My evening at the Care Home with 'South Pacific'

On the last Thursday of each month, I go to the Care Home my Dad lives in, to host a movie night for the residents in the very plush in-house cinema room.

    It’s a great facility, which can fit about 10 people , be they able to edge along from the lounges, or be wheeled in by a Carer in their chair.

   It’s always tricky to pick a film that will get a room-full; many poo-poo an old favourite movie as they’ve ‘seen it before’, but one that is too modern that they’ve never heard of can be rebuked purely because they’ve ‘never heard of it’.  In recent months, The Kings Speech and Breakfast at Tiffanys have been the most successful, with a black-and-white John Wayne Western losing most audience patience most quickly. With around 80 residents, even excluding the bed-bound and the sleeping, it normally takes about 30-45 minutes to populate the screening with a room full of viewers who consider a proposed film to their taste and are prepared to sit in front of the big screen to watch it.

   This month, I arrived to find that there had been a request from one of the residents for South Pacific, which I was delighted to find in the Home’s quite sizeable, if slightly dated DVD collection. I foraged the floors looking for other people to partake in some cinematic action, and just about got a full house of 10, and stood to answer any questions, the ones that always arise:

-             How long will it last? –  Not sure exactly, but it’s a film, so maybe an hour-and-a-half or so

-             What’s it about?  - Well, It’s a classic Hollywood musical from the 50’s

-             Is there a toilet? – Yes, there’s one outside the room. I can get you there any time if the need arises

   Having passed around the popcorn,  and having waited for Mary to be brought back from the toilet my a Carer, it was finally lights down and action.

My views on South Pacific will follow, but first a summary of the in-movie movements of my Timeworn 10:

Minutes into film	Residents name	Departure detail	number of residents left
17	Martha	Bottom hurting, despite sitting on inflated rubber ring. I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	9
28	Hal	Got up and said he’d had enough.  I called a Carer, who escorted him back to the lounge.	8
34	Dot	Said that she’d seen in before. I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	7
43	Geraldine	Suddenly thought that she may have left the door unlocked to the shop (she is 93 years old and sold the shop some 30 years ago). I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	6
47	Patty	Unsettled by fact that best friend Geraldine not there and asked to be excused. I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	5
57	Gladys	‘I’ve got 2 replacement knees and these seats are too low. I’m starting to feel them.’ I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	4

   I was starting to get a bit bored with the film and thinking that it must be approaching an end, when a terrible thing happened – A scene ended and the word ‘Intermission’ came up on the screen, followed by arty frames from the first half and some instrumental versions of the songs we’d already heard. This was going to be one long film, and my planned departure time of 9pm was seriously in jeopardy. I fast forwarded to the second half.

Minutes into film	Residents name	Departure detail	Number of residents left
Intermission	Mary	Needed toilet again. I called a Carer, who escorted to the toilet	3
Intermission +10	Mary	Escorted back from toilet by Carer	4
Intermission +14	Mary	‘Think I’ll go back to my room now’.  I called a Carer, who escorted her back to the lounge.	3
Intermission +20	My father	Getting increasingly fidgety. Took shirt off and now sitting bare-topped. I called a Carer, who escorted him back to the lounge.	2
Intermission +22	Hilda	Concerned that daughter might want to visit and not be able to find her. I called a Carer, who escorted her back to lounge.	1

   That left me and Avis, with probably anything up to an hour of the film left. It would have been mean to nudge her and suggest that maybe as everyone else had gone, perhaps she’d like to as well. So we sat together in the dark and watched the remainder if the interminable 171 minutes - with the bit of the intermission we saw that’s 3 hours!

   Really successful almost 60 years ago, I found the film grim. The screen was large enough to demonstrate the glory of the island vistas and rich colours of the great Hollywood age, but they must have just discovered new technologies and pushed different scenes through various filters, so some twisted to red, some yellow and others had soft focus edging. It was probably a feat in its day, but detracted rather than embellished and was a nuisance.

   The songs were great. Who doesn’t love There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame, and I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair? But the fact that there are a bunch of very female navy ensigns jogging on the same beach as the dame-starved tars, and within a minute of washing her hair, the singer is back snogging her cast-off just annoyed me. The casting is at best mediocre. I just didn’t empathise with leading lady Nellie (Mitzi Gaynor) and did not believe in her relationship at all with enigmatic Frenchman Emile (played by Italian Rossano Brazzi who looked every moment of their real life 15 year age gap, and required someone else, who was not credited in the film, to sing his parts). 

I think this lack of chemistry is clear from this picture from the sound track album.  Rather than planting the most tantalising of kisses, he looks more like he’s either spotted a bogey on stuck to her nose, or else is blowing the final lungful’s into an inflatable woman hair as kinky as his intentions.

 The spivvy Luther Billis (Ray Walston) also seemed hopelessly miscast and quite unbelievable, but at least not (directly) in a sex toy way.

   Being born 5 years before it was filmed, I am not an authority of actors of the age, but I’d not heard of any of these players. Looking them up on Wiki, they all enjoyed long careers, but it seems to me that South Pacific was their high water mark, and it is no surprise to me that they did not seem to go on to better things.

   The plot was based on a series of short-stories by James A. Mitchener, entiled Tales of the South Pacific. I was not surprised to hear this, as the film version is a mishmash of plot lines and distractions, including that unlikely on-off romance, a war story, and a Tonkinese  woman called Bloody Mary trying to cop off her possibly underage daughter to upright Lieutenant Cable, who almost upon meeting, declares his marriage intentions.

   I was spared much of the agony with my regular disappearances to cater for the needs of the residents. It may be therefore that I missed vital plot twists (I missed the whole of Happy Talk) so maybe my review is incomplete or too harsh.

   Roll on next month. I’ll be back, but they’ll be no Rogers and Hammerstein.