UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ - Paint Your Wagon -- in 4k UHD (2 Viewers)

[Matt Hough]

And which bucket would Finian’s Rainbow fall into? Isn’t that similar to PYW in that it’s a 1947 stage hit retrofitted for the revolutionary 60’s audience.

No, Finian's Rainbow remained quite faithful to the stage version. No songs were cut and replaced with new ones, and the plots and subplots were retained. Some allowances were made so Astaire could sing and dance as Finian (which the stage Finian didn't do), but otherwise it's not really comparable to Paint Your Wagon. It also didn't lose money: it was produced economically and did well enough to be classified as a hit.

 

[KPmusmag]

No, Finian's Rainbow remained quite faithful to the stage version. No songs were cut and replaced with new ones, and the plots and subplots were retained. Some allowances were made so Astaire could sing and dance as Finian (which the stage Finian didn't do), but otherwise it's not really comparable to Paint Your Wagon. It also didn't lose money: it was produced economically and did well enough to be classified as a hit.

Finian's Rainbow has truly tuneful music by Burton Lane. I love listening to the soundtrack album. And not to nitpick, but the song "Necessity" was cut from the film although it is on the soundtrack album (and you can hear a strain or two in the underscore). I have actually worked on two stage productions of Finian's Rainbow and thinking of it now, the tobacco sub-plot would really not work today. It was revived on Broadway a few years ago with the golden-throated Cheyenne Jackson as Woody, and they made a beautiful cast album, with the original orchestrations. I don't think it did very well, however. The revival of Bells Are Ringing did not do well, either - answering services and tobacco are not as central to society as they once were.

Back to Paint Your Wagon - I sampled the disc just now and it is wonderful IMO. There is nothing like seeing it in a giant theater with a great sound system, but it is nice to have such a pristine disc in my possession.

 

[roxy1927]

I got the soundtrack to Finian's Rainbow which was remaindered all over the place. It was wrapped with the souvenir book. Clark is great but so is the very different Ella Logan on the obc. I listened to that soundtrack all the time. I didn't know the film was successful. I thought it had been a failure.

Burton Lane was a wonderful composer. He made an appearance at the Biograph when they showed Royal Wedding. I'll never forget him saying the most miserable man he ever knew in show business was Al Jolson. The nicest was Fred Astaire. I wish though he had kept Louis Jordan in Clear Day. Cullum though a wonderful singer just didn't, for me, have the star power the role needed. Now I didn't see it but Jordan/Harris seems like great casting. In the film which I like more than most people with Streisand in her best voice should have been paired with somebody other than Montand. Sinatra would have been great. But at that point I imagine their egos wouldn't have allowed it. Still they needed somebody else even Goulet.

 

[Nick*Z]

And which bucket would Finian’s Rainbow fall into? Isn’t that similar to PYW in that it’s a 1947 stage hit retrofitted for the revolutionary 60’s audience.
On another note I hope one day soon we’ll get Mr. Chips on at least Blu-ray. It’s long overdue and the print on TCM is not that great. I like O’Toole in it and Petula’s not bad either.
Lost Horizon deserves its own category! Do you think anyone will ever do it on stage? Lol

Lost Horizon does deserve it's own special category, along with One From the Heart and Finian's Rainbow and At Long Last Love. As for the '69 Mr. Chips. For me, the only saving grace is Petula Clark, whom I adore in general, and would have been a huge musical star if only her career had launched in the mid-fifties. What a talent and a presence!

Love Peter O'Toole. But this isn't his finest hour. He's too sour for the empathetic Chips of Brookfield.

 

[KPmusmag]

Question for Mr. Harris - I am curious if this is an example of the grain being scrubbed and then artificially added back in, or if we are seeing the true grain.

Now that I have watched the disc in its entirety, I must say I had an almost visceral reaction to the grain - in a good way. At times I felt that I was watching celluloid unspool and it brought back the feeling of being in a movie house. All it needed was some gate weave LOL. I feel very nostalgic right now. Not all discs do that for me these days, even if I still enjoy and appreciate the movie.

 

[Robin9]

Burton Lane was a wonderful composer. He made an appearance at the Biograph when they showed Royal Wedding. I'll never forget him saying the most miserable man he ever knew in show business was Al Jolson.

Did Burton Lane say Jolson was the most miserable or the nastiest?

 

[roxy1927]

I assume miserable.
But it was clear he put him at the very bottom of people he knew in show biz. In Saul Chaplin's, who was cheated by Jolson, auto bio he sarcastically calls Jolson a 'nice guy.'

 

[trajan007]

Watched PAINT YOUR WAGON last night. Grab a copy. Looks and sounds terrific. Forgot what a fun show this is .And that last scene is amazing. Thanks Kino!

 

[roxy1927]

Quite a split on opinions of the film itself. For those of us who like it I'm glad the 4k transfer turned out so well.
Unfortunately my player which I've only had for a few years can no longer play 4k and I haven't played 4k all that often. Bluray and dvds play fine.

 

[BobO'Link]

Can you guys please move your non-Paint Your Wagon film talk to another thread? It's getting annoying to see new posts and come in to find none/few are about the film reviewed.

 

[TJPC]

I grew up in a small Pittsburgh type city (Windsor Ontario). Everyone I came in contact with was a factory worker. There is nothing wrong with that, but I was truly a fish out of water. I love musicals. In the 60's I saw every one of the "bloated flop musicals", in the gigantic Capitol theater and loved almost all of them ("Man of Lamancha --puke) . I was usually the only one there.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

I grew up in a small Pittsburgh type city (Windsor Ontario). Everyone I came in contact with was a factory worker. There is nothing wrong with that, but I was truly a fish out of water. I love musicals. In the 60's I saw every one of the "bloated flop musicals", in the gigantic Capitol theater and loved almost all of them ("Man of Lamancha --puke) . I was usually the only one there.

As a fellow musical lover who grew up in small town Alberta, I share your pain and love some of the bloated musicals of the 60s. I have to confess to not having seen Paint Your Wagon in its entirety. Never could get past the Marvin croak.

 

[Mark Booth]

Lots of musicals & westerns in the sixties...hardly any now, but then we do have all those superhero films

So completely sick of superhero films! If I never see another Marvel Universe film it will be too soon!

Thank goodness for 'Horizon: An American Sag' part one, coming in June (and part two in August)!! I haven't been this excited to see a film in the theater since 'The Greatest Showman'!

Mark

 

[Nick*Z]

I grew up in a small Pittsburgh type city (Windsor Ontario). Everyone I came in contact with was a factory worker. There is nothing wrong with that, but I was truly a fish out of water. I love musicals. In the 60's I saw every one of the "bloated flop musicals", in the gigantic Capitol theater and loved almost all of them ("Man of Lamancha --puke) . I was usually the only one there.

Windsor used to have some spectacular venues for large-format movies, including the Capitol and, of course, the Odeon. Nothing really topped that wrap-around screen. Saw Backdraft and Flowers in the Attic there, along with a lot of other great fluff and nonsense.

There was also the Vanity, which had a great balcony, and The Palace. Sadly, none of the aforementioned survived the wrecking ball in the late 90s. The Odeon burned to the ground, along with the attached Holiday Inn. The Capitol ceased to be a movie venue. It's been half-restored and hosts 'special events' although I am still trying to figure out what those are. The Palace became the home office for The Windsor Star - a now defunct local newspaper, and the Vanity became a series of nightclubs - the longest lasting, called simply, 'O'.

 

[Dick]

Sorry. Honestly, Lee Marvin in a musical?

He sure ain't as pretty as the gorgeous Jean Seberg, but I think he's still the best thing about the movie.

 

[Alan Tully]

He sure ain't as pretty as the gorgeous Jean Seberg, but I think he's still the best thing about the movie.

…by a country mile!

I’d hate to think what the film would have like without him.

 

[DigniT@DigniT!]

It's not a film I love, but the 4K UHD disc looks and sounds almost as clear as the Roadshow engagement of my youth at the Cooper Cinerama in Denver, Colorado. I'd love a 4K UHD of Josh Logan's other big 60s musical mishap, CAMELOT. With all its flaws, I find some of the actors sublime, even in their imperfections/miscasting. And that score and the production values save it for me. It's interesting which Broadway musicals translated successfully to film and which did not. Still glad to have some record of so many of them.

 

[TJPC]

“Roadshows, flop musicals of the 1960’s” is an absorbing book and still available through Amazon.

 

[DigniT@DigniT!]

“Roadshows, flop musicals of the 1960’s” is an absorbing book and still available through Amazon.

Yes. It's on my Kindle, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, having seen all of the films in Denver on the first release!

 

[Indy Guy]

According to the Paint Your Wagon commentary track, the film made a good amount of money, just not enough to cover its massive production costs. That qualifies it as a bomb in the company of films like Disney's Sleeping Beauty where costs affected initial profitability, but not artistic qualities. No recreation of a gold mining boomtown has ever been as evocative as PYW's No Name City...especially the on screen build as the town prospers overnight. John Truscott was a genius for artistic detail.
As for Marvin's emotionally "croaked" Wandering Star, it knocked the Beatles out of #1 for 4 weeks on UK charts. Marvin's son would never let him live that down! The flip side of the single was Eastwood's Talk to the Trees, another beautiful moment in the film for some of us.
For anyone interested in cinema-archiology, here is a fascinating look at "No Name City" as it looks now...

No Name City, 49 years later…

This past weekend, Ghost Host Andy Lindberg and myself (DKC) traveled to the Wallowa Whitman National Forest to visit the filming site of “Paint Your Wagon.” PYW is approaching its 50th…

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