In 1955 this lavish production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway hit The King and I, starring Yul Brynner as the King of Siam and Deborah Kerr as the governess sent to look after his children, was the most expensive film ever mounted by 20th Century Fox. The 40 sets in ripe decors by Walter M Scott and Paul S Fox included a ballroom of black marble with jade and silk tapestries and a banqueting scene with a table that gives the impression of stretching to infinity. The costumes by Irene Sharaff, notably the hoop ballroom gown for Deborah Kerr and those for the ballet "The Small House of Uncle Thomas", dazzle the eye in their delineation of Western manners and Oriental splendour. Brynner remains impressive as the King but his pidgin dialogue, inherited from Hammerstein's book, with the dropping of the definite article takes some adjustment. Alfred Newman put his unique stamp on the music: the Overture offers an example of his luminous divided string sound, the climactic ballroom scene a full bodied orchestral reprise of "Shall We Dance?" as the camera pulls away to a high angle producing an exultant visual finish to this celebrated polka. On the DVD: To view The King and I in its original format (thanks to this DVD release) is a revelation. Over the years the production values of the film have been compromised through inadequate presentation on television and video. Now the eye can appreciate once more the novelty of the wide-screen process CinemaScope 55 which offers in-depth vision, breathtaking employment of Eastman colour and an enhanced sound system that ensures a well-upholstered backdrop for the sumptuous musical arrangements under conductor Alfred Newman. DVD supplements here include the original theatrical trailer, a Movietone news of the Oscar ceremony of 56-57 and three songs lifted from the movie itself. Marni Nixon overdubbed Deborah Kerr's vocals on screen-those moments where one voice takes over from another are more clearly delineated on the DVD with the result that there is some discrepancy between Kerr's spirited playing and Nixon's over careful (rather) twee enunciation of the lyrics. [+]

You know the story: Cinderella rides in a magical pumpkin to the ball, enchants the prince and flees at midnight. He finds her slipper and tracks her down, and they live happily ever after. But wait! In The Slipper and the Rose, it turns out there's more to the life of a prince than being charming. The king prefers to choose the prince's wife, one of proper social station who would provide a strong political alliance to ward off the kingdom's enemies. That's one of the twists in this 1976 British take on the classic fairy tale, one of a long line of musical versions. The disgruntled prince, who's as much of a focal point here as the lady with the footwear, is played by Richard Chamberlain, during the years when he was taking on the classics and had not yet been crowned king of the TV mini-series. He displays a pleasant voice opposite Gemma Craven as Cinderella, and veteran character actor Michael Hordern as the king leads the supporting ensemble. Add lavish sets and lush scenery (partially filmed in Austria), humour, fun choreography, and an Oscar-nominated score full of charming songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman (veterans of such Disney movies as Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book, and who also co-wrote the script with director Bryan Forbes), and you have a grand, engaging family musical. [+]

After several years as the hottest musical director on Broadway, Bob Fosse made his film directorial debut with this movie version of his Broadway hit, which was based on Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. Shirley MacLaine is terrific as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold, one who is convinced that she will find the right man if she just turns enough tricks. The Cy Coleman score is a solid one; the film is at its best when Fosse lets his cast of singer-dancers (which includes Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, and Sammy Davis Jr) unleash his leggy brand of choreography. While the film suffers from stylistic excesses of the period, you can see the seeds being planted for Fosse's future musical film forays in Cabaret and All That Jazz. -Marshall Fine.

A Hard Day's Night may have been The Beatles' first big-screen experience but, as they had become the biggest band in the world by the time of its production, the Moptops were able to ensure it was a bit different from the band-movie norm. "We'd made it clear that we weren't interested in being stuck in one of those nobody-understands-our-music plots," John Lennon would later recall. "The kind of thing where we'd just pop up a couple of times between the action, all smiles and clean shirts, to sing our latest record. Never mind all your pals, how could we have faced each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?" Instead the quartet recruited a young director named Richard Lester-who had previously worked with the Fab Four's beloved Goons-to make a movie that followed them as they enjoyed and endured the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. "The film wrote itself right in front of our eyes," says Lester. "We just took the dirty bits and cut them out. " The result is a frenetic hour and a half inside The Beatles' personal space as they engage in all manner of surreal hi-jinks-more often than not involving Paul's "grandfather" (played by Steptoe and Son's Wilfrid Brambell) while dodging the ever-present horde of screaming fans. Although the result now seems a little dated, there remains an almost heart-breakingly good-natured aura around the foursome's naïve performances while few could argue about the quality of a soundtrack that includes "Can't Buy Me Love", "And I Love Her" and "A Hard Day's Night" itself, to name but a few. Whether the film would have been quite so successful if Lester had followed McCartney's suggestion and called it "Oh, What A Lovely Wart!" will, sadly, never be known. -Clark Collis A Hard Day's Night may have been the Beatles' first big-screen experience but, as they had become the biggest band in the world by the time of its production, the Moptops were able to ensure it was a bit different from the band-movie norm. [+]

Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort was released in 1967 as a dancing companion piece to his musical film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg-an international hit three years earlier. The two films shared the same composer, Michel Legrand and one star, Catherine Deneuve but there the parallels ended: Les Demoiselles was a box-office flop. The reputation of the film has since been kept afloat by Legrand's music, which includes the pretty melody "You Must Believe in Spring". Demy's film is self-evidently a tribute to the American film musical: the choreography is modelled on Jerome Robbins' dances as seen in West Side Story but unlike that film no attempt has been made to make these dances a natural extension of the action. Here the dancers break footloose and fancy-free in a manner that can at best be described as naïve and at worse wearisome in the film's two-hour running time. The opening duet for the two sisters (Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac) nods in the direction of the Marilyn Monroe/Jane Russell "Little Girl from Little Rock" duet from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes but at least the Legrand tune has its own punch and vivacity. Seasoned performers like Gene Kelly-rather too old to play a romantic lead but singing (unlike most of the cast) in his own French-and Danielle Darrieux are on screen too but their presence can't compensate for the lacklustre direction and purposeless plot that reaches its nadir in some embarrassing local headlines describing murder and crime set to jaunty music. While grateful to have had the opportunity to see a film that might have been lost were it not for the restoration process, there can be little doubt that the Demy-Legrand partnership will continue to be remembered for their earlier work. -Adrian Edwards.