Michael Portentier (53:03)
Well, this chat room that I go to, someone just brought up the movie and, and, and a lot of people weighed in. A lot of people have feelings about it, positive and negative. And I think many people have both positive and negative feelings about it. I've always described it as a fabulous mess. There are really so many wonderful moments, not only musical numbers, but scenes as well. Because Peter Stone wrote the screenplay. The book for the original Broadway production was by Neil Simon is credited to Neil Simon. And. But then when the, the movie came to be made, Peter Stone was put on as the screenwriter and he added, he added a lot. And, and, and specifically he added two really, really well written and brilliantly well acted scenes. One of them is when Charity, she's finally fed up with, with her life at the dance hall and she, she goes to try to find a real job and she goes to an employment agency and she sits down with this fellow who. And it gradually becomes apparent that she has absolutely no skills whatsoever, but she still wants a job because she wants to get away from, from that lifestyle. And, and so it starts out as a hilariously funny scene but then as it goes on it becomes very, very heartbreaking making when it becomes clear how, how badly she wants to change her life and that she just doesn't have the skills for it. And then, oh, what happens is that the, the fellow who's trying to help her, he eventually thinks that it must be a put on and that it can't be. That she really, you know, can't do anything and that the fellows down the hall maybe put her up to this as a joke to come into, to, you know, pretend to be completely helpless and, and completely skill free in order to, to, you know, to play a joke on him. And she, Charity goes along with it because she's just so embarrassed. And then she leaves. And then as she's walking out of the, out of the office, we see her sort of crying as she walks down the hall. So that's one scene that he added. And then there's a, an absolutely devastating scene at the end which I think is in the show but in a much, much shorter form where Charity and Oscar go to the marriage license bureau to, you know, to sign up for a marriage license. But unfortunately, Oscar has, has been dwelling on Charity's past. Even though he said he told her, you know, in certain terms that it didn't matter. It seems like he, he cannot, he cannot get over it. So he leaves her at the marriage license Bureau. And it's just absolutely devastating the way that scene is played, the way it's written and the way it's played by John McMartin and Shirley MacLaine. And one of the changes that was made for the movie that I think was an improvement was that the song Where Am I Going? Was shifted to that spot in the narrative. Right. Charity sings it right after Oscar walks out on her, whereas in the show it's earlier and maybe not quite as effective where it occurs in the show. So that was one of the many changes. Bob Fosse does a lot of very creative things, but I always feel like he was showing off in his directorial debut and he. Stylistically, the movie, it just doesn't really cohere because he, he keeps trying all these weird camera tricks. And just when you think you've seen the last weird camera trick, he throws in a new one during the, during the I Love to Cry at Weddings number where at various points during the number, suddenly the. Not only does the action freeze into a, A, a, a still photo, but it's also turns into black and white. It's like, really, Bob, how many, you know, things can we do we have to do at once? So he, he, you know, he matured greatly after that and was, was, thank God, given the chance to direct the film of Cabaret, where he is much more disciplined in that. But it's fascinating to look at Sweet Charity and, And see. See him trying different things, even if so many of them are not successful. Also, the, the musical numbers are. Are pretty fabulous as one might imagine. And the fun thing that happened, it actually was, was yesterday I was reading about the movie online and then I thought, well, let me look at it again, because it's been a while since I saw it. So I watched most of it, rewatched most of it at home and, and then after, right after I finished watching it, I left to go see Saturday Church. And as I was walking down 42nd Street, I ran into Leroy Reams, who is in the movie. And not only in the movie, but featured a featured dancer in both the nightclub sequence that includes the rich man Sprug and those other two dancers dances, but also in the Rhythm of Life number that's led by Sammy Davis Jr. So that was fun. And I thought to myself, well, this is why I live in New York. It was really, really fun to run into Leroy 10 minutes after I saw him dancing in the movie with Ben Vereen and Sammy Davis Jr. And, and Shirley MacLaine. So if you don't know the movie Of Sweet Charity. I. I strongly advise you to. To check it out. And if you have seen it, but it was a while ago, you might want to reacquaint yourself to it and to remind yourself of both. It's its great pluses and its considerable flaws.
