The Gilbert & Sullivan Blu’s

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

This is the typical season of the year for high school and college musical productions, and among the many audience and performer favorites are the comic operettas by the nineteenth-century team of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Their biggest hit, “The Midado,” remains a perennial of drama departments, music departments, and amateur theatre groups ever since its stage premiere in 1885 by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.

The first movie version of any Gilbert and Sullivan shows finally happened with 1939’s “The Mikado,” filmed in England by American director Victor Schertziger with the participation of the D’Oyly Carte company. Sixty years later, British director Mike Leigh wanted to do a film about the general process of artistic creativity, and decided to dramatize specifically how Gilbert and Sullivan came to write and stage “The Mikado” in his 1999 film “Topsy-Turvy.” The Criterion Collection released both “The Mikado” (1939)  and “Topsy-Turvy” (1999) to Blu-ray about a month ago, on March 29.

THE MIKADO

“The Mikado,” like all Gilbert and Sullivan, is a light-hearted and literate satire of British manners, society, and politics, marked by delightfully silly romantic plots, naïve and pompous characters, and incredibly catchy tunes. This time the quintessentially British story was disguised as a stylized fantasy version of feudal Japan, but with scrupulously accurate costuming. World trade with Japan had only recently opened up and the show helped create an international craze for things Japanese.

American pop singer Kenny Baker does a decent job as the emperor’s son trying to escape an arranged marriage and pretending to be a wandering minstrel, who falls in love with the fiancée of the Lord High Executioner. D’Oyly Carte veterans Martyn Green and Sydney Granville are naturally solid in the key roles of Koko and Pooh-Bah, and the rest of the cast is quite good as well. The show is slightly shortened for the film version (reducing much of Katisha’s singing and bantering), but plays just fine with a nice pantomimed prologue setting up the plot to the strains of the orchestra (which often has a livelier tempo than some stage productions).

The Blu-ray’s high-definition, film-like picture transfer is superb, showing off the delicate British-style pastel approach to Technicolor that fits this story so beautifully. A few very brief color fluctuations are excusable as inherent in the original. The audio is quite crisp and clear but has a more pronounced “boxiness” than many 1939-era films and a low but constant layer of background audio noise inherent in old optical elements; it’s not quite as cleaned-up as some of the other 1930s films on Blu-ray. It’s preferable to hear them the way they are, however, rather than have too much tampering that might damage the sound. It’s still a decent audio transfer.
As usual, Criterion includes several worthwhile bonus features. Although there’s no audio commentary, there are high-definition presentations of a deleted scene (with the topical “little list” song), new interviews with “Mikado” experts (including Mike Leigh), and a 1926 silent but color-tinted promotional film made for the D’Oyly Carte’s stage production, plus fascinating all-too-brief audio excerpts from 1939 radio broadcasts of two different all-black Broadway productions, “The Hot Mikado” and “The Swing Mikado,” and also an illustrated booklet.
“THE MIKADO” (1939) on Blu-ray—Movie: A-  / Video: A+ /  Sound: B+ /  Extras: B+

TOPSY-TURVY

“Topsy-Turvy” is Mike Leigh’s biopic of Gilbert & Sullivan, but focusing only on the period when they came to compose, rehearse, and stage “The Mikado” (though scenes from various earlier Gilbert & Sullivan shows are also depicted). Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner as Gilbert and Sullivan, respectively, lead the excellent cast that includes Timothy Spall as major D’Oyly Carte actor Richard Temple.

The film’s historical recreation of the late Victorian era is painstakingly detailed, as is the ever-timeless representation of how a stage show is created, with all the backstage intrigues, personality issues, etc. Anyone who has ever done any theatre, whether acting or on the stage crew, needs to see it (as well as the bonus features that explain the amazing and unconventional way Leigh came up with his script).

“Topsy-Turvy” is a perfect companion piece to watch just after or before the 1939 “Mikado,” and both discs’ bonus features also tie in beautifully with each other (new 2010 HD interviews of Leigh obviously taped at the same time).  The one on this disc runs 38 minutes and includes music director Gary Yershon giving valuable insight into the characters, the production, and the period it covers. There’s also a featurette with cast members from the time the film was made, a half-hour short by Leigh written by Broadbent, three deleted scenes, a 1999 audio commentary by Leigh, and of course a nice illustrated booklet.

Interestingly, the picture quality, while very sharp, seems to look a touch less film-like than the gorgeous “Mikado” transfer, although the stereo audio is excellent. “TOPSY-TURVY” (1999) on Blu-ray—Movie: A / Video: A / Audio: A+ / Extras: A

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