backdrop to her perfectionist, dominating persona. Still, for all of its flaws, it’s one hell of a star vehicle.

The dirty little secret of theater nerds is that the stage show version of The Sound of Music is not very good. The movie isn’t just an improvement, the movie is practically an entirely different beast. It doesn’t just restructure the narrative, it completely rethinks some musical numbers, modifies the plot, and, of course, has Julie Andrews leading the way. It all adds up into something warm and fuzzy, heavily sentimental, and a prime example of popular entertainment done right.

That’s not to say that the film version of The Sound of Music is without problems, because it has several, but it’s almost futile to swim against the tide. Yes, Christopher Plummer frequently looks like he’s counting down the minutes until he can go bar hopping, and the kids are devoid of much in the way of personality, emerging as a seven-person legion of sugary sweet cherubs. But it just doesn’t matter.

It’s impossible, foolhardy even, to fight against the score, the scenery, and Julie Andrews’ life-giving performance. Those three things are enough to guarantee any movie for greatness and memorability, but there’s still something hard to define that keeps us returning to The Sound of Music.

At the time of release, the New York Times dubbed it “romantic nonsense and sentiment,” they meant it as a criticism, but I bring it up as a strength. It’s irresistibly warm and sweet, like being wrapped up in your favorite childhood blanket. Even my cynical, twisted soul is enchanted by this, so it’s obviously doing something right. This is after all a story which bifurcates along its awkward two halves, the first sees a nanny fighting between the lord and her loins, and the second is a tension-filled escape from the Nazis.

How does it successfully employ from the first half to the second? Look at Ernest Lehman’s screenplay which introduces the Nazi element as a slowly growing threat throughout the first half, then has it taking over after the intermission. It also presents a Maria that is already battling with her decision to join the nunnery, so her eventual choice to stay or go has the idea planted with the romance being the push she needed. Lehman also wisely drops some of more unnecessary bits, like numbers from Georg, “Uncle” Max and the Baroness.

Then there’s Julie Andrews’ performance as Maria, another memorable nanny role just a year after winning an Oscar for Mary Poppins. She’s completely different than that role, as she believably places hints of mischief and internal conflict in her novitiate. There’s also that crystalline, incomparable voice of hers wrapping around the Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics and melodies. Her opening spin through the hills is a memorable movie image, but she’s just as great leading the von Trapp children through the Austrian streets while teaching them “Do-Re-Mi” or consoling them with “My Favorite Things.” She’s radiant, and much of the film rests upon her delicate shoulders.

While the kids and Captain von Trapp aren’t the best, Andrews gets able support from a series of character actors, mainly Peggy Wood and Eleanor Parker. Wood’s Mother Superior is the kind of kind, supportive, understanding authority figure that only exists in fiction, especially nuns. While it’s obviously not her singing voice, she still sells the drama of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” of which there is much to sell. Parker is pure glamour as the Baroness, a slightly pitiable figure that’s supposed to be a villain I suppose, but Parker refuses to make her one-note. Richard Haydn gets to play the clown as Max Detweiler, a purely comic creation in a drama heavy piece.

And the natural beauty of Austria goes a long way towards selling The Sound of Music as an important event. Would moments like “I Have Confidence” or the reprise of “Edelweiss” be half as memorable without the location footage? We all want to spin around on the mountains while singing “The Sound of Music” thanks to that opening shot, which is bursting with nature’s loveliness.

If it feels a bit like a sugar-high, that’s because it is. Yes, it’s old-fashioned, it’s a crowd-pleaser from a time when those movies were actually built upon a strong foundation and not just empty calories. The Sound of Music is timeless, an escapist film about escaping has rarely been this watchable, entertaining, or nice. You’re more likely to hear my vibrato squealing along to “The Lonely Goatherd” than ever say anything too mean or critical about this film.

Some stories are surprisingly sturdy, they’re bulletproof entertainments built upon solid foundations and strong characters. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion transmutes across genres into this Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady, one of the titans of musical theater. This 1964 film version is a crown jewel of director George Cukor’s consistently elegant and graceful body of work, and the film that finally nabbed him the Oscar.

Even at three hours long, My Fair Lady is one breezy, fun piece of mainstream movie-making. Pity that so many can’t view the film for what it is and not for the film that wasn’t made. For many, My Fair Lady’s greatness is skewered to favor a decades old grudge that Julie Andrews was passed up in favor of movie star Audrey Hepburn, except no bad blood ever existed between the stars. Yes, Andrews would have nailed the role by transferring her Broadway success to the big screen, but the movies are an entirely different business, and Andrews was an unproven commodity at the time. Don’t cry for her though, she appeared in Mary Poppins this same year, snagged an Oscar, and went on to form her own iconic career.

Which leaves us with this well-known story of two titanic egos sniping at each other, and it’s one of the great movies. By this point George Cukor was a veteran director, and his work here is that of a master at the height of his powers. He doesn’t place the musical in a recognizably realistic world, nor does he place it in a heightened artificial reality, instead mixing the two into a unique result. We view the story from a remove, as famous scenes like the Ascot Gavotte or the grand ballroom that feature the various players posing for the camera before moving about their normal business. The effect is that of a moving fashion shoot, and it provides an already stylish movie with enough flourishes and icing to satisfy several people’s sweet tooth.

Then there’s the ensemble that Cukor has assembled, each of them turning in work ranging from the solid to the sublime. Rex Harrison reprises his Broadway role to great success here, refusing to blunt the edges or snarl of his misogynist Henry Higgins, and he creates great adversarial chemistry with Audrey Hepburn. Wilfrid Hyde-White is consistently daft, yet endearing as Colonel Pickering, Higgins’ sidekick and Eliza’s benign helper. Gladys Cooper is nicely haughty as Mrs. Higgins, and her sisterly solidarity with Eliza throughout is nicely felt, especially a late scene in which she snaps at Henry to behave and takes Eliza’s side in the argument. But one supporting player clearly steals the show, and that’s Stanley Holloway as Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza’s conman father with a penchant for purple verbal prose. Holloway is clearly tapping into the satirical roots of the play, and every time he appears the energy in My Fair Lady increases.

Now let me go to bat for Audrey Hepburn’s sublime portrayal of Eliza Doolittle. Yes, her dubbed singing is a large knock against the film as her voice and Marni Nixon’s vocals are utterly incompatible, yet Hepburn has no one to double her dramatics, and she nails every nuance of Eliza. After years of playing coquettes and impish pixies, or entirely refined ladies, Hepburn is clearly enjoying the wild antics of her Cockney flower girl in the first half. She throws herself into these situations with wild abandon, and her Eliza is a spitfire, a stubborn, prideful woman who wants better for herself by moving up the class ranks through improved speech. Her ego is no less gargantuan than Higgins is, and her consistent verbal putdowns and needling remarks to him are quite pleasurable in slowly deflating his bloated ego. And Hepburn is completely heartbreaking in a scene where Eliza returns to the streets where she used to sell flowers, now foreign to her and her posh accent.

It’s deeply refreshing how so much of the plot revolves around Eliza’s decision and wants. Higgins bets Pickering her could train a girl like her to pass off as a grand dame in a matter of months, but Eliza takes the initiative to set the plot rolling forward. She continues throughout, never playing the damsel-in-distress or second fiddle to any of the male characters, balking every time they treat her like a prop or less-than. Eliza’s ambitions and dreams are the backbone of My Fair Lady, and to reduce it to a love story is a disservice to her. Yes, the ending is weird here, but does anyone really believe that Eliza is acting out of anything other than her own self-interest and self-preservation in returning to Higgins? Never forget the maniacal glee with which she belts out “Just You Wait,” during which Hepburn’s natural singing voice peaks through.

My Fair Lady’s score is one of the impeccable creations in musical theater. Ever song is a classic, and if you don’t believe me let me rattle off a few of the songs featured: “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Without You,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” That’s only six of the roughly twenty-five songs in the score. Each of them is a perfect blend of character development, plot business, humor, and emotional engagement.

Class warfare has never looked as sumptuous as it does in My Fair Lady. It keeps much of Shaw’s smart, funny criticism of the British class system, and only adds in a series of wonderful songs, beautiful costumes, and gorgeous sets. This is a triumph, the kind of film that shouldn’t need a long dissertation or defense, it’s freaking My Fair Lady! After this deliciously tart pastry of a film, the movie musical would begin to deflate, the victim of increasing budgets and decreasing ticket sales. My Fair Lady is one of the final, elegant swan songs of the era, and a great movie for all-time. 

Am I going to be that asshole that dissents on Mary Poppins being a canonized great? Well, yes and no. I think Mary Poppins is a great movie – in parts. The pacing is all over the place, and nearly a third of the film is occupied by the boring story involving Mr. Banks and the bank. Yet there’s still quite a bit to recommend here, like the stretch from “A Spoonful of Sugar” through “Stay Awake,” which is the longest sustained bit of greatness, joy, and weirdness in the film.

There’s actually a large amount of weirdness and quirk in Mary Poppins, but only some of it is fruitful and humorous. If they removed Reginald Owen’s Admiral Boom and Ed Wynn’s hysteric Uncle Albert from the final film, things would only improve dramatically. Admiral Boom’s running gag of firing a cannon off his roof every day at 8am and 6pm is just not funny.

And a great chunk of the first thirty minutes is given over to the parents, which wouldn’t be a problem if they were engaging characters, but they’re not. Mr. Banks is a working stiff, properly English to the core, and, obviously, in dire need of a lesson in what matters the most in life. Mrs. Banks is a daffy suffragette, who cries for women’s rights on one hand, and on the other proudly states how happy she is that her husband handles things so she can’t bungle it. These aren’t characters, they’re walking punchlines. At least Mrs. Banks gives us “Sister Suffragette.”

Much better is the entirety of Dick Van Dyke’s dual roles as Bert and the elderly banker. Yes, that attempt at a cockney accent is atrocious, but he’s having such a fun, whimsical time all by himself that it can be forgiven, even ignored. Bert’s a jack-of-all-trades, and his reoccurring appearances in various odd jobs always provides a bit of warmth, acting as something of guide for the audience in the earliest scenes as an introduction to the world of the film. His chaste romance with Mary is endearing, and he can evidently sense her presence as exhibited in one of the first scenes. Acting as a one-man-band, Bert goes around making silly songs about the people watching him, when he suddenly freezes up, notices a change in the wind, and smiles to himself about “something” coming/happening that’s been there before.

These subtle nods to Mary Poppins’ witchy powers and being keep a tiny bit of darkness creeping underneath the sentimental, placid surfaces. While she is sweet and gentle, there are flashes of cold steel in Julie Andrews’ performance. These flashes are hints of just how all-powerful and magical her nanny really is, and that she’s a witch who could just as easily burn London to the ground as she could enchant you with an afternoon spent in an animated chalk drawing. Andrews keeps some of the pricklier edges of P. L. Travers creation as Uncle Walt goes about the business of bluntly rounding off everything else to make it child-proof.

Having said that, all of the good in Mary Poppins is firmly found in Andrews and Van Dyke’s performances, and their quirky chemistry together. “Jolly Holiday” is an extended flirtation between them, and they prove a case study in opposites attracting. Mary is reserved, even her dancing is more prim and proper than Bert’s rubbery kicks and wild flailing, but they work so well together. Plus, we get to watch Van Dyke dance in unison with a group of animated penguins, and that’s just damn charming. Two numbers stand out with them leading the way, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Step in Time.”

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is the most famous scene in the entire film, and with good reason. Not only is a fun bit of nonsense, but it allows for a bit of levity to exude from the typically prim Poppins as she engages with a series of animated characters. In a film not wanting for joy, this scene in particularly is a ribald, riotous colorful blast. While “Step in Time” is just one hell of a dance number. It perhaps goes on a bit too long, but it’s a series of energetic jumps, kicks, leaps, and spins that provides the single highest moment of dance in the film.

A general sense that Mary Poppins is a little bloated at times cannot be escaped, yet it’s still generally a light, weird affair. By the 60s, a musical was a well-oiled enterprise and Mary Poppins, even for all of its flaws, is a very good original movie musical. The special effects are charmingly lo-fi and tactile to modern eyes, the Sherman Brothers songs are generally strong across the board, and the two leads are just fantastic. There’s a whole depth of empathy and feeling here, and in its own imperfection it is no less indelible.