Customer Reviews

Story of Gilbert & Sullivan [VHS]

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There's no great drama, no real surprises in this bio-pic. The charm of the movie comes from the characterizations and the snippets of G&S classic songs. Some of the famous names of the D'Oyly Carte troupe of the 50's, notably Martyn Greene, appear briefly as 1890's era performers. Robert Morley is properly irascible and pompous as the overbearing Gilbert. Maurice Evans gives insight to Sullivan's desire to write "important" music, conflicted with his success as a composer of "popular" songs. My favorite scene is one in which Sullivan has over-committed himself, trying to produce music for both a grand opera and "The Mikado" at the same time. It's a little like trying to play a computer game at the office while the boss keeps coming by. Though a little dated in it's techniques,"The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan" is a nice introduction to the legendary team for new fans of the Savoy Operas and, for longtime appreciators of the wit and the music, a pleasant affirmation of the history we already knew.

The previous reviewer is mostly right but off in a few details.

The collaboration of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan extended from the mid-1870s to the mid 1890s but the true decade of the team, when they swept all the world before them was the 1880s. ("The Gondoliers" and Jack the Ripper, for example, shared approximately equal attention from the British public toward the end of the decade.)

This British film was one of those sumptuous recreations of the high Victorian era, offering dreamy visions of vast choirs at Albert Hall, golden summer steamboat outings on the Thames, even the introduction of electricity to the theater.

In a pleasing touch, the leading members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the performing company founded by Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer, were cast as their predecessors of seventy years before. It is unlikely that anyone at the time foresaw that in fifty years, true fans of G&S would consider such leading lights of the mid-century DOC as Martyn Greene and Thomas Round to be of equal interest with their Victorian predecessors, George Grossmith and Richard Lely.

This film covers the entire arc of the joint career of Gilbert and Sullivan but it manages to touch on the very same incidents dealt with in the recent hit film, "Topsy-Turvy."

(By the way, the sequence in which Sullivan is over-committed does not involve a struggle between "The Mikado" and Sullivan's opera--"Ivanhoe," the opera, came much later. The struggle is between "The Mikado," that essential distillation of frivolity and a very, very dignified and pompous oratorio. The movie very neatly juxtaposes and contrasts the two types of music rolling off Sullivan's harried pen.)