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King and I (1956)
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Reviews Counted:19
Fresh:19
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.2/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 30 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Synopsis: Rogers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical, adapted from Margaret Landon's fact-based novel and the 1946 film ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, makes a spectacularly successful move to the silver screen in... Rogers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical, adapted from Margaret Landon's fact-based novel and the 1946 film ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, makes a spectacularly successful move to the silver screen in the Yul Brynner tour de force THE KING AND I. Brynner, reprising the role he'd polished to perfection on stage, plays the blustering, headstrong Siamese potentate who meets his match in the form of Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr), the prim and proper English widow he's hired to oversee the rearing of his huge, unruly flock of children. Director Walter Lang (TIN PAN ALLEY) presents THE KING AND I, one of the most popular musicals in cinema history, as a dizzyingly bountiful Technicolor feast. Kerr (aided during songs by the overdubbed voice of Marni Nixon) contributes a dynamic performance that is every bit the equal of Brynner's transcendent, career-defining turn, for which he won an Academy Award. The delightful score, which also garnered an Oscar, includes three perennial favorite show tunes: "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Getting to Know You," and "Shall We Dance?" [More]
Starring: Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson
Starring: Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson, Terry Saunders, Rex Thompson, Carlos Rivas, Patrick Adiarte
Director: Walter Lang
Director: Walter Lang
Screenwriter: Ernest Lehman
Producer: Charles Brackett
Composer: Alfred Newman, Richard Rodgers
Reviews for King and I
Walter Lang's screen version is too theatrical but the score by Rodgers and Hammerstein is glorious and the acting by Yul Brynner in his most iconic role and Deborah Kerr is superb, overcoming Marnie Nixon's colorless voice.
A chronicle of colonialism that poses itself as an easy-to-dismiss artifact, yet reveals itself to be an enduring statement about why people can't get along.
The King and I (1956) is the popular and elaborate musical and story of the tutoring of the stubborn, King of Siam's wives and children by widowed English school teacher Anna Leonowens in 1862.
Classic performances, classic score, the best Rodgers & Hammerstein screen adaptation.
This isn't Thailand, it's Hollywood's version of it on a sound stage, so the sets are at the same time more extravagant and more fake than they should be.
If you don't...see [The King and I], believe us, you'll be missing a grand and moving thing.
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