"Carousel" is probably the best musical Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote, it was their favorite. A testament to how shaking the material was for it's audiences in the 1940s was it's run of just under 900 performances on Broadway, by all means respectable, but no where close to the lengthy runs of "Oklahoma", "South Pacific", "The King and I" or "The Sound of Music". The mentioned titles are darker than most audiences take them for, but "Carousel" is more blatantly dark and sophisticated than those, which would make a film version tricky. Indeed, the film is fairly sugar coated, mistakenly deciding to have it be a flashback from heaven, and to not have Billy commit suicide are both mistakes, taking away from the heartbreaking effect found in the stage version. Gordon Macrae and Shirly Jones are in decent form, but one does wonder how the film might have turned out if the originally fought after leads Frank Sinatra (who quit on the first day of filming) and Judy Garland had madethe film. One also might have wished that Nicholas Hytner's breathtaking revival was filmed and released (as Trevor Nunn's 1999 "Oklahoma!" was) or if the excellent 2002 Carnegie Hall Concert of the show (with Hugh Jackman and Audra McDonald) was televised. Since neither of them were, this film is worth viewing, even if it is on the whole disappointing.
