The blessings of laser videodisc technology-which offers a clear, crisp picture and a broad, rich range of sound-have been particularly effective in bringing out the song, color and spectacle of the movie musical.
Stereophonic sound and the letterboxing process, which shows wide-screen movies in dimensions approximating their original format, are now fairly common practices in laser disc releases, giving a tremendous boost to the already potent pleasures of musical classics such as ”Gigi,” ”Fiddler on the Roof” and West Side Story.”
This is especially important for many musicals that were made in the mid- 1950s, a boom era for wide-screen movies.
”Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and ”It`s Always Fair Weather”
(MGM/UA, $34.95 each), two such movies, have until now been shown for home video use only in a pan-and-scan format, which crops their rectangular images to fit the square television screen. Their new laseer disc editions, however, show the song and dance numbers in their original designs, which were tailored for Cinemascope.
”Its Always Fair Weather,” directed in 1955 by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, the team that created ”Singin` in the Rain” in 1952, is peppered with split-screen numbers that depend on their effect on an elongated picture. And ”Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” directed by Donen, has several dances, notably the rousing barn-raising sequence, that were designed to fill the whole wide screen with action. (A note of caution on both discs, however: The picture is sometimes a bit off center, so that one side of the screen is slightly trimmed out.)
Good as it is to see these 1950s movies restored, it is even better to view the films of the `30s and `40s, when movie musicals were cranked out by every studio as regular part of their theater programming.
To capture part of the enjoyment of those palmy days of moviegoing MGM/UA is releasing a series of Warner Bros. musicals that include in addition to the feature presentation, a cartoon and a coming attractions trailer.
Already out are ”42nd Street” and ”Footlight Parade,” and soon to come is ”Gold Diggers of 1933” ($34.95 each). Amazingly, all three movies were turned out by the same studio within the same year.
Each of these movies features the kaleidoscopic choreography of Busby Berkeley, and each employs the same stable of performers, including these improbable sweethearts, tap-dancer Ruby ”Feet of Land” Keeler and crooner Dick ”Voice of Tin” Powell.
The disc of ”Footlight Parade” is outstanding. A preview of the musical ”Dames” and a primitive color ”Honeymoon Hotel” cartoon are pleasing appetizers, and the feature itself, in addition to the Berkeley extravaganzas has James Cagney inimitably strutting through the role of the hyperkinetic producer of the mini-musicals.
The picture quality is excellent, which makes Berkeley`s compositions come alive with a crisp depth and clarity they probably have not had since they were first shown The ”By a Waterfall” number, for example, keenly shows the striking black and white contrasts in and around a large swimming pool that is populated by the smiling Berkeley chorines.
A few years later, during the 19402 war years, each movie studio developed stars whose vivid palette of the Technicolor camera.
At 20th Century-Fox, the queen of these musicals was the blond, leggy Betty Grable, whose charms are beautifully on display in a new double-feature disc (CBS/Fox, $49.98) that offers her 1944 ”Pin Up Girl” and the 1940
”Down Argentine Way,” which made her a star.
These movies filmed in Fox`s bright colors, were made and sold as fluff, but the fluff they presented was handsomely served, as one can see in the eleborate nightclub routines and specialty acts that dot both movies.
In ”Pin-Up Girl,” there`s the spectacle of ”Red Robins, Bob Whites and Bluebirds,” sung by Martha Raye and danced, in brilliant patriotic colors, by members of a roller-skating revue.
”Down Argentine Way,” in addition to Carmen Miranda in full tutti-frutti blossom singing ”Mama Yo Quiero,” has the two marvelous Nicholas Brothers in one of their successful movie dance routines.
That alone would be cause enough for rejoicing in the superb pictorial quality that the laser disc brings to the musical.
