the film show boat ends differently from the book. in the book, the heroine, miranda, and her hero, a deftly drawn rendering of a riverboat gambler-sot-badboy named of all things, gaylord ravenal, end up anything but happy and together.
but in the film, miranda and gaylord find their way back to each other, and, after appropriate trials and challenges (as well as a few of my favorite show tunes), stroll off arm in arm along the riverbank, as a delighted capn andy beams from the deck of the showboat, whose name eludes me at the moment. "it's saturday morning, again," he says, with an approving twinkle and a puff of his cigar.
all relationships have their mondays and their saturdays, and some mondays seem like they drag on forever. there's more than a little bit of gaylord ravenal in the soul of my Beloved, and more than a touch of madness in mine. mixed together, they sometimes combust in a most soul-searing way.
but somehow, out of the ashes of monday, it's saturday morning, again.
and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.
1 comment:
Annie: Wikipedia says, "Show Boat was adapted as a movie on four occasions: in 1929; 1936, directed by James Whale; 1946 (as a mini-show inside the movie Till the Clouds Roll By); and 1951. And it was videotaped in live performance for television in 1989 at the Paper Mill Playhouse. The 1936 and 1951 films, as well as the television version, retained the miscegenation sequence; the 1929 film version did not."
I've seen most of two different film versions, and I remember being very surprised to see the second one, where our two lovers had tough lives and were apart for something like 20 years. But I've never read the book....
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