It’s hard, even for people who lived through it, to remember how weird the American cinema was in the years between “Easy Rider” and “Jaws.”
Old Hollywood, comprising the studios that were being swallowed into conglomerates as the last of the barons who ran them died off, seemed lost. The post World War II audience that sustained them even as public attention shifted mostly to TV were ageing out of moviegoing.
Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous phrase about the town, that “nobody knows anything” was never truer, as a rare blockbuster like “2001” was followed by the Oscar-winning smash “True Grit,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was chased by “Patton,” and then “M*A*S*H” and “Love Story” and “Posiedon Adventure.”
They knew “genres,” but damned if anybody could figure out the secret to what the public wanted. It was a crapshoot, a time when low-budget projects and newborn filmmakers seemed a safer bet than big budget spectacles, and when nostalgia seemed the safest bet of all.
One way to get a grip on the seismic shift underway 50 years ago is to check into Netflix’s “classics” section and look at the wide range of titles from 1974 on display there — “Chinatown,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” The weirdest thing on offer has to be “The Little Prince.”
This 1974 children’s film was a musical by Lerner and Loewe, who’d scored with films of “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot,” and most recently bombed with the Western “Paint Your Wagon.”
But fresh on the heels of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Paramount lined up Gene Wilder for a role, put legend Stanley Donen of “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Funny Face” behind the camera and went all-in a screen version of a musical based on one of the most beloved children’s books of the last century, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince.”
It’s old-fashioned and trippy, a stumbling novelty picture with sparkling interludes and more heart than life. But where else are you going to hear future character heavy Joss Ackland (“Lethal Weapon 2,” “White Mischief”) sing? What other kid’s musical features Bob Fosse, dressed all in black, from his bowler hot to his spats, complete with gloves, showing us vintage Fosse moves and lines (No “jazz hands,” dammit.) as a “snake in the grass” song-and-dance number staged in the middle of a desert?
The man suffered for his art, never more than in this, I dare say.
Wilder plays a wary, human-hating fox who befriends the prince (Steven Warner, a child with but three screen credits) on the lad’s trip — via a flock of animated doves — from one small planetoid to another.
And Ackland’s a king with no subjects to follow his orders on another solitary asteroid.
Richard Kiley, one of Broadway’s greatest stars of that era, brings his melifluous baritone to The Aviator, a French pilot who crashes on a flight from Paris to India, only to have his attempts to repair the between-the-wars aircraft interrupted by a mop-topped blonde in a military coat, using a sword as his cane.
“If you please, draw me a sheep!”
The pilot’s puzzlement has its limits, as he must wonder if he’s hallucinating this peculiar, other-worldy lad (read the Wikipedia bio of de Saint-Exupéry to see how much of this he took from his own experiences) who begs for drawings and regales him with tales of his travels and fanciful child’s-eye-view of the world.
The allegory the author was going for, which the musical adaptors watered-down, was the loss of innocence and a way of looking at the world. The Aviator has grown up avoiding adults who didn’t appreciate his childhood art.
The Aviator hears that the King, the assorted military men, business folk, vain Rose (Donna McKechnie, another Broadway legend) and the thorns of international totalitarianism threaten the Prince, making the child despair of ever finding his way home, to peace and tranquility.
Some of that is in there, but you have to be looking for it.
Bond movie credits king Maurice Binder never did a sloppier animated opening credits than he did for this picture. At least the film’s short running time was merciful to parents, even if it can’t do justice to the material.
There have been revivals of the musical, but it’s plainly not one of Lerner and Loewe’s most beloved shows. There’s a newer version of this tale, with music by Hans Zimmer, that’s on Broadway through May.
Still, Donen and his crew give us playful in-camera effects and fantastical “Wonka” ish asteroid sets. Kiley shines and is in fine voice, Wilder playfully does what he’s paid to do, McKechnie and Ackland have a little fun and Fosse choreographs himself a little pre-“Chicago” razzle dazzle in a role that is best appreciated excerpted on Youtube.
Whatever its shortcomings, “The Little Prince” remains a curiosity, a fascinating artifact of a Hollywood age when the industry as a whole was lost enough to give auteur directors free rein to make “The Godfather,” “American Graffiti” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Walt Disney was long gone, and children’s cinema practically flatlined. But fear not, because musicals were about to experience the “Chicago/Chorus Line” earthquake.
And whatever you think of the “blockbuster” mentality that set in did to the cinema, “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “E.T.” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” stopped theaters from closing, brought forth the birth of the multiplex and saved the movies for generations to come.
Rating: G
Cast: Richard Kiley, Steven Warner, Gene Wilder, Donna McKechnie, Joss Ackland and Bob Fosse.
Credits: Directed by Stanley Donen, scripted by Alan J. Lerner, based on Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical adapted from the novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A Paramount release on Netflix, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:28
