Coming out during in my favorite year of the movie musical ("The Great Ziegfeld", "Show Boat", "Swing Time", "Born to Dance", debuts of Garland and Durbin, etc.), this was a surprise in finding how much I enjoyed it for its stylish production, great dancing, delightful comedy and all around good cheer.
It is a minor issue for me that Charles Collins had a singing voice higher than Kenny Baker's (which may have garnered some giggles then and now) and that the print that I saw was in black and white rather than the two strip technicolor. From looking at stills of the restored print in color, it looks a lot like color shorts that MGM was making at the same time and similar to "Becky Sharp" made the year before. We'd have to have Robin Hood and Rhett Butler before the color motion picture was ready to move on to a more advanced method.
The story is corny, that is for certain, but once I got into the film and saw how tongue-in-cheek and winking at the audience it was, I really began to see it for the high quality production values that it had. It's unfortunate that public domain prints are either greatly edited or not very sharp, but fortunately, the print that I had (replacing a VHS copy from years ago that was unviewable) was complete an entirely watchable. I was able to up my rating from a 4 to a 9, and have moved this up to my top 10 favorite musicals of 1936, quite a change considering the number of musicals made that year.
Steffi Duna is a delight as the village maiden who saves Collins from being hanged for having been guilty of simply being on a pirate ship, and Frank Morgan is once again truly enjoyable as the governor who is pompous but incompetent, unable to get a single sentence out without stammering. The dance numbers are very elaborate, and it's great to see a young Rita Hayworth in a featured dance role. This goes to show that just because you don't like something the first time doesn't mean that a second viewing will make you see something in a different light. As much fun as the later Gene/Judy musical "The Pirate", and one I will definitely go out of my way to watch again in its restored original color version.
It is a minor issue for me that Charles Collins had a singing voice higher than Kenny Baker's (which may have garnered some giggles then and now) and that the print that I saw was in black and white rather than the two strip technicolor. From looking at stills of the restored print in color, it looks a lot like color shorts that MGM was making at the same time and similar to "Becky Sharp" made the year before. We'd have to have Robin Hood and Rhett Butler before the color motion picture was ready to move on to a more advanced method.
The story is corny, that is for certain, but once I got into the film and saw how tongue-in-cheek and winking at the audience it was, I really began to see it for the high quality production values that it had. It's unfortunate that public domain prints are either greatly edited or not very sharp, but fortunately, the print that I had (replacing a VHS copy from years ago that was unviewable) was complete an entirely watchable. I was able to up my rating from a 4 to a 9, and have moved this up to my top 10 favorite musicals of 1936, quite a change considering the number of musicals made that year.
Steffi Duna is a delight as the village maiden who saves Collins from being hanged for having been guilty of simply being on a pirate ship, and Frank Morgan is once again truly enjoyable as the governor who is pompous but incompetent, unable to get a single sentence out without stammering. The dance numbers are very elaborate, and it's great to see a young Rita Hayworth in a featured dance role. This goes to show that just because you don't like something the first time doesn't mean that a second viewing will make you see something in a different light. As much fun as the later Gene/Judy musical "The Pirate", and one I will definitely go out of my way to watch again in its restored original color version.