Rent Carousel (1956)

THE OLD FILMS ARE STILL THE BE3ST - Carousel review by db

I last saw this film in the cinema I thoroughly enjoyed it then and its was enjoyable all over again great singing and choreography

Best of all - Carousel review by JK

Call me old fashioned but how people can rate the droning drivel of so many of today's 'musicals' in comparison to this masterpiece is beyond me.

Yes - it's dated, and in this PC world would probably be regarded as misogynistic, however, the theme, incorporating taboo subjects like domestic violence, class inequality and abandonment is bang up to date.

Better, too, to have four beautiful, brilliantly crafted and tuneful songs than 20 "I'll-see-how-many-anthems-I-can-get-out-of-these-five-notes" in the likes of Les Mis.

In my book - you can't get better than Carousel.

Musical Fantasy. - Carousel review by Steve

Musical version of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom which was adapted by Frank Borzage and Fritz Lang in the '30s. Gordon MacRae stars as a fairground barker of superficial charm and foul disposition who ill treats his new wife (Shirley Jones). He dies while robbing a local big shot, leaving her pregnant and alone. In the afterlife, and with his family in peril, he gets the chance to live for one more day...

There's a lot that doesn't work in Carousel. The main role is such an unrepentant and contemptible lowlife that it's hard to care about his redemption. His wife is too sweetly virtuous to easily accept as a working girl growing up in poverty. The beautiful locations in Maine carry no impression of a realistic, working fishing port where lives are traded for a few dirty coins...

The film retains too much of the play's realism  to be credible within the conventions of a fifties Hollywood musical. And its acquiescence of domestic abuse makes it too difficult to want to suspend disbelief. The story is too dark for this kind of treatment.

Of course the songs are excellent, and You'll Never Walk Alone is one of the great showstoppers. It is performed twice. The Cinemascope is thrilling, particularly in accommodating the dance routines. The locations are lovely and the colour is bright and deep and luxurious. But none of that is really harmonious with the story that's being told.