Finian's Rainbow (1968)

Finian’s Rainbow (1968)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Screenplay and book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, based on the stage play by the same

Runtime: 2 hr, 25 min

I may not be any sort of expert on film or film history, but I absolutely love writing about and reviewing classic cinema.  And I have loved maintaining this blog in order to do it.  The process writing up these reviews has exposed me to films that I would otherwise probably ignore, and by several strokes of luck, the vast majority of movies have been a treat to view.  Occasionally, however, one must watch a catastrophe, and few movies I’ve ever seen are quite as catastrophic as today’s film, Finian’s Rainbow.

Set in Rainbow Valley, which is two miles from Fort Knox, Finian’s Rainbow finds Fred Astaire as Finian, an Irishman who has taken a crock of gold from a leprechaun named Og (Tommy Steele) and traveled to America with his daughter Sharon (Petula Clark) to make his money multiply—long story.  Meanwhile, there’s a rancorous senator (Keenan Wynn) who wants the town property for his own corrupt uses, but the residents of Rainbow Valley, led by a fellow named Woody (Don Francks), are none too happy about that.

Finian’s Rainbow, buried somewhere deep in the proceedings, has the makings of a good movie—political corruption and hatred, mysticism and money-making schemes.  It’s got all of that, and that’s the problem.  Watching the film try to juggle all these plotlines and elements is like watching me try to juggle anything—it all falls down very, very quickly.  Despite nearly two-and-a-half hours of screen time, Finian’s Rainbow fails to adequately develop any of its subplots, let alone integrate them into a coherent story.

The clearest example of this problem comes in the romance between Sharon and Woody.  When Sharon and Woody first arrive in town, they clearly demonstrate some possible chemistry.  Yet at their very next interaction, they share a musical number and fall in love.  I get that it’s a light-hearted affair, but can we at least get them some more dialogue before they get to that point in their arc?  This event occurs about a third of the way through the film—which leaves a good hour-and-a-half of their relationship going absolutely nowhere.

Normally, a weak storyline (or several) can be salvaged by some good performances.  Sadly, Finian’s Rainbow is in short supply of those.  I will say that Petula Clark has a fine sing voice and brings energy to her character, but the rest of the cast is dire.  Fred Astaire, no doubt a result of his age, appears lethargic as Finian, and Francks’ Woody is as stiff as board; there’s no way he’s in love.  But the worst is by far Tommy Steele, who is overacting in all the wrong ways and performs as if restraint is a foreign concept.  I hated him from thirty seconds in, and not one second passed where I didn’t wish for him to drown.

Still, I can see why Steele, a teen idol in Britain, would be cast in a musical—he certainly can sing.  But given the voices of Steele and Clark and the moves of Astaire, I’m a bit perplexed how shaky the musical elements of the film are.  Most of the songs are flat or cloying and fail to advance the plot or characters; only the melody of “This Time of the Year” sticks out.  Even worse is the choreography, which is confused as all hell.  The dances aren’t engaging and the staging is hacked to bits by poorly placed cuts.  Apparently dance gives you the power of teleportation.

Yet what gets my goat the most—more than the acting, the plotting, or the music—is the fact that Finian’s Rainbow has a message.  Not that it’s a bad message; “Don’t be a bigot,” while obvious today, would be a worthwhile one for the film’s setting.  The problem is that it’s this movie that’s delivering it.  The amount of disconnect between the painful slapstick from the god-forsaken leprechaun and the sudden turns to anti-racism from Sharon is staggering.  Even for light entertainment, Finian’s Rainbow does not earn the right to preach to its audience.

Okay, I will give the film one thing: it look beautiful.  Even though the amount of green in the movie sets gives the impression that Finian and Sharon never left Ireland, the textures and cinematography are lovely.  There’s a certain surreal appearance to the grass, especially where Finian buries the crock of gold.  This does an excellent job of accentuating the mystical qualities of the film’s story and characters.  It also leads to the obvious joke that, yes, I would rather watch the grass growing than what was portrayed on screen.

Finian’s Rainbow fails in some many ways that laying the blame on anyone person would be inadequate.  Is it Coppola’s fault for not getting how a musical is staged?  Do we blame Tommy Steele for making a bad set of performances intolerable?  Or could it be that the screenwriters clearly needed to give the script a good once-over before handing it in?  Yes, yes, and yes, and yes to several more possibilities.  Ultimately, Finian’s Rainbow serves as a great guide to filmmaking.  See what they did here?  Yeah, don’t do that.