Romancefest 2018: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Stanley Donen's 1954 musical SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS starts off innocently enough with Howard Keel as a pioneer farmer in the mid 1800s Oregon territory. He lives on a farm with his six brothers and wants a wife, so one day he goes into town and finds one: Jane Powell as a plucky woman working in a tavern, happy to go off and marry one man instead of serving every man in town.

The innocence continues as Powell takes on the job of civilizing the other 6 brothers and teaching them the ins and outs of courting a woman. They all go into town and there's a really cool song and dance (and fight) sequence revolving around a barn raising.

Things take a turn swiftly south when the 6 brothers hatch a plot to kidnap the girls from town that they want to take as wives, then keep them up on their farm all winter as the pass is snowed over and their families and betrothed ones won't be able to get at them. Then they'll have to marry the six brothers, right? Yeesh.

Of course this isn't meant to be disturbing, it simply is anyway. To the movie's credit, as soon as Powell figures out what has happened, she scolds Keel to the point where he moves out and flees to his winter cabin, and she banishes the other brothers to the barn. To the movie's detriment, the kidnapped women do eventually fall for the brothers and everyone gets married in a "happy" ending.

Aside from the extreme sexism on display here, the movie is at least enjoyable for inventive song and dance scenes involving chopping wood and stuff like that, though the songs are not very memorable. The first half of the film, before the kidnappings, is the best stuff. It'd be an interesting exercise to try to rewrite this one without the sexism and see how it comes out.