Saturday 21 July 2012

Calamity Jane (1953)



The musical Western from 1953 starring Doris Day as Calamity Jane with Howard Keel, Allyn Ann McLerie and Philip Carey. Sees Jane agree to bring a big female star from the city to her town of Deadwood. Jane is very much a Tomboy and dresses as a soldier, shoots and drinks with the men and wants to be accepted as one of the boys. The film follows her as she discovers more about what she wants from life and why being a woman can be good.

This film is a lot of fun and the songs including "The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack Away)" and "Just Blew in From the Windy City" are catchy, memorable and I am sure you will have heard them before. Musicals are a strange type of film as they can be more about the music than the story, this I think can be an issue for some people who are looking to watch a film rather than segments of music videos. The older Musicals including this really use the songs well to help emphasise the story and be a set piece within the film.

Musicals are a genre of film that I have naturally avoided but having seen this and recently seeing "Singin in the Rain" for the first time and really enjoying it, I am going to try and watch more Musicals. Overall this is a strong 3 stars I would recommend checking if nothing else to see a solid film star in Doris Day.

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