Guys and Dolls (1955)

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This musical improves over the years. Despite its innocent plot it contains the whole essence of the 50's, its sequences become today pure magic they make the viewer keeping the smile throughout the play; the scene of the dice game inside the sewer is more than great, especially when one knows that the die has no marks. Another surprise comes by watching Marlon Brando singing more musical numbers than Frank Sinatra. This musical itself Is a good heritage from the past to the new generations, a real luxury gift.

Guys and Dolls is my favorite musical, and since my parents owned a theater company in San Francisco, and I've written three musicals myself, that is quite a compliment. I grew up on musicals, and have probably seen or listened to every one available. I've never seen Guys and Dolls onstage and I probably never will. The movie is the one and only version of Frank Loesser's musical, as far as I'm concerned.There are exceptions, of course, but in general, I prefer the songs in a musical to help advance the story. In Guys and Dolls, all of the songs advance the plot. A couple of songs were cut out from the Broadway production, but for those who are listening for them, they can be heard playing in the background of applicable scenes. Even when the characters aren't singing, the music is advancing the plot! The plot is very simple, a classic among countless love stories through the decades. Two men make a bet that one can't get a particular girl to go out with him. You've seen that story a hundred times, but with singing and dancing, set in the 1940s, and played out in the style of old-fashioned gangsters, it's incomparable.Sometimes, in the transfer of a stage-to-screen musical, the timing of the lines feels slow, as if the actors are waiting for the audience to laugh. Director Joseph Mankiewicz created a nearly perfect film. The script, co-written by Mankiewicz, is absolutely hilarious, and is delivered with perfect timing by the actors. Damon Runyon famously wrote a collection of gangster stories, which the Broadway show was based on, so all the characters talk in a very stylized manner. But if you're used to it, or at least expecting it, you'll crack up after every line. It's so adorable.Guys and Dolls was the first Marlon Brando movie I ever saw, and it was years until I saw him in anything else, so I didn't quite understand how shocking it was for him to sing and dance in a musical. This is still my favorite of his performances; he may not have initially become famous for his musical talents, but he's absolutely charming and delightful in his ardent pursuit of the reserved Sister Sarah, played by Jean Simmons. They are so perfect together. The chemistry cracks, sizzles, and scorches, making them one of my all-time favorite screen couples.Frank Sinatra plays the second lead, but since he was given a couple of extra songs, he pretty much shares equal screen time with Marlon Brando. In the film, he's the one who bets Marlon Brando to woo Jean Simmons, and while he makes such a reckless bet, the rest of his character is hen-pecked, stressed out, tired, but still charming and adorable.If you like the famous songs that came out of Guys and Dolls, like "Luck be a Lady", "Guys and Dolls", and "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat", or if you like stylized period pieces where everyone speaks without contractions, or if you like Brando or Frankie, or if you like the scripts in musicals to be as entertaining as the songs, or if you want to laugh, or swoon, or sing along, or if you're looking for a new favorite musical, buy a copy of Guys and Dolls. I've seen it countless times. Once, when I was particularly blue, I watched it twice in the same week and still didn't get tired of it. It's one of the true masterpieces to come out of the 1950s.

Brando completely outclasses Sinatra in this film. Perhaps credit should go to their supporting actresses: Brando plays opposite a very likable character in Sarah Brown whereas Sinatra's "doll" is naive bordering on bimbo-ish with an irritating spoken voice (despite excellent singing and dancing skills). Perhaps credit should go their roles. Brando has much more screen time; Sinatra fills a supporting role.In truth, throughout the film, Brando excels at singing to the best of his natural ability, dancing--a little stiff, but he tries--and acting. Whenever he appears in a scene, the audience knows that Brando is an actor whose legacy will live far beyond this one film.Sinatra, by contrast...only momentary glimpses of his famous crooning voice. Does he ever dance in this film? If yes, the performance was obviously not memorable. His acting lacks distinction from the other gambling thugs.WHO WON? WHO'S NEXT? YOU DECIDE (I say "Brando")

That musical, if it did not have the music, and I do not say the singing, would be today forgotten. The story is zilch. The plot is null. The drama is hilarious. The suspense is non-existent. The décor is surrealistically realistic. The cops are puppets. The gamblers are marionettes. The guys are caricatures. The dolls are evanescent. And I said, the singing is mediocre, apart from Frank Sinatra who was a singer by profession. The others, particularly Marlon Brando, are hardly good enough for a chorus line. That was 1955. The USA had no competition in the world and they thought at the time they were building the future of the cosmos. So everything they did had to be best, even if it was crap, quite the proper word for it since the main attraction of the film and the main interest of the cops were crap games. Yet the music is innovative and in a way surprising, half Broadway traditional musical and half jazzy, swinging definitely and yet missing the point due to the poor quality of the singing and the very stiff dancing. The choreographer must have been movement-challenged and he was not able to conceive of supple and flexible bodies moving along curves and curbed lines with bodies that should be continuously changing opening and closing arcs. Too bad, because a real musical could be done with some of the elements of the scenario, though there would be a lot of rewriting to do. And I must say that the Salvation Army in disguise in this film is not exactly fascinating, even if the general is a woman and the sergeant is another woman. Apart from the heavy presence of women in this good-doing-or-is- it-doing-good army that wants to save our souls it is talking gibberish most of the time, and that gibberish does not concern us really. It is from another time, another galaxy, definitely another universe.Luckily it was in a box set of five musicals, otherwise I doubt I would spend one dollar to buy it, certainly not a pound, not even a euro. If pirating is stealing, to wrap up this zilch thing between West Side Story and Man of La Mancha is really high way commercial robbery.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU