Oklahoma! 1955
Oklahoma! is one of those legendary movies that I have heard about forever and yet had never watched. I was able to get a nice restoration on Blu-ray that included the Todd-A.O. and Cinemascope versions of the movie. When they made the movie, they used two different cameras. The two cameras were so different that they had to shoot just about every scene twice, once for each camera. The Todd-A.O. version was filmed at a higher frame rate and on larger format film, so that is the one I watched. I have to admit that it looks amazing for such an old film. The colors are bright and true and the picture is crisp and modern looking. Both versions of the movie used a form of surround sound, but I didn’t notice that while watching.
There are some great songs in this movie, with my favorite being the title song, which I have on regular rotation on a giant playlist. The film opens with “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” which is also great and then right after that is “Surrey With the Fringe on Top.” Some of the other songs aren’t as great, but are cute. This is a fun movie to watch with silly dancing cowboys and a gorgeous young Shirley Jones, no hint at all of Mrs. Partridge. There are aspects that haven’t aged well, like Eddie Albert as the Iranian peddler, Ali Hakim. Huh? He doesn’t even do a very good accent. I wonder if it would have been too shocking to have an actual Persian chasing after white women? The final face-off between Curly and Jud is a bit of a letdown and a couple of the dances, including the dream sequence where different actors play the two main characters seem kind of odd and slow things down, but maybe make the movie a little bit more artistic. The movie is kind of long (they include an intermission like the original movie did), but it moves quickly due to a lot of musical numbers and getting to know the different characters.
At about the same time I bought The Sound of Music and The King and I from this same series of Rodgers and Hammerstein movie adaptations, so I am hopeful they will look as good even though I have seen both of them before, so they will not be as much of a surprise.
Written: 11 Apr 2018
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital