The Fluffer dances with … Finian’s Rainbow (1968)

by The Fluffer

Yes, I know. The expressions “musical” and “Francis Ford Coppola” don’t exactly inspire confidence when in the same sentence (One from the Heart, Captain Eo).

Yes, Coppola himself has (often) complained about the film’s flaws.

Yes, Keenan Wynn appears in blackface.

Yes, it really should have been made in the fifties (they did try).

Yes, Coppola’s approach doesn’t quite nail it.

But Finian’s Rainbow is absolutely worth a look.

For starters, there is a wonderful score, superbly performed, especially Petula Clark’s versions of ‘Look to the Rainbow’, ‘How Are Things in Glocca Morra?’ and ‘Old Devil Moon’. The soundtrack album is splendid.

The cast is very good. Clark is wonderful – it’s odd that she never became a movie star (she had two attempts, in Britain in the early ‘50s and in Hollywood with this and Goodbye Mr Chips), but never mind. Tommy Steele is genuinely non annoying (not always the case in his film career) as a leprechaun, Fred Astaire is charming, and Don Francks, in his movie debut, is very impressive.

The movie looks splendid with great location work.

The story’s politics are of their time – specifically post-war, New York, progressive left-leaning, well-meaning: the stage musical on which the film is based debuted in 1947 and deals with race relations in the South; it was considered a hot potato in the McCarthy fifties (part of the reason it wasn’t filmed then). But its heart is in the right place. A far nicer place than, say, Coppola’s One from the Heart where Frederic Forrest’s horrible domestic abuser is the hero.

I think the reputation of Finian’s Rainbow has suffered over the years mostly from three things:

being grouped in with all those post-Sound of Music roadshow musicals with their tales of notorious cost blow-outs (Darling Lili, Star!, Hello Dolly, Doctor Doolittle, Paint Your Wagon). Finian’s Rainbow actually didn’t cost that much and didn’t flop – it actually did alright at the box office.
Being grouped in with all those flop musicals from New Hollywood (At Long Last Love, New York New York, Coppola’s own One from the Heart). This was old Hollywood, really.
Its uneasy place within Francis Ford Coppola’s oeuvre. The director has never distanced himself from the movie exactly but has gone on (and on) about its problems in interviews, which hardly helps the film’s reputation. In particular, Finian’s Rainbow is typically compared – unflatteringly – with the low budget indie The Rain People, which Coppola made after with his Finian’s fee (and much of its equipment): the soul-less studio project versus the passion project. And a lot of Coppola’s film bro fans clearly struggle with how to pitch the movie – Coppola movies typically need some sort of exciting behind the scenes story to remain in the discourse, otherwise they get forgotten (Twixt, Tetro, Youth Without Youth), so faced with Finian’s they resort to “studio bloat/interference”, “flop” and “obscene waste of money”, even though it isn’t quite the truth.