OKLAHOMA!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 914, 15 February 1957, Page 21

OKLAHOMA!

(Magna-R.K.O. Radio) Y Cert. EVIEWERS must be as tickled as Richard Rodgers was by the line, "The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye": it’s an intro on a silver dish. Add to it Aunt Emma’s prophecy, "It’s gonna be another good year for corn and oats," and the temptation is almost irresistible. Oklahoma! of course, is corn. I admit I went prepared to sniff. But there are corn crops so lush and, well cultivated that one must admire them, and exhausted as I was after two hours and 20 minutes of Oklahoma! in a Wellington heat wave, I was inclined to think this was one of them, As it happens that crack about corn is particularly apposite, for Oklahoma! starts right off with the biggest crop of corn ever, climbing right up through the top of the CinemaScope screen. Out of the distance and through this corn rides Gordon’ MacRae, singing. He’s off to ask Shirley Jones to go to Skidmore’s party with him, But, as you probably know better than I did, Shirley’s going to teach him a lesson: she’s going with the hired man (Rod Steiger) . What makes this conventional story so agreeable? For a start, of course, the songs. I’m no Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, and I think there are too many songs in this show to take at one sitting. But there are some good ones, as you don’t need me to tell you, and they’re wonderfully well put across, especially by the principals-stereo-phonic sound never impressed me more than when they sing "People Will Say We’re in Love." Then there’s the straight playing. Those I’ve mentioned do all that’s expected of them-Mr. Steiger especially is a really villainous villainbut there are other good parts, too: Charlotte Greenwood, for instance, as Aunt Ella, Gloria Grahame as the girl who "cain’t say no," Eddie Albert as the travelling salesman, Gene Nelson as Will Parker. The ballets are excellent, and among these the big dream _ sequence, after starting on familiar lines, blossoms into something really imaginative and eye-catching. So I might go on. How much of all this will be familiar to those who’ve seen the stage production I can’t say, for I never did. But I can say that this film version offers much that no stage could hold. Some of the set pieces are stagey or start off that way (dare one tamper with anything so hallowed by time?); but the director (Fred Zinnemann) and his photograper (Robert Surtees) have not stayed stagebound, and many of their cinematic sorties, from the detail in close-up to long shots on the prairie, are poetry. I can’t say fairer than that. I’m not reaching for the purple ink, because in film musicals I still prefer the thing written for the medium. Oklahoma! (I say it again) is too long, and so on and so on. But I went to sniff and stayed to praise, and I’m happy to say so. '