‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ or — Creatures in Heat?
1850 and woodsman Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) arrives in town to pick up some supplies, chewing tobacco and a wife who can cook those supplies for him. It seems Adam has grown a little bored of the rugged life of a singing woodsman and so armed only with his moustache, flashing smile and baritone voice he sets out to capture a mate. It is left unclear as to whether or not how much choice she will have in the matter.
He spots a woman called Milly (Jane Powell) whose cooking meets Adam’s approval so he immediately asks her to marry him. Milly, who must have hit her head recently against a hard surface, agrees and so the two are quickly married. Adam then takes Milly to her new home located high up in the remote mountains where Adam lives in a small, secluded Hollywood soundstage.
However, imagine Milly’s shock when she discovers that Adam doesn’t live alone but with his SIX younger brothers and an entire film and dance choreography crew. These brothers are rough, tough and uncouth and spend their time brawling, singing and playing with their choppers.
Soon Milly takes them all in hand (luckily not in a literal sense) and before they know it she’s scrubbed them up, shaved their faces and decked them out in brightly coloured shirts she, and with a little help from a Hollywood costume department, made entirely by her own hand.
However, after meeting some pretty women during a barn-raising (this is when a barn is built and not when a big barn gives birth to a little barn that they then have to raise by hand) the brothers suddenly realise that they now want women too! But how? Living all alone in a remote mountain-top studio soundstage has meant they’ve lived a sheltered life when it comes to the opposite sex and so have no idea how to talk to ladies they find attractive.
Fortunately elder brother Adam is at hand to give his younger siblings some sensible advice. You see, Adam has just read this handy instruction manual about how to woo and court the woman of your dreams like a gentleman. It’s called ‘The Rape of the Sabine Women’.
And so in high spirits and a song in their hearts the seven brothers set off down to the village to commit an act of horrible and horrific abuse. Who says romance is dead?!
Reading the plot to ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ (1954) makes it seem like an unbearably awful viewing experience, and if it had been directed by Sam Peckinpah it would’ve been. Fortunately it’s directed by Stanley Donen and is a delightful, and tonally crazy, musical that succeeds for two distinct and important reasons — it’s energetic and brisk.
The movie’s story is shockingly simple — one brother gets a wife so the others want one too. And that’s it. This means that even AFTER all the songs are included that the movie has a running time of well under two hours, and that’s virtually unheard of with a Hollywood musical. There are no side characters, diversions or subplots so it’s all focused on the brothers. Indeed, the brothers work so well together they almost feel like one character rolled into one, like some sprawling, sexually aroused 14 legged leaping creature in heat. They’re all distinct enough, sure, but work better as a dancing, wood-chopping, priapic gestalt.
Not that there aren’t wonderful set-pieces, too. The barn–raising sequence is fantastic and explodes with life and sexual competition, possibly because Donen knows to keep the camera just the right distance away to fully show the performers tearing up the stage. Although my favourite number might be ‘Lonesome Polecat’ when the brothers, shot in one take, mournfully take their sexual frustration out on the trees in the snow.
By the time it gets to Adam’s big plan, namely to ride into town and kidnap the women, I was so caught up in the movie that I was less shocked that they actually DO SO but was also wondering what the hell the studio heads must have been thinking to green-light a story like this! It’s a bit like when the audience watch ‘Springtime for Hitler’ in ‘The Producers’ (1967) in that I was sitting there trying to keep my mouth open whilst thinking “They actually went ahead and DID this?!”
The film “justifies” the sequence by reassuring the audience that kidnapping and implied rape are a bad thing, even though it seems to actually work as the women eventually get worn down by all the singing, brightly coloured shirts, sexual frustration, sheep, ducks and doves like a form of Stockholm Syndrome down Old MacDonald’s Farm. Still, it at least explicitly flags it up that this is a wrong thing to do and certainly feels less insidious than many recent movies where a man kidnaps a woman only for the woman to fall madly in love with him and with the abduction going unaddressed.
‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ is great and blasts along with tremendous energy. It’s heavily set-bound but seems to transcend its limitations and, besides, this isn’t a story about the great wilderness or majestic landscapes but 14 people desperate to fuck but can’t, so they have to leap about instead. And isn’t that what, ultimately, all musicals are about?
