South Pacific (1958), 8

On a South Pacific island during World War II, love blooms between a young nurse and a secretive Frenchman who's being courted for a dangerous military mission.
2h 37min | Musical, Romance, War | 19 March 1958 | Color, WS
Director: Joshua Logan
Stars: Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston, Juanita Hall, France Nuyen.
LeRoy Prinz ... choreographed by: Boar's Tooth Ceremonial Number

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052225/

Hammerstein likes to tackle social issues in his librettos, and this hits racial prejudice head-on. And it does it very well. I like MG a lot, so to see her struggle with her prejudices gets me more involved.

The music is gorgeous, of course.

The worst aspect of the film is the color filters. It reminds me of silent films that were tinted blue for night, yellow for day, etc. It's more mood-oriented here, and maybe some of it is trying to mask day-for-night shots, but I really hate the filters. Per the c.track, they were physical filters placed over the camera lens. So we're robbed of the tropical locations (mostly NOT studio sets) so they can add visual unreality to musical scenes? I don't need a yellow tint to hear MG sing about being as corny as Iowa crops. Also, watching it closely, I don't buy the filter being over the camera during shooting; I don't see a cut when the filter disappears. So it looks more like post-production printing instead. Apparently one scene by the lagoon (Happy Talk) was filmed on a cloudy day and the yellow filter makes us feel it was sunny. Ugh.

~18 songs in the Soundtracks. You would never know MG can dance from this film. But she does her own singing. RB & JK both get dubbed. Even JH, who originated Bloody Mary on B'way, also gets dubbed.

Rated 8 on 2006-11-14. Today the ending moved me enough that I considered bumping this to a 9, but  I really, really hate the color filters and they're used a lot.

I watched both the standard edition and the roadshow version (14 min longer with poor-quality footage inserted), and listened to both c.tracks; yep that's 4 times. When I want to see this again and not watch both, I'd recommend the roadshow version on disc 2, which runs 2h 51min.

Magna Theatre Corp., distr. Fox, dir. Logan; 8