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Oklahoma! More at IMDbPro »

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Gordon's Beautiful Morning, 9 April 2008

Author: John Johnson from Lincoln, Nebraska

In part, I think it is because when I was a kid my dad went around the house singing the song that the first two minutes of Oklahoma! are among my favorite in all of movieland. Gordon MacRae, tall in the saddle, young, handsome, with a bright orange shirt that brings out the glory of Technicolor, booming out "O What a Beautiful Morning" – it just sends me. It's archetypal. Even the two box elder trees he passes by seem magnificent and perfect to me. And then, the lace curtains blowing from the yellow farmhouse window, introducing Shirley Jones – it curls my toes.

Of course, it's a great song, that's why dad was singing it, that's why Gordon, buried a few miles from where I write, had the opening notes of the song cut on his tombstone.

There are plenty of flaws in the opening moments, too: the choppy continuity of the cuts, the short shadows looking like a beautiful noon, not morning. And Aunt Eller is so deaf she doesn't hear a horse come up behind her? Well, the song is so perfect I let all the rest joyfully pass. The humanity of the artifice shines in its flaws.

Overall, the movie is pretty corny, and I'm really not too big on it; but even still, I'll take it. The last time I watched Oklahoma! a friend of mind called me up to go see Funny Games. He used all this high, lit-crit kind of talk to sell it to me, but honestly, I'm tired of nihilism. I'd rather be happy, even if I have to align myself with corny things. Maybe all Hollywood sells is hormones, but that desolated one when evil wins in a picture, I just can't abide by it anymore. Give me the corn.

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