Extinct Genre revisited

[cinemabon]

"Oklahoma!" directed by Fred Zinnemann; DP Robert Surtees

For those who feel the musical is not dead, simply dormant in your video collection, a bit of history was released on DVD this week.

“Oklahoma!” is important for several reasons. Starting on Broadway, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein created a new way of telling a story with song by incorporating the verse into the story. When it premiered in New York, “Oklahoma!” began a new era of musicals on Broadway that has never looked back. This new form of stage entertainment had been used in film, however, long before it was used in the theater. From the advent of sound in 1927, there have been musical motion pictures. Only in the last two decades of film history since the late 1980’s has the musical disappeared from the cinematic lexicon. After its stellar debut in New York, “Oklahoma!” may have vanished, too, had it not been for Michael Todd.

He’d been a major shareholder of the parent company of Cinerama, a widescreen film process that uses three cameras to create a super-wide picture. As with all larger screen formats of the 1950’s, Cinerama was meant to compete with television to bring the public back into the declining film business. But the bulky cumbersome process had no future as Todd saw it. So he ventured to visit with a well-known Minnesota glassmaker, talking the technician into creating a spherical lens that would offer a new widescreen process.

Labeled Todd-AO after its visionary, this new process brought in over twice the angle and light as Cinemascope, developed by Bausch and Lomb. When photographed on 65mm film and transferred to 70mm, Todd-AO predated IMAX in creating an enormous area for projection, more than three times the area of a 35mm positive.

For his first commercial venture, Todd convinced Rogers and Hammerstein, with the use of some test footage called, “The Miracle of Todd-AO” to bring “Oklahoma!” to the screen using the new process. Distributor 20th Century Fox, however, balked at the idea, saying that most theaters around the country would not be able to spend the money on the new equipment needed for projection. Hence, “Oklahoma!” became a film of historical firsts.

The first film to be shot in two widescreen-processes at the same time, and also turned out to be last. Both versions are included on the two-disc DVD. Shooting in two different formats at the same time required director Zinnemann (High Noon, A Man for All Seasons) and DP Surtees (Ben-Hur, The Sting) to be creative in their set ups, as Cinemascope shoots at a 50 degree angle and Todd-AO shoots at 120 degrees of arc.

This was also the first time a Broadway musical and book were brought directly to the screen virtually intact, filmed as a if the play were shot on location, word for word with hardly any change in the libretto.

This was the first film of Shirley Jones, making her debut. While Gordon MacRae was considered the seasoned actor, he made only made one additional film with Jones, Carousel (a part written for Frank Sinatra) before he quit and went back to television. Alcoholism quickly ruined MacRae’s one asset, his voice. His stiff acting style fell out of favor when ‘method’ acting became the rage.

Oddly enough, Carousel was also supposed to be shot with the two processes when, just two weeks after Sinatra quit in protest over having to do two set-ups, that aspect of the production was dropped. Carousel ended up being shot in Cinemascope only and MacRae got one more chance to act opposite Jones as the two reprised their 'lovers' role.

While the Cinemascope version on the DVD is saturated with color, and has a clean crisp sharp look; the Todd-AO version, while more imaginative in its staging and with much better sound quality, unfortunately has a slightly blurred picture. I believe the print may have suffered from spherical distortion when it was transferred back from the “curved” 65mm negative. Unlike the horizontally stretched ‘scope’ version, the Todd version is compressed in a way so it can be shown on a curved screen. The compromise in un-squeezing has resulted in a ‘soft’ look that becomes disconcerting after a while, as if you’d like to shout “FOCUS!” to the projectionist. After I enjoyed the Overture (on the Todd version only), compared a few scenes on differences, I quickly returned to the scope version to watch the entire film.

In 1977, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would have a showing of the Todd-AO version at its theater on Wilshire Boulevard. I was there with my very good friend Rick when we saw this rare print projected for the first time in years. I can’t begin to describe the incredible clarity as the print was projected at the higher 30 fps in 70mm. Oklahoma? Unbelievable!