Movie Review of With a Song in My Heart
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With a Vocal in My Centre |
 | With a Song in My Heart Flim-flam 1952 / Color / one:37 flat full frame / 117 min. / Street Date November thirteen, 2007 / 19.98 Starring Susan Hayward, David Wayne, Thelma Ritter, Rory Calhoun Cinematography Leon Shamroy Art Direction Lyle Wheeler, Joseph Wright Film Editor J. Watson Webb Original Music Alfred Newman Written and Produced by Lamar Trotti Directed by Walter Lang |
Fox's insert liner notes for this serviceable musical biography proclaims With a Song in My Eye to exist one of the greatest musicals ever fabricated. It certainly was a sizeable success in 1952, when songstress Jane Froman was still in her prime number every bit a radio and concert artist. But unless you're a fan of Ms. Froman, Susan Hayward or musical biographies in general, beware ... With a Song in My Heart brings odd thoughts to mind, such as, "I judge Hollywood tin can homogenize and neuter almost any story" and, "Don't they realize that the merely thing propping up this picture show is Thelma Ritter?"
The main titles for With a Song in My Heart (the subtitle "The Jane Froman Story" is an addition for the DVD) brandish a parade of badges for various armed forces units, letting usa know right off the bat that the flick was made to appeal to Froman's legions of fans in the military. U.Due south. soldiers appreciated the celebrities that ventured to war fronts to entertain them and Froman'due south courage and lack of special pleading only increased her standing. Unlike Bob Hope, who re-invented his performing personality effectually his prototype as "Mr. USO", Froman simply wanted to entertain. Her popularity waned merely when 50s musical trends replaced her 30s and 40s standards. By now, the fan base of operations with more than a cursory knowledge of who Froman was is over seventy years old. Films of Froman performing are rare, 1 fifty-fifty though she had her ain tv testify in the early on 1950s.
Produced and written past Lamar Trotti, With a Song flattens Jane Froman'south story into musical biography cloth. She's a happy trouper from Missouri when David Wayne's Don Ross offers her fulltime management services just out of 'friendship'. Their marriage slowly fizzles, and Jane is open for something meliorate when handsome John Burn saves her during the fateful plane wreck. Since the movie tin't afford to offend anyone, all of these people are presented equally to a higher place little human flaws. Don Ross gets a bit cranky when he drinks and Jane is afforded perhaps three minutes of screen fourth dimension to feel sorry for herself. Almost of the film shows her in dazzling gowns, expressing her emotions in song. Make that many songs. At least an hour of the flick's 117 minutes is of Susan Hayward energetically lip-synching to Jane Froman's recordings.
Susan Hayward performs in a close approximation of the singer's style -- she was coached by Froman herself, on the set. The trouble is that Froman's excellent vocal style never changes. Taken separately, the songs are good just twenty in a row are merely too many. Even Bluish Moon and I'll Walk Alone tend to drone equally we lose interest in the fine modulated phonation (which seems a scrap low for Hayward). Hayward'south authentic delivery and repetitive arm and manus movements also become tiresome; except for one dance number, the performances are almost identical. None of this hurt the film'south popularity. Alfred Newman's score and arrangements even won the Oscar that yr, beating out Singin' in the Rain. Somebody was doing something right, at least on commercial terms.
The motion-picture show's final human action trades on the thought that Froman was an inspiration to our boys overseas, and therefore sort of a warrior herself. Unfortunately, her USO shows for polite G.I.due south in hospitals and aid stations are also much like movies in which vain divas prove themselves to exist human beings by singing to orphans and the like, as in the syrupy Interrupted Melody -- some other picture about a performer fighting her way through a concrete infirmity. Writer Trotti reaches for both patriotism and pathos in the film'southward lowest scene: singing an 'effectually the U.South.A.' medley of country-themed songs (each duller than the one before), Jane takes time out to comfort a soldier suffering from trounce-shock. She'd seen him dorsum in New York every bit an eager-to-go paratrooper (young Robert Wagner). The stuttering soldier finds he tin can talk to Jane, fifty-fifty though the nurses say he has barely spoken in weeks. Jane Froman can't raise the dead or brand the blind run into, but giving a mute back his vocalisation own't bad.
Don't get me wrong -- Ms. Froman clearly raised morale, and auspicious upwardly troops is a good thing. But With a Song tiptoes from one user-friendly moment of uplift to the adjacent, catering to audience expectations. We're given surefire distortion similar Una Merkel as a 'beautiful' nun. Merkel uses the same mischievous grinning that worked for her as a Warners' Gold Digger two decades earlier. The movie doesn't exactly say that Froman'south survival was a Holy miracle, only information technology does offer a gold crucifix every bit prove for believers who care to think that air crash safety can be enhanced by religious symbols.
Catering to the audience likewise means not upsetting them, and then Jane Froman'southward total ordeal is minimized. In the river off Lisbon, John Burn down, his spine fractured in several places, had to hold her head above water or she would have drowned. One leg was about severed and other grave injuries were scattered all over her body. Complications from these injuries continued for the rest of Jane's life. Things like that aren't suitable for a Hollywood musical, so they were dropped. The inspiring 'human involvement' angle was all that was retained.
David Wayne's Don Ross goes sour just in time for the personality-challenged Rory Calhoun to accept his place. What saves the movie is the presence of Thelma Ritter as Clancy, the ane character that resembles something really living and animate. Ritter gave a boost to almost every picture she was in, and was nominated vi times for supporting actress. Clancy is an American nurse who went to Europe equally an ambulance driver and ended upward in Portugal. ii Equally happens in movies where the heroine needs a gal pal, she drops everything without caption to play private nurse, housekeeper and best friend to Jane from there on out.
With a Song in My Heart has enough of supporters that love the lack of cynicism in its direct-on mix of music, simple characters and moral uplift. Stories of people rise from adversity to triumph may be a cliché but they always sell, and we should be grateful for Lamar Trotti's overall adept taste. If the movie were fabricated today, information technology could easily be like TV'south pandering 'personal interest' featurettes praising Olympic hopefuls, all of whom seem to have overcome terrible odds to compete. Information technology'south non enough to be an ambitious athlete, because 'reality Idiot box' demands that drama be manufactured in convenient seize with teeth-sized chunks. This issue is what makes the joke in Get Shorty piece of work, when Chili Palmer recognizes thespian Martin Weir: "His best function was when he played the crippled gay guy who climbed Mt. Whitney!"
Fox'south DVD of With a Song in My Heart presents the show in a good transfer from a reasonable element made from its Technicolor separations. As is common, shots with dissolves have registration issues but the prove looks very attractive overall. 3 Sound is in a solid English mono, with subs in English language, French and Spanish.
A pair of docu extras tell the story of Jane Froman and the production of the motion-picture show; hither's where we encounter the stills of the singer, leg caryatid clearly visible, helping Hayward with her on-screen delivery. Cheers to the input of biographer Ilene Stone and others, Froman's life is illustrated with many good nonetheless images. No clips from her 50s TV shows appear, so nosotros don't get to compare the vocaliser's phase presence with Hayward's facsimile.
On an audio-only extra, 89 yr-old John Burn down recounts his fateful coming together with the singer simply before the fateful crash and talks almost their injuries and recovery. It's an excellent prime source document. The keep example likewise contains a couple of small still reproductions, and an insert essay composed of pure publicity hype.
With a Song in My Middle is notorious for a chip of unexpected nudity that may have escaped notice when it was new; the Fox Movie Channel fifty-fifty pointed it out on cablevision TV. In the film'south one big trip the light fantastic toe number, Hayward'southward partner (Richard Allan?) apparently stepped on her gown, tugging it down and exposing her left breast for a expert 2d. Although the shot is a fairly wide down angle, the problem is obvious. I only mention this because of the screaming hypocrisy that accompanied Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' at the Super Basin a few seasons back, the debacle that inspired a toothless, misguided crackdown on broadcast smut (which is real enough). Although Jackson's display was in a sexed-up context and Hayward was simply trying to wait elegant, the events are comparable. The With a Song in My Heart DVD carries two M ratings on the dorsum, but America needs to exist warned ... whatsoever you do, continue this disc out of the attain of children! four
On a scale of First-class, Expert, Off-white, and Poor,
With a Song in My Centre rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Very Good
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: stills, trailer, featurettes Holding the Loftier Notes: The Life of Jane Froman and Capturing a Song: Bringing Jane Froman to the Screen, sound interview with John Burn
Packaging: Keep example
Reviewed: November eighteen, 2007
Footnotes:
ane. Idiot box clips of Froman tin be viewed on U-Tube.
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2. This odd detail suggests that Clancy is supposed to have been ane of the heroic volunteer nurses who offered their assist in the Castilian Civil State of war ... Clancy is a (gasp) leftist.
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3. I've never heard an explanation for the tendency of Flim-flam Technicolor musicals to overuse the color blue, as if the caput of the fine art section were crazy about that colour. Scene later on scene has blue backings or blueish curtains, often set off with deader blue grays or blueish greens. Really warm colors are definitely avoided. The original Technicolor prints looked like this too. It's very foreign.
Response from Jon Lidolt, eleven.19.07: "Hi Glenn, Natalie Kalmus, married woman of Technicolor founder Herbert Kalmus and their dictatorial color consultant, had definite ideas almost how color should be used in their complex iii-strip photographic system. One matter she felt very deeply about was how the color blueish set off the peaches and foam complexions of the female stars in the early on Technicolor features. This may explain the overabundant utilize of bluish in early Fox color films. Apparently the talent at other studios managed to ignore Ms. Kalmus' advice in ready and costume pattern as often as they could. - Jon
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4. It's fun to contemplate at what point the offending gland was discovered. Hayward must have known; as she spins we can see her holding her partner closer, on purpose. Did she non tell anyone, and the 'whoops' camera accept ended up as the only skillful i? I call back that fifty-fifty on a petty Moviola screen editor Watson Webb would accept noticed the nipple. Did the movie go out this way and nobody noticed? On a big screen this must have looked like a 3rd row view at Minsky's. Or did nobody spot it? Were audiences back then so numbed past sanitized amusement that such a thing could slip by? This crucial cinematic issue is equaled just by a similar occurrence with Jane Russell (or her suba diving double) in Underwater (1955).
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