(184 min) Released 1993-10-06
Director: Trevor Nunn
Stars: Willard White, Cynthia Haymon, Gregg Baker, Damon Evans.
originally posted 30 Sep 2017 16:17
Jumping out of sequence because I got a special deal on eBay for the LOST (actually suppressed by the Gershwin family) 1959 film, so wanted to watch this before that to guess why it might have been shunned by the family. (Recall that George died in 1937. Ira wrote lyrics, libretto by DuBose Heyward, play by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward.)
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This film is an opera, lit to have a near-sepia tone, and video-taped, not filmed. The quality is fine, but it looks more like a soap opera than a movie. It helps to convey the period (1912), but I would bet that even poor women had colorful dresses, and the grass was likely green in South Carolina. (OK, I exaggerate: green is green, but it's just not satisfying.) Trevor Nunn, the lyricist of Memory from A.L.Webber's Cats [shudder], directs with lots of close-ups to make us feel we're not bound by the proscenium, but some of it is very awkward. His directing credits are primarily plays on film.
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I loved the opening, where some music is diegetic, played on a sad-looking dusty upright piano in the dreary local bar.
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The best scene was during Act 2, Scene 2, when Sportin' Life sings It Ain't Necessarily So. He does not use an operatic voice, and that drew my attention. We also get a "dance" sequence where a pair of young men do some acrobatics, and one does 8 consecutive jack-knives to make you ache.
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Some of the roles have dubbed singing, but surprisingly not Crown, who is a magnificent specimen (tall and built, with shoulders to carry an ox!) The white characters don't sing, but the black ones do, even when replying to whites.
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Three hours is too long (dark-screen time, no intermission), but it's worth seeing for a full performance of the opera.
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BBC, dir. Nunn; 7
