…shows em how it’s done:
Movie musicals and rub a dub dubbing, and Audrey Hepburn
In yesterday’s thread about the undeserving poor, commenter IGotBupkis took aim at the musical “My Fair Lady” versus the movie version of the play “Pygmalion.” His comment was rather long (go here to read the whole thing), but I’ll excerpt a bit:
I’ve always been of the opinion that [“My Fair Lady”] sucks. BIG time.
a) It’s just horribly miscast. Hepburn as Eliza? Who the eph can possibly look at her and NOT see the beauty therein? It’s preposterous. And Harrison, well, Harrison played Higgins as a cold, emotionless fish…
(b) To take [playwright Shaw’s] words [in “Pygmalion”] and intersperse them with music and such is to destroy the inherent cadences and rhythms he set up. Just as there are some films which ought not to be colorized…as the directors were talented enough to USE the interplay of light and shadow that B&W gave a picture, so, too, is the notion of taking Shaw’s work and making a musical out of it.
In general, the hierarchy of preference in my mind goes like this, with only a few exceptions: books over movies, and stage productions over films. But straight plays over musical versions of the same thing, even when Shaw is the playwright? I’m divided on that because I see the genres as so different that each stands alone as a complete and satisfying work of art.
But not the movie of the musical “My Fair Lady.” I’m with IGotBupkis on that one. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a film musical that holds a candle to its stage musical version (many of which I had the good fortune to see in the originals). In fact, most movie musicals are barely watchable to me, faint echoes of their glorious stage selves.
That’s true for MFL, too. Audrey Hepburn is too fragile and lovely to begin with, too much of a lady with a bit of dirt smeared charmingly on her face. And Harrison is a much colder and gruffer Higgins, far more repellent than Leslie Howard in the film (not to mention the huge age difference between Hepburn and Harrison, which goes further to unbalance the film), although I still think his performance works on a comic level if not a deeper one.
But the musical itself is a great one. I saw it as a small child, with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, and it was a delightful masterpiece. I saw it later in various excellent revivals, and it was different but always wonderful. Shaw’s dialogue comes shining through in all its wit and humor, and since it is a rather light theme the music fits right in, at least to me. What’s more, many of the lyrics were inspired by Shaw’s words in the play.
But movie musicals, as opposed to musicals on the stage, require a suspension of reality that just doesn’t work for me. With a proscenium arch, a curtain, and all the conventions of the theater which let the reader know we’re in another and different—and more magical—world, the fact that the characters break into song periodically is only minimally jarring. On the screen, there’s a different expectation, and although I’m not exactly sure why, it seems far more absurd that people are singing and dancing when they should be going about their ordinary business.
And then there’s the fact—as commenter “Susanamantha” points out—that Hepburn is lip-syncing in MFL. Why, oh why oh why, cast an actor or actress in a musical who can’t cut the mustard as a singer? Surely there are enough available who can. The dubbing adds an extra layer of artificiality to a situation already overburdened with it, and not in a good way.
Movie lip-syncing (which I wrote about before, here) used to be a lot more popular than it is today. Commonly, the actors and actresses involved (and this includes Audrey Hepburn in”MFL”) did sing while the film was being made, and then they were dubbed afterward, sometimes without their prior knowledge. In MFL, Hepburn was led to believe her vocals would be used in the movie, and she was singing every note for all she was worth. The directors used a technique whereby for most songs the entire thing was dubbed, but for others they inserted another singer only for the high parts, which gives those songs an odd effect as the voice shifts back and forth between Hepburn’s real voice and the dubber, Marnie Nixon.
Here is Hepburn singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” herself (not very good, IMHO; I can see why she was dubbed):
And here’s the way it appeared in the movie (Marnie Nixon all the way):
And here’s a mixed song, as it appeared in the movie, with Hepburn doing the majority of the vocals and Nixon coming in for the higher notes (for example, you can hear Marni begin at around 1:20):
Here’s what Hepburn herself had to say about the process:
Although Hepburn had lip synced to her recorded tracks during filming, Nixon looped her vocals in post-production and was given multiple attempts to match Hepburn’s lip movements precisely. Overall, about 90% of her singing was dubbed despite being promised that most of her vocals would be used. Hepburn’s voice remains in one line in “I Could Have Danced All Night”, in the first verse of “Just You Wait”, and in the entirety of its reprise in addition to sing-talking in parts of “The Rain in Spain” in the finished film. When asked about the dubbing of an actress with such distinctive vocal tones, Hepburn frowned and said, “You could tell, couldn’t you? And there was Rex, recording all his songs as he acted … next time ””” She bit her lip to prevent her saying more. She later admitted that she would have never have accepted the role knowing that Warner intended to have nearly all of her singing dubbed.
Hepburn was an actress with exquisite taste, and she shows it there. But it was also true that her singing just wasn’t up to the demands of the role, and her charms were also unsuited to portraying the untutored Eliza of the beginning of the film.
But I love Audrey; there was nobody even remotely like her. And here she is, doing a better job of singing a song more suited to her skills:
The glorious Egyptian revolution…
…seems to be going the way of most glorious revolutions—not well (although I suppose it depends who’s doing the judging).
It’s fifty-fifty between the Muslim Brotherhood and a Mubarak surrogate in the first round of voting:
In what many described as a “nightmare scenario” that will mean a polarised and possibly violent second round…”It feels as if the revolution never took place,” lamented a despondent George Ishaq, a founder of the leftwing Kifaya Party.
“The Brotherhood are despotic and fanatical and Shafiq is the choice of Mubarak. It is a very bad result. The revolution is not part of this contest.”…
Hisham Kassem, a publisher who had backed Moussa, said: “It’s a disaster. Shafiq will try to restore the Mubarak regime. And my trust of the Brotherhood is minus zero.”
Other liberals retreated into black humour. “All it takes now is for Mubarak to be released and be made vice president,” one tweeted. “This is not the second republic,” said another, “it’s a stillborn deformity”.
Zeinobia, a prominent blogger, compared the outcome to the humiliating defeat of Egypt and the other Arab states by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. In an already tense atmosphere, there could well be serious unrest if, as some predict, Mubarak is acquitted on charges of corruption and illegal killings next month.
From the very first article I wrote about the revolution in Egypt, I mentioned my fear that the end result of elections would be that the Muslim Brotherhood would take power. I’ve never seen any reason to revise that opinion, and it didn’t take any remarkable insight on my part to call it that way right from the start.
[NOTE: I wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood and its history here. And this is about the revolutionary fervor of the young.]
The undeserving poor
An exchange in the comments section of this post made me think of one of my favorite scenes from “My Fair Lady.” It’s a discourse on the welfare system by Eliza’s ne-er-do-well father, Alfred Doolittle:
Here it is:
And here’s the same speech, in the earlier movie rendition of its original appearance in “My Fair Lady’s” prototype “Pygmalion’:
[ADDENDUM: Leslie Howard, who played Higgins in the movie “Pygmalion,” led a relatively short but interesting life. Among other things, he was what used to be called a “ladies’ man,” and once said that he “didn’t chase women but ”¦ couldn’t always be bothered to run away.”)
Divide and conquer?
This Politico piece about how Obama’s campaign has been flatfooted and awkward contains the following rather amusing observation:
Some key Democrats say they have been dismayed watching Obama become a divider not a uniter, trying to incite anger among women, students and older voters.
To be fair, Politico is trying to contrast Obama’s 2012 overt campaign message with his 2008 overt campaign message, although even back in 2008, Obama talked out of both sides of his mouth on that. However, unless they haven’t been paying attention for the last four years, those “key Democrats” quoted should have noticed that there’s no way Obama could run with a “uniter” message this time without sounding ludicrous to all but the most devoted Obamaphiles.
Or it’s all just spin.
Obama the stoner
So all right already—Obama was a stoner in high school.
Didn’t we already know that? And although the photos are rather interesting in a retro-70s way, do we really care?
Not all that much, although it certainly tells us some of what Obama was doing way back when. For that matter, I never cared much about George Bush’s drinking, or whether Clinton inhaled, although I wouldn’t have liked an alcoholic or pot-smoking president.
What’s important about the Obama-the-stoner story is how little attention has been paid to it contrasted to how much attention it would received had it been in the past of some Republican candidate. I get awfully tired of remarking on that sort of thing, but it remains true. The MSM has been remarkably uncurious about so many aspects of Barack’s—then known as Barry—life.
The story is more interesting for the questions it raises about certain unknowns connected with Obama’s academic performance. If he was such a stoner at Punahoe, how did he get into Occidental, and if he was (by his own admission) an indifferent student at Occidental, how did he get into Columbia? And so on and so forth.
But maybe this was how Obama learned history. I can think of worse ways:
[NOTE: By the way, Vanderleun of American Digest was on the case long, long ago.]
Suzanne Farrell
Perhaps you’ve never seen Suzanne Farrell dance.
Perhaps you’ve never even heard of her. She’s sixty-six now and retired from performing for over twenty years. But in her heyday she was unique, and choreographer George Balanchine was besotted with her.
Farrell came to the New York City Ballet, Balanchine’s company, as a teenager and began performing as a soloist very quickly. Just as quickly, the very-much-older Balanchine fell in love with her, divorced his wife Tanaquil LeClerc (once another of his ballerinas, LeClerc had tragically been forced to retire very early in her career because she’d contracted polio), and hoped to marry Farrell. She refused, and declined to have an affair with him, either, although he kept on choreographing ballet after ballet for her. At 23, she married another NYCB dancer and they both left the company, although she returned many years later.
I saw her dance quite a few times, mostly when she was achingly young. I attended a performance of the famous 1965 production of “Don Quixote” in which Farrell was Dulcinea and the 61-year-old Balanchine danced a worshipful Don Quixote. I didn’t much like it, but Farrell was extraordinary. Although slender, she was never emaciated. She had a tiny head and a longish torso. Taller than most, her body didn’t have that steely, muscled quality so many dancers get, even female ones. She looked softer, gentler, and had a way of moving that I can only describe as liquid (and that’s a compliment, although it might not sound that way).
Farrell didn’t mind being off-balance, but she made off-balance into a kind of balance. Her dancing was almost eccentric; nothing she ever did was ordinary or expected, especially her flowing and flexible upper body and arms.
But perhaps Farrell herself said it best:
A lot of dancers don’t want to move, they just want to pose. I’m not a poser.
Watch:
Is Obama joking?
I wonder what Obama meant by this—other than just a new way to attack Romney:
There was a woman in Iowa who shared her story of financial struggles, and he gave her an answer right out of an economic textbook. He said, “Our productivity equals our income.” And the notion was that somehow the reason people can’t pay their bills is because they’re not working hard enough. If they got more productive, suddenly their incomes would go up. Well, those of us who’ve spent time in the real world ”” (laughter) ”” know that the problem isn’t that the American people aren’t productive enough ”” you’ve been working harder than ever. The challenge we face right now, and the challenge we’ve faced for over a decade, is that harder work has not led to higher incomes, and bigger profits at the top haven’t led to better jobs.
Well, they did laugh.
[NOTE: A portion of Romney’s response is here.
And here is the context of Romney’s original remarks that Obama is referencing.]
RIP Paul Fussell
Author Paul Fussell has died at 88. I read only two things he wrote, but both of them were extraordinary.
The first was his magnum opus, the one that made him famous (at least in some circles), The Great War and Modern Memory. It came out in 1975 and I read it not long after. Even though that was many decades before my political conversion, it proves that, contrary to the old saying “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” I was always at least somewhat interested in learning about war (although I had zero interest in experiencing it).
Prior to reading Fussell’s book, I thought World War I was a very minor event, dwarfed by World War II. His book was an eye-opener, revealing not only the enormous scope of the war in terms of deaths in western Europe, but also its enormous effect on people’s perceptions of the world and their concept of mankind’s progress. The war introduced a profound cynicism and can be said to mark the beginning of the modern point of view.
The second work of Fussell’s that I read was his essay, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” The title was deliberately provocative, and the thesis Fussell advanced–that those who easily condemn the dropping of the atomic bomb by the US to end WWII have no idea what was really going on, and why–was highly unpopular among intellectuals. But Fussell didn’t march to any drummer but his own.
[NOTE: I wrote about Fussell’s atom bomb essay previously, here.]
Whatever you may think of Bristol Palin…
…her son Tripp is one seriously adorable child:
Obama’s attack on Romney’s Bain record isn’t going so well
During the Republican primaries, Romney was attacked mightily for his tenure at Bain. Gingrich was the main—although hardly the only—source of the criticism. His supporters said that, far from harming Romney if Mitt ended up being the nominee, this would help him, since Obama would inevitably mount the same attacks, and by then the public would be sick of the whole subject, and Romney would have had a chance to polish and rehearse his responses.
So here we are in late May, and now comes the completely inevitable depiction of Romney as vulture capitalist and vampire, feeding on the blood of the American worker. But the approach doesn’t seem to be working as planned.
Quit a few Democrats, from Newark mayor Cory Booker to former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and even Obama’s campaign manager Ben LaBolt, have criticized the approach and defended venture capital firms such as Bain. Jamelle Bouie, a liberal blogger, writes that the Obama campaign should take a leaf out of Newt Gingrich’s book and do the Bain attack right. And Gingrich, now of course a warm and fuzzy Romney supporter, argues that although his own critique of Romney’s Bain record was correct, it was politically ineffective and particularly inappropriate for Obama, who’s got “the worst unemployment record in modern times,” and should therefore refrain from attacking “a businessman over job creation [that] gets him exactly into a fight that Obama doesn’t want to be in the middle of.”
Well, Obama does seem to be having a run of bad luck in seeking to strike at Romney’s soft underbelly. Dog abuser. Woman oppressor. Haircutting homophobe. Weird rich guy. “Mad Men” character from the 60s. And now, venture vampire/vulture.
But my question is this: did Gingrich’s attacks on Romney’s Bain record in fact immunize Romney somewhat, as many claimed? I think there may be something to that. It’s partly that a lot of people are sick of the subject, and it’s partly that it’s been aired so much that a number of people have actually learned a fair amount about how venture capital and Bain worked. If all this is true, Romney can say a bit of a “thank you” to his old nemesis Gingrich.
The changing eyewitness testimony
Several eyewitnesses in the Zimmerman-Martin case have changed their original accounts, mostly to reflect more poorly on Zimmerman.
This is disturbing, but not at all unusual. Eyewitness testimony, which many people give extreme weight to, is notoriously unreliable. And that’s true even when there is no political pressure—which certainly can’t be said in the Zimmerman case, where there’s political pressure galore.