Bali Gay
In the movie, newly arrived Lieutenant Cable runs into Bloody Mary, who sings Bali Hai (the most beautiful song in South Pacific, in my opinion), about a mysterious nearby island where his dreams will come true.
In my version, Joe Cable always thought he was straight, but Bloody Mary sings that he might discover something else if he visits the island of Bali Gay.
We start with the introduction sung by Bloody Mary in the movie. Then I change the song to instrumental music with my new words as subtitles.
Note: The 1958 movie South Pacific used weird colored filters during some of the song sequences (e.g. everything would be tinted purple or yellow or whatever). The filters were not subtle. See the screen capture below from the beginning of the song Bali Hai. Yes, it's really that color in the movie. These horrible color effects are universally hated by critics and audiences everywhere. I don't know what the movie makers were thinking. The colors were especially bad in the song Bali Hai, changing from purple to orange to no filter to red to purple. I tried to fix the colors in my video editor, but there's only so much I can do. So, if the colors look "off" in places, rest assured that it looked much worse in the original movie.
Despite the filters, which were only used during a few songs, the movie is a classic and is well worth watching.
5 comments:
You have been working very hard.
Those filters ruin the film and make it, at least for me, virtually unwatchable. In addition, I'm not a fan of the phony exuberance of star Mitzi Gaynor. Doris Day, whose husband/manager Marty Melcher tried to get her the role of Nellie Forbush, would have been much better. Melcher wanted an exorbitant salary for his wife while Gaynor accepted a low salary and, because the film was already projected to be over budget before shooting even started, she was chosen.
I've read that the director was told that if he didn't like the color filter effects that Technicolor could compensate for them in the processing of the film, but as it turned out the filters were too intense for that to be possible...pretty much the same as your experience with the video editor program.
While "Some Enchanted Evening" became the hit and the preferred song to record, I always thought this was the better song.
I agree. One of the things that bothers me about "Some Enchanted Evening" is that it's a rare case where Rogers and Hammerstein's music and lyrics don't match the natural rhythm of the English language. Specifically, nobody says "across a crowded room" with a heavy accent on the first syllable of "crowded," like the song, so it sounds artificial, like an opera aria. Other Rogers and Hammerstein songs, like "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair," match the natural rhythm of the language perfectly.
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