Synopsis
Rose wants her kids, June (Ann Jillian) and Louise (Natalie Wood), in show business, so they can live the dream she never got to live. She’ll do anything to make it happen. When Rose takes her daughter June as far as she can in the Vaudeville arena, she finds herself at a crossroads when June is offered stardom. Instead of letting her daughter go, Rose decides against the career, which leads June to leave her family altogether. Defeated from her star child, Louise is promoted from second favorite to new favorite. Regretfully, as with June, Louise takes a different route than her mom wants and soon finds herself not in Vaudeville, not in Hollywood, but blooming as a popular, sophisticated stripper — Gypsy Rose Lee.
Wow, what a film.
The delightful part of Gypsy, other than the musical pieces that are done wonderfully, is how the progression of the relationship between Rose and her daughters develops, and ultimately collapses. From the get-go, we see Rose as a control freak that lives vicariously through her daughters. They are put through Rose’s dream of becoming a star without much say. The film starts off with the kids pretty much listening to their mom without question, but as they get older and wiser, they find themselves slowly going against her word. This, of course, leads to the ultimate breakdown of Rose’s relationship with her daughters, that leads one of them far away from the family. The other, Louise, goes against her mom, but keeps her around out of respect. It’s the ultimate truth to how parents slowly lose control of their kids, so their kids can find their own path. If you need a visual, it’s like when baby birds are pushed so much that they’re forced out of the nest, maybe unwillingly.
The reality of the situation isn’t far from real life. If you want to see how this sort of pushing works out for real celebrities then look no further than Drew Barrymore, Lindsay Lohan and/or Miley Cyrus. These are kids who ex-communicated their pushy parents. What’s truthfully sad about Gypsy is that it does tell the truth on the repercussions of said parents. Rose had everything through her children, but the children didn’t want to be pushed any longer, so they pushed back and finally left. What’s worse is that Rose (played by Rosalind Russell) is unaware of what she’s doing to her kids until it’s too late.
Anyway, the music in the movie is fantastic, but the real beef to this movie is the sad/truthful web that it spins. I would have loved to see this on Broadway. It’s one helluva film.
Warner Archive Collection picked a good one to transfer to Blu-ray. Though it was released in 1962, the vibrant colors that come along with this movie do well in the Blu-ray/HD format. There is little to no graininess in the picture, no artifacts and definitely no color banding. It is transferred beautifully and makes for wonderful eye-candy (not just Natalie Wood, the ACTUAL picture) in high definition. This is one of the prettiest films that I’ve seen on Blu-ray. It’s not surprising because Warner has always done well with their HD transfers to Blu-ray. It does say a lot about what’s to come for Warner Archive Collection. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
As for the audio, you get it in DTS-HD 2.0 (not in love with it), but it would have been epic to hear it in DTS-HD 5.1, especially since it’s a musical. The film comes to you in 2.40:1 ratio.
As for features (yeah, there are special features), here’s what you should expect:
– 2 Outtake Musical Numbers
– Theatrical trailer
For a 1962 film of a Broadway hit, you can’t ask for much more than that. It’s not like they had features planned in 1962 for a format to be named later. Both musical numbers are quite good, as is the theatrical trailer. I’m happy to see some added value to the release.
