Back in the 1940s and 1950s there was an American illustrator named Norman Rockwell who became famous for his magazine art. He painted covers for the weekly Saturday Evening Post magazine, showing an idyllic, bucolic America of country farms and apple pie, boys down at the fishing hole and girls catching their first kisses at the annual State Fair.
Well, State Fair, the 1946 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, is pure Norman Rockwell set to music. Its streak of corn is as wide as an elephant's hide. In this Iowa fairyland, everything, just everything, is coming up roses.
The plot is simple, country family goes to the State Fair. Mum wins the prizes for best sour pickles and best mincemeat; Dad comes home with a 'Best of Show' award for his Hampshire boar and daughter Margy and son Wayne find romance, both sweet and sour varieties.
This is probably the weakest of all the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. It's the only one they wrote specifically for the screen. It was written to capitalise on the huge popularity of the then-current stage hit, Oklahoma!, which had opened in 1943 and looked likely to tour America forever. As a matter of fact, it still is touring America, and looks as if it will never stop.
State Fair boasts only two standout songs - It Might As Well Be Spring and A Grand Night for Singing, whereas Rodgers and Hammerstein used to normally spruce up their stage hits with ten or more great numbers.
So it's short-shrift in the music department. But it still has a certain vintage charm, and its lead, young singer Jeanne Crain, is full of fresh appeal. By now it has even assumed a certain documentary credibility. If this isn't how rural Americans once used to live, it's how they would like to believe the old days were. Pretty charming really, if you don't mind creamed corn for breakfast, lunch and dinner...
Here is another vintage full-frame movie which comes up fresh as a daisy on DVD, with glowing colours which just seem fresher and more vibrant than many film-makers can manage today.
It's a beautiful print, in top condition. It's great to see film heritage preserved this way.
The sound is adequate. It's two-channel mono, not breathtaking in any way, but probably true enough to its origins. It would be interesting to hear it if it had been given the sort of treatment Warner Brothers gives some of its films from these years - their 5.1 remixes of some of the old soundtracks are wondrous.
