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By PAUL BRENNER
Paramount Home Entertainment
has released a desultory DVD version of George
Sidney's 1968 magnum opus, "Half a Sixpence."
Based on H.G. Wells's "Kipps," this splashy
musical version of the London and Broadway hit
stars Tommy Steele, the musical comedy dynamo with
the flashing toothpaste grin, recreating his stage
performance. The story is pure corn -- a penniless
shop clerk in love with his childhood sweetheart,
inherits lots of money, loses the girl, then loses
the money, and reunites, chastened, with his girl.
On stage, the show was a simple, unaffected
vehicle for Steele, the wobbly story serving as a
framework for some old-fashioned and entertaining
singing and dancing. But the film is another
matter. Particularly with George Sidney involved
as the director. At one point, Sidney was one of
M.G.M.'s great court directors of musicals ("The
Harvey Girls," "Annie Get Your Gun"). But the 3-D
production of "Kiss Me Kate" must have set his
musical comedy sensibilities into the fourth
dimension and he was never the same since. By the
time he directed "Bye, Bye Birdie" and ran
roughshod over Dick Van Dyke's "Put On A Happy
Face" number by having Van Dyke draw cute happy
face cartoons and then turning the original
satiric ending of the stage production into a
speeded up Keystone comedy pastiche, Sidney had
become a subversive anarchist of the film musical,
a film maestro exploding both the form and the
performances.
At the start of "Half a Sixpence," anyone familiar
with Sidney's previous films could see what is
coming when, over the credits, a pompous British
windbag shouts "System! Efficiency! Economy!" and
then George Sidney's credit appears. After that
dire warning, one knows that "System! Efficiency!
Economy!" will be sorely lacking in "Half a
Sixpence."
Sidney employs slow motion, stills, step printing,
and even cartoons to expand David Heneker's
pleasant ditties into Wagnerian proportions. These
simple music hall songs cannot hold the weight of
Sidney's repeated choruses and superfluous
performers. The production numbers keep going and
going and swelling and bulging like The Blob,
consuming dancers, singers, and actors in an
apocalyptic frenzy. This is the kind of overblown
exuberance that Monty Python sneringly mocks in
the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" musical number from
"Monty Python's The Meaning of Life."
But, incredibly, through sheer dogged showmanship,
Tommy Steele manages to rise above this exploded
hot air balloon. In Steele's brief run at
Hollywood musicals -- "The Happiest Millionaire"
and "Finian's Rainbow" -- before heading back to
the London Stage ("Singin' in the Rain,"
"Scrooge," "Hans Christian Andersen"), his
dynamism and energy are solely what make those
films memorable. He had a style all his own. And
he is at his best in "Half a Sixpence" -- a
vibrant, relentless force of dogmatic optimism.
Too bad he had to butt heads with George Sidney to
get his stage success on film. Significantly,
"Half a Sixpence" proved to be Sidney's last film
(before starting a twilight career as an afternoon
television movie host in Los Angeles) and Steele's
last film to date.
Paramount, staying true to their skimpy legacy in
DVD land, offers nothing in the way of extras.
Ironically, with such a bloated film in their
catalog, Paramount seeks extreme minimalism on
their DVD release of the 145-minute film. The film
is available in Dolby Surround and subtitled in
English. |
