Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor

Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor (1953)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning short from MGM was one of their earliest examples of showing off their Symphony Orchestra led by the talented Johnny Green. Otto Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" has the one-hundred plus piece orchestra doing some of their best work as the unknown director sits back and delivers one of the best looking visual shorts out there. This short was shot in Cinemascope and goes to about 2.55:1 and is a real treat on the eye. Green calmly leads the group and the camera goes in, out and side to side as it tries to capture the beauty of all the instruments. The music itself is great and Green perfectly handles everything and delivers a fine performance of the song. This is the fourth or fifth short I've seen featuring him and he's been impressive each time out. The beautiful visuals and wonderful music make it easy to understand why this thing walked away with an Oscar.

MGM was heralding the CinemaScope process with this short Oscar-winning film. It is ideal for filming symphony orchestras, since a low angle shot can capture the entire orchestra. One impressive shot showed all 8 bass violins lined up in a row, in a relative closeup. The music was good too, but secondary to the purpose of the film.

"Author: eeeeeeeee from United States But what makes this bizarre is that the short has no credits, NONE, nada, zilch -- neither orchestra nor conductor are ever identified, and the music itself is named only at the end as a kind of afterthought."

As with the other shorts produced with the MGM Symphony Orchestra the credits are spoken at the start of the film. See also "Poet and Peasant Overture," "MGM Jubilee Overture," and "Strauss Fantasy." The purpose of these short films was to show off stereophonic sound and the new Widescreen and CinemaScope processes. They would be seen, along with trailers, cartoons, and newsreels, before and/or after the main feature.

An early short to demonstrate the new movie process of Cinemascope, this short is nicely shot in Technicolor, and the orchestra is shown with some discrimination. Obviously the person who shot it concentrated on what to photograph at different points. They are playing Otto Nicolai's overture for THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR (a nice piece of music, from a forgotten opera - Verdi and Boito's later opera FALSTAFF is more frequently revived). The music is very familiar, as one of the pieces of classical repertory that was used again and again in films (including cartoons) like Von Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture. Turner Classic films showed it as a "One Reel Wonder" tonight about 7:40 - 7:50 P.M.

If one studies it, besides some nice shots of Johnny Green conducting the opera, look at close ups of the players who are momentarily at the center of the score. For example the first oboist about halfway through it, or the cymbalist towards the end. Those shots are why I think the person shooting this short was studying the orchestra while it rehearsed, to note who to concentrate the camera on momentarily.

Whatever the original reason, it is a pleasant concert piece - worth watching or listening to at least once.

It's not so much a film this as an early music video depicting the mastery of their instruments by the members of MGM's in-house orchestra. As it says on the can, these musicians are playing the overture from Otto Nicolai's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy. It uses fairly standard filming techniques and is actually something you could just as easily close your eyes and listen to as watch, but this is clearly a classy operation at work and it is good to hear the woodwind section get more prominence during the eight minutes. The one thing I did find curious was that there only appeared to be two women in this orchestra, both violinists, but otherwise it's an unremarkable piece of film-making.