State Fair – 60th
Anniversary Edition
Picture: C+/B-
Sound: C+/B- Extras: B Films: B-
State Fair began as a non-Musical
Comedy/Drama with in 1933 Comedy at Fox with Janet Gaynor & Will Rogers,
but when the studio wanted to do the film in color in the mid-1940s, they
decided to turn it into a Musical. Best
of all, they managed to get Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to do the
music based on their amazing past work and the resulting 1945 film became the
only Musical they did directly for the motion picture screen. Rogers was still around when the studio
wanted to remake the film for widescreen and stereophonic multichannel sound,
so unsatisfied with the result of the previous film, he wrote new additional
songs for the resulting 1962 film with the wild combination cast of Pat Boone,
Ann-Margaret, Bobby Darin, Pamela Tiffin, Alice Faye, Tom Ewell and Wally
Cox. Even after his death, the work was
upgraded with originally unrelated R&H songs for the stage since. Fox has issued the two film musicals in the
new 60th Anniversary Set and it is one of their best
movie-lovers and historically well-rounded sets.
Maybe the 1933 film will be issued later, and from the
clips shown in the documentary on DVD 1, likely needs more restoration. First, to deal with both films. The 1945 film is still considered definitive
by many, though it is not perfect, yet it is a grand production for the time
and shows what a major like Fox could achieve when they decided to back up a
project. At the time, they went all out
with the three-strip Technicolor production and it was a critical and
commercial hit, though it has always lived in the shadow of the Vincente
Minelli films it tries to emulate.
However, as we have seen in the past, sometimes imitators when done well
can be entertaining. The songs are
performed with great energy and enthusiasm, another reason for its success.
Outside of any imitation, it has not dated as well simply
because of the obviousness of the sets alone, but the color and other positive
aspects of the production design combine to give it a certain charm. Add the uniqueness of the productions at each
studio in the Classical Hollywood era, and you have a key classic in the genre
from the 1940s. In it, there is the
daughter (Jeannie Crain) who is about to go form loneliness to a near love
triangle while her mother (Vivian Blaine) is preparing to compete with her
chili recipe while father (Will Rogers) prepares Bluebird for his own
contest. Bluebird is a pig dad cherishes
very much.
The 1962 remake has Pamela Tiffin in the love triangle
with Boone and Darin, plus competition from Ann-Margaret. Alice Faye is the mom, while Ewell gets stuck
with the pig. Many purists and die-hard
fans of the old version write this film off as a mistake and when it did not
fare too well at the box office, many may have thought that might be the end of
R&H hit films when it was not.
Instead, the big CinemaScope production opens up the film to make it
more like a stage musical the way the Todd-AO 70mm Oklahoma (1955) was,
which was a monster hit. The film has
camp value the 1945 version could not hope to have, some of the casting is as
good as the original and the production design is better than it may get credit
for. The new songs are interesting and
the critique of big business and commercialism creeping into the title mom and
pop tradition is interesting, funny and honest without being preachy. Fox Scope productions like Will Success
Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) had the same sly humor. The racecar angle is especially funny,
because state fairs always have formula car races?
No matter their successes or failure, limitations or
flaws, both are worth a look. This is
even more valid if you watch them back-to-back, which is particularly
recommended to filmmakers so they can get a new angle of what does and does not
work for the different aspect ratios.
Walter Lang directed the first and was able to handle both frames well,
while the great actor Jose Ferrer shot the latter. The original was shot in 1.33 X 1 by
cinematographer Leon Shamroy, A.S.C., in real three-strip Technicolor, where
you had to shoot three different colors of monochrome to come up with the
print. In a majority of the shots, you
can see how good the color is, though the DVD cannot totally deliver the impact
of how great a dye-transfer print looks.
The remake was shot by William C. Mellor, A.S.C., and by the mid-1950s
as owners of CinemaScope, Fox decided to launch their own lab under the now
well-known DeLuxe name. That color can
be great and has its moments here, but was not as rich or enduring as
Technicolor. Nevertheless, this
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image has the usual distortions inherent to
the older CinemaScope process, but this is a better-looking film than you would
expect. We look forward to the Blu-ray
versions, though the 1945 film will suffer by being stuck in the middle of a 16
X 9 TV frame.
The sound is Dolby Digital throughout both discs. The first has 2.0 Stereo and Mono options,
with the Stereo having a slight edge.
The remake has Dolby 4.0 based on the original magnetic stereo tracks
(three behind the screen, plus one monophonic surround, which is a step above
Dolby Pro Logic) is not bad, while both have 2.0 commentary tracks recently
recorded. They perform as well as could
be expected.
Extras on the DVD 1 include a commentary by Richard
Barrios and Tom Briggs, fans, historians and even participants in the
ever-evolving history of State Fair, while Pat Boone himself does a
commentary for the remake on DVD 2. No,
Mr. Boone does not speak throughout, which is usually irritating, but his words
are “fascinating’ and a co-star from the film or a fan who knew something
really should have joined him. DVD 1
also has three stills galleries, the original trailer, a sing-along option and From
Page To Screen To Stage featurette that covers the history of the
musical. DVD 2 offers a trailer, the
pilot to a non-Musical TV pilot from the 1970s that was not a hit, a clip from
a 1954 tribute to R&H and its original theatrical trailer. All this does justice and will insight new
interest in a unique Musical work. More
DVDs in the genre, especially when a studio owns more than one version of such
a film, deserve the same thorough treatment.
This set is
also available in a nice new compact DVD collection with all six R&H titles
(eight films in all not including alternate cuts of the main film) in The
Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection Box Set. Like their Mel Brooks Collection
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), the DVDs is thicker regular cases are here
in slender cases (two each!) for The King & I, Oklahoma!, The
Sound of Music, South Pacific, Carousel and State Fair. Our page links to all six reviews at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4547/The+Rodgers+and+Hammerstein+Collection+Box+Set+(The+King+&+I/Oklahoma!/The+Sound+of+Music/South+Pacific/Carousel/State+Fair)
- Nicholas Sheffo
