How bittersweet to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a nominee for Best Picture of 1954, so soon after choreographer Michael Kidd's death. His work here is certainly the highlight of this musical. The scene involving the barn raising, with its competition between the mountain men and the city men for the affections of the unmarried girls, is just dazzling, one of the best dance sequences every put on film. What a loss his death was, but what a contribution he made to the art of film choreography. If only one film could stand as a testament to his talent, it would have to be this one.
The story involves Howard Keel as Adam, a headstrong backwoodsman , who comes to town to get supplies for the winter and to find a wife. He is determined not to leave town until he has found the right woman to marry. He meets Jane Powell's Milly, and by the end of the day, they are wed and on their way to his rustic home. Milly discovers that Adam has six brothers, all of them lacking manners, and she sets about to cure them of their ways in order to get them married off as well. However, as soon as they learn how to behave from her, Adam contradicts her lessons, suggesting that she is making them weak (perhaps even effeminate). He goads his younger brothers into kidnapping potential wives from town, and they all wind up trapped in the mountains due to the snowfall. As the winter very slowly becomes spring, the brothers and their "chosen" brides begin to fall more in love with each other. This is an MGM musical so if you can't guess how it's likely to end, I don't think I'm going to help you.
One of the more intriguing themes underlying this film is the notion of what constitutes masculinity. Certainly, the brothers all engage in some very demanding physical labor (but then Milly is shown chopping wood just as easily they can), but they also quickly learn how to dance and they subject themselves to Milly's tutelage quite readily. They even shave off their facial hair as a way to demonstrate her power over them. Doing so gets them what they want--women--but the film seems to ask if there is a cost to doing so. Even Adam, allegedly the most masculine and strong-willed, must submit to Milly when she becomes pregnant (guess the gender of the baby). The filmmakers may have used the story of the myth of the Sabine women (or "sobbin' women," as one of the songs puts it) as an organizing principle for the plot, but they also seem to have in mind something about the feminization or "taming" of men as being necessary for civilization. Okay, let's save that theory for an analytical paper some other time.
I have always liked Howard Keel's singing voice, and Jane Powell was one of the better dancers ever to work at MGM. Their talents are used to great effect in this film. Jacques d'Amboise is a standout among the brothers, primarily for his dancing (not surprising, considering his status as a ballet star at the time), and you'll notice Julie Newmar and Ruta Lee (with different names) among the brides with lovely voices. The songs aren't particularly memorable here, but there are moments of clever humor throughout the movie--one of the slyest involves the naming of the brothers after Biblical characters in alphabetical order (pity the brother whose name begins with "F"). At the heart of this film, though, is the dancing. I never watch it without marveling at the amount of work it took to put these images on film. Thankfully, they've been preserved forever for us to watch and take delight in. Enjoy.
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