NekoHomey
Purely Joyful Movie!
Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Beulah Bram
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
atlasmb
"Funny Girl" is the screen adaptation of the stage musical, based on the life and career of Fanny Brice. And it is a vehicle for the talents--acting and singing--of Barbra Streisand. She embodies the role, defines it, and carries it to heights of perfection.The other actors in the film are, I'm afraid, part of the scenery. It's not their fault. Streisand acting dominates the screen. Streisand singing brands the song. Her facility with comedy is both unique and classic. Her ability to portray tragedy--sometimes through comedy--is heartbreaking.In "Funny Girl", we love her spirit, rejoice in her triumphs, and suffer with her when she realizes she has no control over the one thing she truly wants. She wants an impossibly attractive man, finds love with him, then fails to hold him. It's a theme she later explored in "The Way We Were"."Funny Girl" showed that Streisand had the screen presence that could draw an audience. In fact, it even realigned common definitions of beauty as the camera lingered on her profile. She also wears some wonderful fashions.This is the film that launched a career that had only existed on vinyl (or on stage if you were luck enough to see Streisand on Broadway). It is film history in the making. I only wish she had made more films, but I can settle for "The Way We Were", "A Star is Born", "Hello Dolly", and "Yentl".
bear1955
I don't think I can watch the whole thing on TCM this minute. or ever. Tune in and listen a bit an turn away is enough. Better to listen to my CD, and get the Cast album if I can, as they dropped many songs; I've read. I am just young enough to know the name Fanny Brice, but not Nicky Arnstein; and wondered do they mean Sophie Tucker! Sounds silly but was confusing. Brice was not movie star(?) let alone to ever be possible as a TV star, out of sight out of mind.The lives of Fanny and Nicky and her family in this movie are too sanitized and fictionalized. The movie and earlier play was produced by Fanny Brice's son-in-law and was 'rigged' so to avoid what I read could have been possible lawsuits especially from Arnstein! So I do hove something against it. And there won't be a musical remake of this caliber that can be closer to the real background story.I thought they stopped making up all kinds of fictionalized characters and scenarios to sell the A- musicals of the 50s with THEN old-fashioned music standards and the THEN more "mature" stars. (Tea for Two", "Band Wagon" etc.)I have no idea what Fanny Brice sounded like. Aren't there any recordings? None of the characters ring true in my imagination - songs forced style NY Jewish-ish, and sometimes the lines and sometimes not that way, too. You need to be a Streisand or a movie musical lover to take this in and be able to swoon.
tieman64
A 1968 musical by William Wyler, "Funny Girl" stars Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, a comedienne and Broadway star who embarks upon a stormy relationship with a suave gambler (Omar Sharif).As a domestic drama, "Funny Girl" is mostly routine. As a monument to Barbra Streisand, though, it's a bit special. One small step for Jewish comedians, Streisand takes 1930s/40s screwballs, with their sassy, working-class heroines, and gives them a self-depreciating, unconventionally beautiful, proudly (tentatively?) Jewish and so new edge.William Wyler typically oscillated between daring projects ("The Children's Hour", "The Collector" etc) and light-hearted fluff. "Funny Girl" lies somewhere in the middle, part Hollywood crowd-pleaser, part a product of the 1960s, when dramas strove for supposedly "new" and "grittier" depths. The film ends with an out-of-place rendition of "My Man", Streisand standing before a black background, bawling her lungs out with phony intensity. A better film would have ditched all similar pretences at "heavy drama" and milked instead Streisand's comedic talents; "Funny Girl" works better as comedy than tragedy.Outside of Streisand, "Funny Girl" offers fine production design, some good cinematography and a dashing performance by Omar Sharif. Like most of Wyler's films, "Girl's" impeccably framed and lit. This would be the director's penultimate picture.7/10 – See "The Children's Hour".
Prismark10
Barbra Streisand made her film debut as singer, actress, comedienne Fanny Brice and bagged a Best Actress (co-win) helped by big song numbers such as 'People,' 'My man' and 'Don't rain on my parade.'The first part of the film starts of brightly as Fanny tries to get into showbiz from being a chorus girl and finds out that she steals the show from her bad roller skating. She is brash, determined, single minded, strident and gets her own way which even the Great Ziegfeld soon finds out.The film is then soon bogged down with the love story with Omar Sharif (Nick Arnstein). Although Streisand and Sharif make a good couple, this heavily fictionalized part of the story is just humdrum. You just know that as Brice becomes more famous and rich, her and Nick, her gambler husband will drift apart before he gets involved in a dicey bond caper.Streisand shows the film world her talents and although her singing is spectacular you cannot help wondering whether she could had stretched herself as an actress, because she kept on mining the same type of character. The single minded, dominating, wannabee someone.
