Two Classic Musicals

The Sound of Music



Recently I went back and re-watched this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. It’s been a perennial classic, and it seems likely to stay that way. Everything about it was calculated to appeal to the widest audience possible. While I can’t say I’ll ever be a fan, it does have it’s own corny charm, and yes, it’s still corny after all these years.

China Town



Another classic musical made just a few years earlier is China Town. Not to be confused with the Roman Polanski neo-noir film Chinatown, China Town is a musical that has been near and dear to the hearts of many Indians the way The Sound of Music has been to many Americans.

This Hindi film is a black and white film worth seeing for the music if nothing else. It contains a wonderfully diverse mix of Jazz, traditional Chinese and traditional Indian music as well as early Rock and Roll, and even classical music in the score - 'Night on Bald Mountain' appears during a chase sequence.

Shammi Kapoor stars as Shekhar, a hotel lounge singer who agrees to impersonate a gangster named Mike for a police sting as a way to prove himself to his sweethearts father and get his approval to marry her. Shekhar is a dead-ringer for Mike, one of the key members of an opium ring in Calcutta’s China Town.

Yes, there are racist overtones, but no moreso than in Hollywood films of the time - despite a long common border, it's clear that the Chinese were perceived just as mysterious and inscrutable to the Indians as they were in the west.

It's proto-Bollywood, so you have to be able to accept that people break into song at random times with full instrumentation springing forth from nowhere. There is a fair amount of buffoonery here, but it’s worth putting up with to see stuff like Pompadoured Shekar's Indian Elvis moves – the film seems to be India’s answer to King Creole.

Unfortunately, like most Indian films of that vintage, the preservation isn’t great – the print is very rough in some parts - there are some breaks and gaps where footage has been lost, but very few, not enough to really detract from the story.
The fact that it has survived at all is cause for celebration because at the time of it’s release, it was never more than a minor hit, peaking at #9 in the Indian the box office.