Pacifique Sud

This is my favorite R&H musical and I play the original Broadway s/t frequently because I love Pinza.

I agree with an earlier poster who commented that Mary Martin was much too old and earthy for the young innocent Nellie. Mitzi Gayner was perfect. I also love the different hues for the singing. It does give the movie a different feel to it.

Of all the R&H musicals, this one was the best to transfer to the screen (with exception of King and I). Too bad they can't find a complete reel of the latter movie.

And my favorite song from the show/movie is This Nearly Was Mine, a heartbreaking song if there ever was one. Pinza breaks my heart on the OBC recording. Tozzi is good, too, but Pinza is the peak.

And R&H were pressured to drop You've Got to be Carefully Taught and they refused. The racial prejudice runs right through the picture without hitting you over the head with it and it was way ahead of its time. But then the book was written by James Michener who had an Asian wife and who knew about prejudice.

I love this movie -- still!

Although Rogers and Hammerstein wrote many great musicals, I believe that overall the score of South Pacific is the strongest, producing many 'old standards'.

"There is Nothing' Like a Dame", "Younger than Springtime", "Bali Hai", Gonna Wash that Man Right outa my Hair", and the eternal "Some Enchanted Evening" are major highlights, but many other delightful and strong songs help fill this impressive musical.

Of course there is a love story, but there is also a strong lesson of the dangers of bigotry even for people who would never imagine themselves to be so.

Many have criticized the filters used in camera shots during many songs (and a few other scenes). It was ground breaking at the time, and certainly different. Although I myself would certainly rather see the 'pure colors' of those scenes as well, I can respect the wish of the cinematographer to try something that had really seldom been done in major films, but is a staple of still photography.

Unless you just hate musicals, this is a must see film in its genre.

The most obvious flaw is its running time, it's very long. I think it's longer than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Unfortunately there were other flaws with the movie, so I can't overlook what I've just said. Another flaw was the colour filtering;the orange and yellow picture did get a bit distracting after a while, although the Pacific does look beautiful. Rossano Brazzi, whose singing voice was dubbed, looked wooden, but was he ever not wooden? I must say though, the dubbed singer did a marvellous job.

However, there were a lot of truly excellent things about this movie. Mitsi Gaynor was a lovely lead, and she was wonderful in the musical numbers. She does get a little tiresome toward the end, but most musicals do have the same problem. But Juanita Hall was just perfect as Bloody Mary, I had absolutely no problem with her. The songs were absolutely outstanding. Rodgers and Hammerstein have given us some truly fantastic music scores, and South Pacific is among them. Ray Walston gives comic relief as Luther, I think, and the focus on the war was very endearing. The real star was the stunning choreography, that made the musical numbers so energetic.

All in all, an entertaining, but flawed film, that is underrated in my opinion. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This film is due to be re-released in 70MM for limited engagements next year. A new restored DVD is also being prepared by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment which includes scenes that were cut back in 1958. Somebody commented recently about the fact that "lap-dissolves" were used between many scenes in this film and this person obviously felt that this was some kind of fault. This was a common editing technique utilized in the past and was used usually to signify the passage of time. It is rarely used these days and obviously that person has not encountered this technique before and has assumed that it is a fault, but this is not the case.

I am curious to know if the new transfer will feature the Broadway continuity(the Emile-Nellie Plantation scene before the "Bloody Mary" scene)? I hope it is an anamorphic transfer?

This is indeed one of the classics of musical theater but the use of the colored filters during many of the musical numbers was very distracting. I have this movie on laser disc and every time I watch it I want to choke whoever was responsible for giving the go ahead to this failed experiment. There they are in one of the most beautiful places in the world to shoot a movie and they use colored filters to take out most of the color during the best moments of the film. I also felt that with certain songs (particularly Mitzi Gaynor's) that there should have been considerably more dancing. Instead she sings 70% of most of her songs directly into the camera. Why did they hire a dancer for that role in the first place if they weren't going to have her dance?