Grease – The Rockin’ Rydell Edition

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Film: B

 

 

When I covered the Deluxe Edition CD soundtrack for the hit film version of the musical Grease (1978), I went all out about the film and its music, but saved some comments for the inevitable DVD re-release.  Like the Elvis Presley cycle of Musicals before it, Randal Kleiser’s huge and enduring hit is not always considered or respected enough as a Musical, but was a reprieve for a Hollywood that could not let the genre go and lost hundreds of millions trying to revive it since its decline in the late 1960s in the face of Rock music.

 

Of course, this is a film about Rock music, even if it is its early days.  The original stage version was a bit rougher, but producers Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr decided to make changes that mighty have ticked off purists, yet led to a hit film.  John Travolta was a star on the rise and Olivia Newton-John Had already logged a long string of hits, including two #1 albums, a couple of #1 Pop and 8 Adult Contemporary #1 singles (not to mention huge Country appeal that people forget; see more in Billboard’s charts).  John already had a big TV hit (Welcome Back, Kotter) and film hit (Saturday Night Fever) that made him the big new star.  They had instant chemistry and the rest is history.

 

Part of the split between the Classical Hollywood Musical and a film like Grease with its Rock music is that the Musical is always held up to a standard of art that it even made fun of by the 1950s with The Bandwagon and Singin’ In The Rain.  The Musicals at the same time want to be about freedom and conformity and Rock breaks that contradiction that never totally worked itself out.  It is to say that “if we come together and act a certain way, everything will be great” but at the same time is about the freedom (and psychosis for that matter) of just breaking out into song and being alive.

 

Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (reviewed elsewhere on this site) was an epic that sadly bombed a year prior to this and dealt with many of these issues.  Herbert Ross’ adaptation of Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven (1981) was actually even darker.  Ironically, they only dealt with Jazz, Blues or Showtunes.  Rock allows the viewer and audience to leave that behind and that is why this film and Elvis pictures are different, though most of the Elvis films were bad formula films giving the idea of a “Rock Musical” a bad name.

 

In the 1950s, Rock films did surface that were usually in black and white, though Frank Tashlin’s hit The Girl Can’t Help It (also reviewed elsewhere on this site) was in widescreen and full color.  Narratives, usually very weak like most of the Elvis films, were weak ways to string together the songs.  In most such films, each song was unrelated (oddest in the Elvis films) and outside of the Elvis films sung by a different performer each time as their own showcase.  Remarkably, it was not until the film Grease that the obvious boy-meets-girl narrative came together well, with usually memorable songs and exceptional comedy.  Yes, some of the past films had their laughs, but it could also be said that Hollywood finally gave in to doing this film by surrendering Musical’s past.  Rock Opera films, which even produced a few hits (the 1975 Stigwood-produced Tommy in particular) were just too surrealistic coming from the Glam and counterculture they originated to begin with, so that put them somewhere else (like Rockumentaries versus Documentaries) instead of with in the Musical.

 

By not having a dominant male (Elvis, referenced in this film) or female (Monroe, Mansfield, Van Doren) as star or not-so-cleverly disguised star levels the playing field for Travolta and Newton-John.  That they are here as they are on the rise is a plus and a supporting cast that included Didi Conn, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway, Dinah Manoff, Ellen Travolta, Annette Charles as Cha Cha and a dialog-less Lorenzo Lamas in his best role, as well as great veterans like Joan Blondell, Eve Arden, Dody Goodman, Alice Ghostley, Sid Caesar, Fannie Flagg, Edd Byrnes and Frankie Avalon, the film peopled its world very well.

 

The Musical numbers came in both the real world of “gritty” 1950s life and sudden fantasy sequences (Greased Lightning, Beauty School Dropout) until the two meld in the final (and somewhat anti-climactic) conclusion.  The fantasy is never too gaudy, while any cultural “quoted” references are not like today where the audience is treated like idiots who never saw TV or film before.  The film always respects it audience and the sex/energy connection is always balanced with humor and the idea of those thinking in the “gutter” (read “sex”) versus with dignity (read as naïve or suppressed here) particularly exemplified in the great Summer Nights sequence.

 

That could have degenerated into virgin/whore complex or some other kind of stupid mess, but Kleiser and smart, distinctive choreography by Patricia Burch (who directed the now Cult sequel Grease 2) meshed in ways better than they ever got credit for.  Bronté Woodard’s screenplay (based on Allan Carr’s adaptation) of the Jim Jacobs/Warren Casey stage Musical is a great example of how to adapt such a production to the big screen.  Since no one figured how to follow up, the Musical was considered still dead, the sequel was not a hit and MTV arrived soon after, it has become a one-of-a-kind film that paramount in particular tried to recreate over and over again.  They never came close, though soundtrack driven non-Musicals like Flashdance became the next cycle they led the way in.

 

As time has gone on, the film is seen more in relation to the 1950s than 1970s, though it is somewhat of a revision of that time.  It also reminds us like the many Rock films that it is in the tradition of that the 1950s was not just a gloomy, suppressed time of Communist Witchhunts, supposedly perfect family life, endless prosperity and conservative utopia.  It was the Baby Boom, the birth of Civil Rights, the counterculture, the future and Rock as a potent music genre.  Yes, the songs are often more Pop than Rock, including the new tracks written by John Farrar and/or Barry Gibb that hold up remarkably well.  That includes the title song performed by The Four Seasons’ lead singer Frankie Valli, which is even edgier than any of the original stage songs as explained in my CD soundtrack review.

 

Grease itself is organic, something Grease the film keeps some connection too no matter how astray it goes from that vantage point.  However, it is also the peak of a Musical movement that took a quarter century to peak and that is why it will remain a classic no matter what.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 x 1 image is from the same master used for the previous DVD, which is a print from the 1998 theatrical re-release.  Though it was shot by Bill Butler in anamorphic Panavision and looked great in that re-release, this DVD like the last DVD does not quite capture how good this film looks.  Detail is an issue, as well as softness in some shots that are just not typical of how good the film looks, so it will take HD-DVD and Blu-ray versions to really show how good this film really is.  This is watchable, but no improvement over the previous DVD.  At least they were smart enough to windowbox the animated credits, which have all kinds of hidden gags.

 

The Dolby Digital 5.1 is not as good as it should be, with limited surrounds and sound that pulls towards the center, suggesting a second generation transfer.  The mix is really the 4.1 Dolby magnetic stereo mix discussed in the Deluxe Edition CD soundtrack review, which you can access at:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/639/Grease+-+Deluxe+Edition+CD+Soundtrack+set

 

 

As compared to the fullness and clarity of the CD tracks, this standard Dolby version just cannot cut it.  I hope Paramount and Universal/Polydor go back to the original multi-channel music again and redo this for Dolby True HD and DTS HD for the new HD formats, because I bet the production and engineering quality of the music is that good.  As before, the music is recorded better than dialogue or sound effects, as was the case at the time.  However, the music at its best is unbeatable.

 

Fans should get that CD set ASAP, with as many great extras as this set while they can.  Paramount has even encased the hard plastic DVD case of this re-release with a faux leather jacket that you can zip up in the DVD case.  It is really a clever slipcover with a logo iron-on patch of the film on the front left side and T-Birds logo on the back.  My big joke is that when I add one cup of water to it, it turns into a full-sized leather jacket.  Don’t do that, though.

 

Extras on the DVD includes footage from the 25^th Anniversary DVD release party when Olivia and John show up and prove they still have the same chemistry nearly three decades later despite doing the dreadful film Two Of A Kind.  You also get the original theatrical trailer, a brand new audio commentary track by Kleiser and Burch that is terrific, several deleted/extended scenes that have sadly only survived in black and white, interview excerpts from a TV special where the producers interview the leads back in 1978, Rydell Sing-Along feature that lets you isolate each musical number or with the captions to each song as you watch the feature as yellow highlights travel through each word in white, sample interview with Olivia and John, stills, The Time, The Place, The Motion: Remembering Grease featurette and featurettes on the dancing and the cars.  Grease – The Rockin’ Rydell Edition delivers the special edition fans have been waiting for.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo