FUNNY GIRL
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Columbia Pictures Director: William Wyler Writer: Isobel Lennart (play), Bob Merrill Cast: Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, Kay Medford, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon Screened at: Sony Screening Room, NYC, 8/27/01
In one of his Broadway shows Jackie Mason would pull this shtick. He'd tell us of his friend, let's call him Sam, who was brought up in a poor Jewish enclave in New York and who became a successful entertainment lawyer. "Venn he vas vit his friends," Jackie intoned, he vould tuck luck mih--'Suh, tell me, Hoib, yoh daughter, she getting merried soon, nu?' But when his phone rang in his Park Avenue office, he'd answer, 'Hellooooooooooooo, yeeeeees, this is Samuel Farbstein, what can I do for you?'"
By all rights Fanny Brice, born likewise in a poor Jewish enclave on New York's Lower East Side, then rising to become an entertainer, might have switched from an ethnic accent to a bland inflection. Yet somehow she never really possessed a trace of Yiddish in her voice. Ironically she was called by Florenz Ziegfeld upon to acquire the very accent that her audience assumed she had in the first place. At least that was the case in real life and real life was exploited to a great extent by Isobel Lennart in fashioning the undistinguished book to the musical play "Funny Girl," which opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theater on March 26, 1964 and which was adapted to the big screen four years later. There is never any doubt that Fanny Brice is not a Park Avenue WASP and one need not be Professor Henry Higgins to figure out her roots in the largely Jewish Lower East Side of New York in the early part of the 20th Century. While Julie Styne's songs, most notably "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade," are striking and in no way try to copy the songs that Fanny Brice actually used while she was a Ziegfeld Follies star, "Funny Girl" does not approach the greatest of the all-American wonders like "Oklahoma," "My Fair Lady," and "South Pacific," and you'd therefore not expect to see even revival-hungry Broadway jumping at the chance to try once again.
But Columbia Pictures has had no problem in restoring the film print for moviegoers to enjoy, opening to a public at summer's end. This "Funny Girl" can benefit not just the nostalgic buffs but many young people who may be familiar enough with Barbra Streisand--for whom the musical and the movie were made--but who long for the chance to see her in her first Oscar-winning role. (She tied with Katherine Hepburn that year.) Critics who saw the 1964 musical agreed that Ms. Streisand easily met the comical genius of Fanny Brice and repeated their accolades once again when the movie opened, and it is indeed a pleasure to hear Barbra's uniquely mellifluous tones once again as she performed at the age of twenty-six. Watching her dominate virtually every scene with her commanding personality, one can almost see Barbra Streisand herself, afflicted with mediocre vehicles during the 70s, pestered by criticism of megalomania and accusations that she had been a tyrant interfering with every detail on the set.
"Funny Girl" is the story of a young woman, Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand), who is raised on Henry Street on New York's Lower East Side, who has internalized the opinions of those around her that she is not beautiful and yet is fiercely determined to have a life on the stage. After ignoring a director's order firing her from the set of a small burlesque-type production, she appears on roller skates and turns what is supposed to be a straight dance performance into a pratfall-filled comic romp, to the great pleasure of the audience. After receiving the romantic attentions of an aristocratic and well-connected gentleman, Nicky Arnstein (Omar Sharif), she is auditioned by Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon) and hired as a major singer for the Ziegfeld Follies. Ignoring the script, she turns a serious finale about the joys of being a bride into a comic spin in which she appears at the altar in the final stages of pregnancy. About to be fired for insubordination, she is saved when she receives five curtain calls. Much of the second half of the story deals with her up-and- down relationship with the shady Mr. Arnstein, a man who motivates her to sing "People" with tears of joy, "Don't Rain on My Parade" in rebellion against her detractors, and in one of the rare instances in which her mouth is shut to listen to Nick sing seductively to her "You Are Woman." A particularly surprising scene occurs during what looks like a serious performance of the ballet "Swan Lake" but concludes as a comic send-up by Ms. Streisand--who reportedly rehearsed for three months for that scene alone.
Like "Apocalypse Now Redux," this film has gone through a careful restoration, in this case taking the original negative, used almost 300 times, replacing almost one-fifth of the original, and repairing the remainder in a process that took three years to complete. The six-track stereo masters, somewhat disintegrated, were digitally restored and remastered and a Dye Transfer printing process used to restore color.
What emerges still looks its age. Some of the washed-out color could remind you of revived movie musicals such as "Meet Me in St. Louis." But perhaps that is one of the charms of the rejuvenation. We want to see modern technology bring to life what otherwise would be impractical to show to today's audience who are not diehards loving to see the fragmented silents at places like New York's Museum of Modern Art. Yet the faded colors lend an pleasant, old-fashioned look to the project, which is desirable. I don't think anyone sees "Funny Girl" to hear Julie Styne's music, although "People" is one of the great classics of the American musical theater. They say that anywhere in the world, you can address an envelope simply "Barbra" and it would get to the correct recipient. That should give you the reason this "Funny Girl" could conceivably draw an audience to its theaters and away from some of the more modern but paradoxically far more tired productions of the summer.
Rated G. Running time: 155 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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