H.M.S. Pinafore (1982)

By Zentilack

[The above image is a poster from 1879, when the show was first put on.  I couldn't find a decent image for the cover of the 1982 version.]

Summary

Ralph Rackstraw (Michael Bulman) is a common sailor on the British warship H.M.S. Pinafore, and pines for the captain's daughter, Josephine (Meryl Drower).  Their different social positions make this impossible...until the odd Sir Joseph Porter (Frankie Howerd) comes aboard with his unorthodox notions of equality.  This seems to solve the problem, except for the fact Sir Joseph came specifically to ask Josephine to marry him.

What I Expected

I've never seen Pinafore on screen or on stage, only know the music through cultural references, and have no idea what the story is.  I know that it's a pretty famous musical (I found out later that it is not a musical, it's a comic opera).  I know it has something to do with a (fictional) British ship.  Really, considering the fact that I was in theater in high school, including work on several musicals, I'm kind of embarrassed that I know so little about it going in.

Prolegomena (ie, stuff you need to know beforehand)

This is kind of a special case movie, seeing as how it's a TV adaptation of an 19th century opera.  There is no way that I could bring you up to speed on all the intricacies of the show, Savoy Operas, stagecraft, and the particular genre of H.M.S. Pinafore.  So I'm going to try and give you the very basics, including some things you will need to know in order to understand some of the humor and plot points.

Pinafore was written by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.  They wrote a number of operas together, including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.  I doubt you have the patience for a history lesson, so I'll just say that these two had a massive impact on the musical world in their day and inspired countless others in many different fields of entertainment all the way up to today.

Okay, so what's an opera?  Opera is a very important part of Western Classical music.  Near as I can tell, whereas a musical is a story that integrates a few musical numbers into it, an opera is pretty much built to tell the entire story through song and musical score.  There are more technical aspects of it, of course, but you get the point.

What's the deal with the name Pinafore?  Well, we've all seen pinafores before, even if we didn't know what they were called.  They're those apron like things that women always wore in the 1800's (but they're not actually aprons).  In my brief research, I learned that Alice was drawn wearing a pinafore in the original Alice in Wonderland book.  When you see Alice wearing that white thing over her dress in the Disney cartoon, that's a pinafore (I'm pretty sure it is, anyway).  Having a combat vessel named Pinafore is ironic, to say the least.  It's akin to the name of the film Operation Petticoat. 

The character Sir Joseph Porter is a man who has been appointed as Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty in the story, though it is made humorously clear that he has never been to war or even served on a ship in his life.  Curiously enough, the year before Pinafore was first performed, a gentleman by the name of William Henry Smith was made First Lord of the Admiralty in real life, despite the fact that he never served.  It was thought that this was no mere coincidence, though I'm not sure if it was intended to be a shot at him with my limited research.  I do know that Gilbert had a thing for writing situations where someone wildly unqualified was placed into a position of power.

One of the many famous songs in Pinafore is "A British Tar."  A tar is short for a jack tar, a slang term for a common sailor.  This was not an insulting nickname and the sailors apparently liked it.

And speaking of famous songs, this is probably a good place to address some of the places that Pinafore's music has been referenced.  The keyword here is some of the places (there is a lot more than this).  Though I did not know it at the time, the first time I heard any of these songs was in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  There is a scene where John-Rhys Davies, in a moment of happiness, begins singing "A British Tar."  Again, I didn't know what it was back then, and didn't realize what it was until I saw Pinafore and recognized the tune.

Another, somewhat more recent, reference was in a fifth season episode of The Simpsons called "Cape Feare" (a great episode).  Bart distracts the murderous Sideshow Bob by asking him to sing the music from H.M.S. Pinafore.  I had actually completely forgotten about this reference until my post-watching research.  One more reference can be found in the not very good Star Trek: Insurrection.  It's probably the best scene in the movie, for what it's worth (Worf's reactions are pretty funny).

The Bad

Okay, let's get down to it.  This was a 1982, made for TV version of Pinafore and it  really shows.  At first I thought it was one of those recordings of an actual stage performance, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn't.  There was a backdrop painting hanging behind the ship, and it was obvious that it was a specially constructed set that they didn't really have the money to properly make.  Nothing looks real, and while that might be forgiven on a stage, it's bad when you're trying to record it.  It gives off a bit of a cheap vibe (considering this is a TV production) that I never quite got over.  It looked a bit like they borrowed the local high school's Pinafore set.

I am not an avid opera watcher/listener.  I like the music quite a bit, but I can't always make out what the players are singing, and that happened here, too.  Most of the lyrics I could understand okay, but when the two leads, Rackstraw and Josephine, sang, it was so operatic that I had no idea what they were trying to say half the time.  I got the gist from the context, but I wanted to know what they were saying.  I tried to turn on the subtitles only to find out that there were none.  Really, guys?  No subtitles at all on a DVD?

The camera work was hardly ambitious.  I can't remember any shots from overhead.  If the camera moved at all, it was all lateral.  Side to side and forward to back is not very interesting.

There were some weird mistakes left in the movie.  Places where one of the background actors obviously messed up but they left it in anyway, as if that was the best take they got.  One that sticks out to me was when the men were throwing their hats into the air and one of them dropped his.  Everybody else puts theirs back on and stand at attention while this guy is bending down to pick his hat off the deck.  That sort of thing is charming in live performances where each show is a little different from all the others.  This is not a live performance, though.  I saw the "making-of" featurette on the DVD.  They did multiple takes.

The Good

There really was quite a lot to like.  The story is basic with a few twists.  It's an amusing tale of two people of different class falling for each other.  A foppish, buffoonish upper class guy who unwittingly gives his rival in love an opening to win the girl.  The girl's charmingly goofy father (who is also the captain of the ship).  It's really a fun story with funny characters.

Most of the cast had only this on their IMDB pages, with the two real exceptions doing mostly TV work.  The one that floored me, looking him up afterward, was the guy who played Josephine's father, Captain Corcoran.  While I didn't recognize Peter Marshall at first, checking his page revealed that he's the guy who hosted the American television show The Hollywood Squares.  I don't know if that is a good thing, specifically, but it's pretty neat to know that the host of Hollywood Squares sang Gilbert and Sullivan.

While the camera work wasn't anything to write home about, the blocking and character movements were pretty good.  Characters would dance around, pop out of deck hatches, and speak to other characters through little portholes in the ship.  Only being able to see the actor's face through a porthole really makes it hard for a performer to emote, but Alan Watt (as Deadeye) pulled it off wonderfully.

The music and songs were absolutely great.  Sullivan wrote some great and memorable tunes here.  Like I said before, I had trouble understanding some of the words in the more ambitious pieces, it was still wonderful to listen to.  There are some songs that have more serious elements, there is always a feeling of fun and humor to be found in every song.

The singers themselves sounded pretty decent to me, though I'm hardly an expert.  I can tell when something's out of tune with the surrounding music or if something is out of time, and I didn't hear any of that.  The voices were pleasant where they were supposed to be, amusing and off-beat for the more comedic characters, and the chorus sounded nice.  They were probably more adequate than great, but again, I'm not an expert and I've not heard any other real performances of this music.

Overall Thoughts

H.M.S. Pinafore is a great show.  Entertaining with a lift-your-spirits sort of feel to it.  I really, really would like to see this on stage if I ever get the chance and I wish I'd tried to see it sooner.  That being said, my recommendation for this particular rendition of the show is more reserved.  Almost everything that I really liked is inherent to Gilbert and Sullivan's writing.  It's hard to explain, but this version seems...I don' know, small?

Let me put it this way: I've seen The Music Man both on stage and the 1962 movie with Robert Preston (several times each).  On stage it feels lively and energetic and big.  On the screen, the production also gives those same feelings, but in a different way, since it was made specifically as a movie.  Simply taping a live performance wouldn't give the same feel.

And I guess that's the problem with this version of Pinafore.  It feels like it was performed as a merely okay stage production and recorded for the screen.  There's this weird in-between feel.  It doesn't seem as lively and energetic and big as it should.

I highly recommend H.M.S. Pinafore, just not this particular version of it.

The short version - If you can see Pinafore live on stage, do so.  If you can't see it live, this version is okay, I guess (rent, don't buy).