ON THE TOWN (iPlayer)*****

 

By Louise

Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00789db/on-the-town

Available until: 31^st January, 10.15am

A lot of people want to see more new musicals in the West End and I want that too. It’s important to give new musicals a chance. But I also think it’s important to revive the old musicals. Some of them are really good and a lot of fun to watch, like On the Town.

The film is different from the musical in lots of ways. The basic story is the same – three sailors called Gabey, Chip and Ozzie come ashore in New York and they all meet a different girl. Gabey falls in love with a picture of Ivy and decides to find her. Chip wants to go on a tour of the city and his driver is Hildy. Ozzie goes to the museum to see some culture and leaves with an anthropologist called Claire. They all spend a really crazy day together.

Some of the music is different. I was a little bit disappointed because a lot of my favourite songs weren’t in it - Leonard Bernstein’s music is brilliant and so varied - but it was really interesting to hear all the songs by Roger Edens, Lennie Hayton and Conrad Salinger which I don’t think I’d heard before. All the new songs are really good. There is also quite an important character who was cut – Claire’s fiancé Pitkin. I can understand this because Claire cheats on him with Ozzie and that’s not very nice, but it does kind of work out in the end and it leads to the possibility of something really special for a different character.

But there were lots of new things I really liked. There are also things you can do really well in a film that are more difficult to do in a theatre, like a car chase. This was really exciting and fun. There’s a scene with the Empire State Building which would also be very difficult to do onstage. There’s a scene where the characters attend a live performance and they’re rushing around all over the stage and backstage. So while you might miss some of the things you love about the stage production, there really is a lot to love and appreciate in the film.

Some parts of the film are a bit outdated. It probably seemed very funny and daring at the time for a female cab driver to insist on taking a passenger back to her place, or for a female anthropologist to go after a man who is looking at a dinosaur in a museum. If it was a male cab driver and a male anthropologist, I think there would have been outrage, but for the women to go after the men seemed perfectly all right.

It is all right in the film and the play. It is a story from another time and I think it’s interesting and even important to see the ways things were then. Also, it’s not a serious story. We’re not supposed to take it seriously or see it as real life. It’s also very clear that Chip and Ozzie are happy to be enticed. But if you think about it seriously (and maybe you shouldn’t because it’s a fun film), if a man says he’s not interested, it’s not acceptable for a woman to throw her arms around him and kiss him anyway. He shouldn’t be expected to want it or enjoy it just because he’s a man. A man is allowed to say no too, for any reason. Even if he secretly wants to say yes.

I don’t see this as a reason to cancel the film because it’s really good, but if there is ever any kind of remake of On the Town, maybe it would be important to remember all the things we have learned since the film came out and at least consider doing things differently?

The film is great, though. The characters are all really likeable and funny. The three women are particularly good characters because they’re all so distinctive. Gene Kelly, who also directs alongside Stanley Donan and stars as Gabey, has produced some brilliant and varied choreography. The direction is really exciting and Aashiq says they really ‘went to town’ for the big scenes. Adolph Green and Betty Comden’s screenplay is very amusing and there is a lot of clever visual humour too.

Gene Kelly is really good as Gabey. He is fun and charming and he does seem to be a nice man. Chip is played by Frank Sinatra and it is really lovely that a big star singer is happy not to be the star of the film. It seems like he has a lot of fun as Chip, who is very sweet. Ozzie is a little bit overshadowed by the other men (and a lot overshadowed by Claire), but Jules Munshin is a really important part of the trio – it wouldn’t work with just two of them.

Vera-Ellen is a really lovely Ivy. She has a really nice quiet sincerity and she is a beautiful dancer. Betty Garrett is a very assertive Hildy, and Ann Miller is a glamorous and confident Claire. The way Lucy is treated by the script is sad, but Alice Pearce makes her into a real human being, not just a comedy figure or an object of pity.

On the Town is a really good, fun and happy film. Those are all things we need at the moment.