Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Stanley Donen
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Julie Newmar, Russ TamblynDirector: Stanley Donen
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; French (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 1.77:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-12
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: One of the great MGM musicals, with the seven Pontipee brothers, two attractive leads and four superb dancers
Summary: 5 Stars
What has this MGM musical, on the cusp of the Hollywood musical's long decline, have going for it? For starters, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has a generous story with healthy, naughty overtones; a boisterous score; two attractive leads, both of whom can sing while smiling; great scenery, even if the movie was shot on sound stages; dances that are original and precise; and, rare in movie musicals, a genuinely masculine feel thanks to the seven Pontipee brothers, all of whom were definitely male with four of them played by great dancers and one by a gifted gymnast.
The story is a tale of sex and abduction...no, better make that a search for wives by seven well-intentioned nature's gentlemen who are a bit rough around the edges. Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel), the eldest brother, leaves the isolated Oregon homestead he and his six brothers work and takes the long, long ride into the small town miles away. He's after supplies and a wife. Surprisingly, he finds both. Milly (Jane Powell), a young woman who wants her own life, is swept off her feet, agrees to marry Adam, and off they go back to the homestead. What she finds isn't as bad as Elsa Knudsen meeting the Hammond brothers, but it's clear the Pontipees haven't much acquaintance with soap. The Pontipee house is a mess and so are the Pontipee table manners. Milly begins to straighten out the house and the brothers, and the brothers begin thinking that having wives of their own might not be a bad idea. Milly starts to teach them the finer aspects of courting, but Adam encourages them to just go into town and abduct the young women they'd met at a barn-raising. They do...and Milly nearly brings down the house around them. But then winter sets in, the pass is blocked, the young women can't be returned even if they want (they really don't), and Milly dictates the sleeping arrangements, which is not what the brothers had in mind. And that includes for Adam. When spring comes, Milly says, the girls get returned or they get married. Until then, she's going to be an iron-fisted chaperone. In time, with Spring, all is happily resolved.
With the story an amusing, sweet-natured comedy of longing, frustration, good-intentions and hormones, for me Seven Brides for Seven Brothers stands out for three reasons. First, lyric writer Johnny Mercer and composer Gene de Paul constructed a score of outstanding, rambunctious songs interspersed with a few easy-to-take, serviceable romance songs. "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," "Goin' Courtin'," "Lonesome Polecat" and "Sobbin' Women" carry the movie along with great good spirits and a little bit of irony. Second is the dancers. Of the seven Pontipees, four do the dancing...Tommy Rall, Marc Platt, Matt Mattox and Jacques d'Amboise. They were all classically trained in ballet with careers that didn't often, except for Rall, include Hollywood. They are fast, controlled, precise and believable as backwoods types who just happen to be able to spin, leap and stomp. Russ Tamblyn, the gymnast, joins them with integrated flips. Third, is Michael Kidd's choreography, with the highlight being the long barn-raising sequence. The Pontipees, all washed and spiffed up, have come to town to meet some girls, decide to take part in a barn raising because that's where the girls are, but the girls have young townsmen who don't take kindly to the backwoods competition. We're off on a clever, vigorous square dance that quickly turns into a challenge dance between the Pontipee brothers and the townsmen, and that moves from the square dance to the building of the barn. Kidd has constructed one series of challenges after another, using everything from lumber on wooden horses to axes. It's athletic and funny. Tamblyn holds his own, and Rall, Platt, Mattox and d'Amboise shine.
According the Donen, MGM placed its bets that Brigadoon, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Gene Kelly, which was being shot at the same time as Seven Brides, would be the big smash. MGM executives took half of Donen's budget and gave it to Minnelli. How wrong they were. Brigadoon turned out to be a disappointment, stagy and self-conscious. Nowadays, it looks dated. Seven Brides just took off. Fifty years later it still is a joy to watch, and that barn-raising sequence is a dance classic. Donen was 27 when Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was released. He and Michael Kidd did alright.
The DVD transfer is excellent, crisp and colorful.
Summary of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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