April 3, 2008...2:55 pm
Entertainment Weekly’s incomplete musical listing article
Entertainment Weekly or EW as some call it, compiled a list of the “Best 25 of all time” musicals in motion picture history.
The list includes heavy hitters such as: Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Funny Girl, Cabaret, Singin’ in the Rain, Mary Poppins, Grease, Music Man, Swing Time, etc…, but is missing easily one that should be in the TOP 5 greatest musicals of all time… OLIVER!
The film won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture of the year in 1969. That’s not to say that awards alone should merit this remarkable film to the top of the list. No, the film speaks for itself. The location, choreography, set design, score, art direction, cinematography, acting and directing (directed by Carol Reed, same man who made The Third Man - among other films) catapult this film to same platform as West Side Story or Wizard of Oz, easily!!!
This version of Oliver (there have been others) is the best and most accurate narrative storytelling of Charles Dickens’s immortal classic novel, and EW has the moxy to not even include it in its Top 25 listing? How can they consider themselves to be an Entertainment News Mecca if they don’t have a firm girp on their film history?Perhaps the supposed “film buffs” they hire are merely young turks who think cinema really started in the 1970s with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and only put classic examples in their listing for good measure.
When I went to film school, we were drilled with film history. Every genre, every movement, every great director was studied in detail. Our appreciation for these great films of yester year permeated through our souls and it made us better filmmakers. I’m sorry to rant, but I was appalled when I saw their “list”, if you can call it that and it didn’t include Oliver! I swear those guys/gals simply grab names off of IMDB or similar search engine, slap on some stills and cut/copy/paste a description with it and hand it off as a “greatest list”.
Below is a 9-minute clip from Oliver! Its for the song “Who Will Buy”, which is easily in the top 2 best musical scenes in the film. Notice the scale of the production, the choreography, the amazing vocals and breath-taking cinematography.
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