GUYS AND DOLLS - DVD review

I have the impression that the movie version of "Guys and Dolls" may have been more than a bit outdated even when it was first released in 1955. It comes off as a passably good musical and certainly one that everybody knows, but it's not a great musical. Its cast, which includes Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, is sincere, and its screenwriter and director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is earnest.

Maybe the fault lies with Frank Loesser's music and lyrics. With the exception of a couple of numbers, they aren't really memorable. I'd bet that beyond "Luck Be A Lady," most people would be hard pressed to recognize, let alone remember, any other song. Be that as it may, "Guys and Dolls" is a long, lavish, old-fashioned Hollywood production that tries very hard to entertain. Maybe too hard. No such reservations about MGM's picture and sound, though. They're first-rate all the way.

Opening on Broadway in 1950, "Guys and Dolls" is based on characters and incidents from the work of American writer Damon Runyon. Centered around Mindy's restaurant, the story is filled with the colorful gamblers, hoodlums, and other disreputable denizens of New York City. The main character is a slick operator named Sky Masterson (Brando), who makes a $1,000 bet with a friend of his, Nathan Detroit (Sinatra), that he can pick up any woman of Detroit's choice and persuade her to go to Havana, Cuba, with him the next day. Detroit takes the bet because he is in desperate need of money to secure a place for his "oldest established permanent floating crap game." So Detroit chooses the most unlikely woman for Masterson to romance--an uptight, ultraconservative Salvation Army-type lady named Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons).

Needless to say, the plot concerns both the romance, which, naturally, blossoms into true love, and the crap game. But really the banal plot is just a contrivance on which to hang the tunes and dance numbers. Among the better songs are "Follow the Fold," "The Oldest Established," "Guys and Dolls," "A Woman in Love," "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," and, of course, "Luck Be A Lady Tonight."

Samuel L. Goldwyn, who produced the movie, brought a measure of publicity to the film before it ever started shooting by paying a then-record $1,000,000 for the screen rights. But Brando was not Goldwyn's first choice to play Sky Masterson; Gene Kelly was. There were also thoughts about Clark Gable and even Dean Martin (with Jerry Lewis as Nathan Detroit). Brando had established himself by that time as a hot new star ("A Streetcar Named Desire," "On the Waterfront") but hardly a singer or dancer. It was even rumored that his voice was dubbed for the part. According to the booklet note, the fact is that Brando sings his own songs, taking voice and dance lessons every day on the set. He puts in a strong, serious, mature performance that does no harm either to him or the movie.

Sinatra, on the other hand, has only to play Sinatra. Unfortunately, the standard show tunes he gets don't give him much chance to do any of the vocal stylizing he was famous for. Jean Simmons as Masterson's love interest plays a role very much in the Audrey Hepburn mold; she conveys an innocent appeal with more than a touch of feminine spirit.

The other characters are as notable for their descriptive names as for their actions: Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Stubby Kaye), Big Julie from Chicago (B.S. Pulley), Benny Southstreet (Johnny Silver), Harry the Horse (Sheldon Leonard), Rusty Charlie (Dan Dayton), Society Max (George E. Stone), Arvide Abernathy (Regis Toomey).

Video:
The production is big and glossy, with large splashes of color everywhere, and MGM's digital transfer conveys all of it effortlessly. The CinemaScope picture is rendered in a 2.25:1 ratio widescreen that often looks positively breathtaking. Colors come in bright, vivid blocks, sharply defined, with excellent contrast in the shadows, sometimes achieving a crystalline, three-dimensional quality. It's not meant to be realistic, just flashy, and it succeeds. In line with the clarity of the image, age spots and artifacts are nonexistent. Even Nicely-Nicely's plaid coat shows up nicely, nicely, at least on my Sony 7700 player; I suspect it may be a challenge to some other machines, though, with lines possibly dancing here and there. Look at it as a test.

Audio:
The audio in the English version comes by way of a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix of the original stereo. It is slightly hard and bright, but for its age it is remarkable, some of the earliest true stereo on film. There is not always the widest left-to-right spread, even less rear-channel activity, and when the sound does open up it can appear somewhat compartmentalized. Still, it's very clear and very precise, every word of dialogue and song is cleanly articulated.

Extras:
There's hardly anything else on the disc to talk about. English, French, and Spanish are offered as spoken languages; French and Spanish for subtitles. There's MGM's usual informational booklet insert, only four pages, though. Thirty-two scene selections are more than adequate, and an exceptionally long, five-minute theatrical trailer is included, hosted by Ed Sullivan. Curiously, the folks who did the packaging mention four times that the production was copyrighted in 1938; the date appears twice on the back, once in the booklet, and again on the disc itself. 1938? Strange, as the play wasn't even written until 1950. I wonder if the early copyright date could be a reference to Runyon's work, or was it just a plain old mistake repeated four times?

Parting Shots:
"Guys and Dolls" comes off as a throwback to the extravagant Hollywood shows of the thirties and forties, a form soon to be replaced by deeper, more penetrating character studies like "My Fair Lady," more sociopolitical efforts like "Cabaret," and more satiric stage works like Frank Loesser's own later musical, "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."

Many people still consider "Guys and Dolls" the greatest Broadway show of all time, and I wish them well. For me, most of the songs fail to endure the test of time. Nevertheless, it's surely grand entertainment in a grand tradition, and for those who long for such things, MGM's new DVD transfer does the job better than could have been expected.