Song of Norway (1970)
Like the play from which it derived, the film tells of the early struggles of composer Edvard Grieg and his attempts to develop an authentic Norwegian national music. It stars Toralv Maurstad as Grieg and features an international cast including Florence Henderson, Christina Schollin, Robert Morley, Harry Secombe, Oskar Homolka, Edward G. Robinson and Frank Porretta (as Rikard Nordraak). Filmed in Super Panavision 70 by Davis Boulton and presented in single-camera Cinerama in some countries, it was an attempt to capitalise on the success of The Sound of Music.
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The greatest movie ever made..!
an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Toralv Maurstad sings and dogs bark on the mountaintops of Austria. O.K., this takes place in Norway, but dogs feel the pain from thousands of miles away. Poor Florence Henderson, just settling into the role of Carol Brady, and a sweetheart of the world of Rodgers and Hammerstein, having churned butter in "Oklahoma!", made curtains out of drapes in "The Sound of Music" and washed that man right out of her hair in "South Pacific". Her promising attempt to become the next Julie Andrews or Shirley Jones ended here, mainly because movie musicals in most cases were bombing, this one quickly dismissed and driving its small audiences to near deafness.I couldn't believe what I was hearing here, the alleged biography of Edward Grieg, and one where a hangover is preferable. The songs are among the mist wretched that I have ever heard in a movie musical, especially in such a cynical era as the early 1970's. Toocmany nature shots show what was on the cameraman's eye, and I wonder if producer/director Andrew Stone was looking for a tax write-off after seeing "The Producers". Cameos by Robert Morley and Edward G.Robinson added a little bit of curiosity, and Florence tries her best to rise above the material. It's overly long (complete with intermission) and consistently dull. There's nothing to put this in the category of camp, leaving me to prefer to revisit the musical version of "Lost Horizon" than to ever subject myself or my neighbors who happen to hear it of ever enduring this again.
Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay were reportedly tortured by having to watch this film several times a day, many of them begging for mercy and swearing they would eat pork chops for dinner every day if only they quit showing them this film... ***WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!*** The Surgeon General has concluded that watching this movie may be hazardous to your health. ... I saw this movie on the Big Screen when it came out. I loved Grieg's music (well, still do) but this film really put my loyalty to the test. Others here have spoken quite eloquently about the movie's incredible editing and song and dance numbers, so I won't add to the comments. The reason I gave the movie two stars instead of one was: Florence Henderson's wonderful role in reprising her cameo in Weird Al Yankovic's "Amish Paradise", and the totally meaningless non-sequitur animated sequence about two thirds through the movie where you have monsters popping out of fiords.
The movie starts out great with some of the most beautiful nature scenery ever taken by a movie camera. If you stopped watching the film at this point, you'd be ahead of the game. From there on you will not find two connected scenes, let alone a continuous movie. Saying this film is bizarre is to do a disservice to the word bizarre. My guess is that someone shot several dozens of scenes, then put them in a big box, shook the box thoroughly, very thoroughly, and spliced them together at random. The result was The Song of Norway. Morley, Henderson, and, Robinson must have been very, very, broke to have been in this flick. Take a pass on this dog. (my apologies to dogs)
I saw this as a little kid taking piano lessons and loving Grieg's music. (That was in San Francisco - maybe I saw it at the same theater, the Paramount, as one of our earlier commenters?) All of 10 years old, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I suppose I wasn't a great judge of acting at that point, or of cinema in general (it was probably the third or fourth theatrical film I'd seen in my life at that point). So it was basically the music, voices, and scenery I was chewing on. I hadn't even heard the name "Carol Brady" then.Haven't seen the film since, but I just wonder ... terrible compared to what? The soundtrack (a few cuts I have on a Grieg compilation) is miles better than the nursery-rhymes in Sound of Music, and for the most part the transliterated lyrics aren't a travesty. Florence Henderson doesn't make me gag any more than Julie Andrews or any other too-clean-and-scrubbed actor in the business. And what's wrong with casting an actual Norwegian as Grieg instead of ... I dunno, from the same era ... George Peppard? The movie even had a nice animated sequence for the kids.Song of Norway was unlucky enough to arrive at the absolute tail end of the road-show-spectacular era of movie musicals, and I'm sure a lot of critics just had indigestion by that point, following Paint Your Wagon (with a singing, dancing Clint Eastwood!), Camelot (a singing, non-dancing Richard Harris!), The Happiest Millionaire (a singing, dancing Fred MacMurray!), and Darling Lili (Dame Julie's nadir). So what's so much worse about Song of Norway? Got something against Scandinavian composers?!