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I’m on the fence about this one. Stanley Donen’s direction is effervescent, Michael Kidd’s choreography is unique and lively, the score is pleasant if unmemorable, but that story is just so aggressively archaic. I suppose the sexist overtones of the film’s second half could be overcome with more distinct characters, but both the brides and the brothers are largely shades of beige with no discerning traits or personalities to speak of.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers exists more as eminently watchable than as a must-see classic for me. It’s missing a distinct sense of something more that is easily identifiable in more obvious musical classics like Singin’ in the Rain or A Star Is Born. It’s main distinguishing feature is Michael Kidd’s choreography, which is a flurry of high-kicks, spinning torsos, and piston-pumping knees.
It takes the lived-in experiences of frontier and country life and uses them as excuses for exceedingly complicated dance numbers. I suppose a better description for them would be hoedowns. The barn dance is the most famous, and with justifiable reason. It begins simple enough, and keeps expanding and growing. The brothers begin by peacocking for the prospective brides, then engage in macho one-upmanship, before turning into a hand-clapping, foot-stomping flurry of body parts and flouncy skirts. It’s a showstopper of the best kind, but nothing else comes close to matching it in terms of songs or performances.
Despite a lively ensemble, only Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, and Julie Newmar make any lasting impression. Keel and Powell are the leads, so they obviously get the lions-share of screen time to develop their characters, with Powell emerging as the more sympathetic and well-rounded of the two. Tamblyn’s not quite the actor he would blossom into in a few years with much better performances in West Side Story or Peyton Place, but at least his brother gets something more to play. And Newmar’s already in full sex-kitten swagger here, a little over a decade before her career-defining role as Catwoman in Batman ’66. Her memorable performance boils down to one scene in which the kidnapped prospective brides discuss their dreams of being June brides, and she purrs out questions about who’s bed she’s been sleeping in.
Yet it’s that entire kidnapping scenario which my brain can’t quite wrap itself around. Just when I thought Powell and the girls would give the boys a taste of revenge, the girls demure and don’t want to leave. For all of the feisty displays, for all of Powell’s verbal smackdowns and motherly protesting, a happily-ever-after by way of shotgun weddings still happens. It’s ludicrously sexist, to the point where it plays like knowing camp, like a self-mocking acknowledgement that kidnapping your sweethearts like the Ancient Romans did to the Sabines was probably not the best idea.
The arch symmetry of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is probably best viewed as an exceedingly giddy hoedown, with a cast populated mostly by dancers and not actors. A raccoon cap wearing farce, it’s enjoyable but don’t count me in as one of the people proclaiming this one a classic. If we’re basing a musical’s merits entirely on its choreography, this is one for the ages. But dancing alone does not a musical make, and this is substitutes exuberance for craft in far too many places.
