Oklahoma!

A film adaptation of the Broadway musical. It is set at the start of the twentieth century in the Oklahoma territory, not yet a state. Curly is a cowhand, Laurey a young woman on a farm. They like each other and neither says so. Jud comes between them: a farmhand who talks to nobody and wants Laurey. She agrees to go to the box social with him, to annoy Curly. The second line is comedy: Ado Annie cannot refuse any proposal and is caught between two men. At the centre is a long ballet. Laurey falls asleep and dreams what is coming; the sequence is told through dance and the characters are played by dancers. The production has technical importance too: it was made as the first film in a widescreen system developed at the time and was shot separately in two formats. Gordon MacRae plays Curly, Shirley Jones plays Laurey and Rod Steiger plays Jud. Gloria Grahame is in the cast. Fred Zinnemann directed. One of the essential examples of its genre for anyone who likes classical musicals and the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein. For a viewer who wants something short, it runs over two and a half hours and the pace is slow.