Hair

Starring: John Savage, Treat Williams Director: Milos Forman Original UK Premiere: 1979 Dvd Release: 6th August, 2001 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish Dubbed In: French, German, Italian, Spanish

Article Index: [Background Info] [DVD Extras] [DVD Review] [Biographies] [Articles/Resources] [Link To This Article] Looking To Buy? Buy This DVD Here

Hair, subtitled The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, is a musical about hippies. It was written by James Rado & Gerome Ragni & Galt MacDermot. It premiered off-Broadway as the inaugural perfomance of the Public Theater, on October 17, 1967 & moved to the Biltmore Theater on Broadway on April 29, 1968 where it stayed for 1472 performances. It opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London on September 27, 1968, continuing for 1998 performances until closure was forced by the roof collapsing in July 1973. It went on to stage productions across the world & continues to be performed today. A movie version of Hair was directed by Milos Forman in 1979. The show challenged many of the norms held by western society at the time. It caused controversy when it was first staged & much publicity was provoked by the Act I finale which included male & female nudity. This became a legal issue when the show left New York on tour. Stage nudity was acceptable in New York at that time but was unknown elsewhere in the US. Posters Of Hair

DVD Extras: The only extra is the theatrical trailer which, much like the film itself, is quite a cute period piece. Inexplicably, the scene-searching menu is not arranged by song, making it infuriatingly difficult to locate the tune you want, unless you already know the movie so well, which would leave little point in hearing these songs again anyway.

Milos Formans 1979 film of the 1968 musical Hair is far more watchable than it has any right to be. Controversial though the original stage version might have been at the time, it has not dated well. It was written back when most people thought the Vietnam War was a good idea & long hair on men a signifier of a hopelessly corrupt society, rather than the other way around. By the time the belated movie adaptation arrived attitudes had changed, & what made Hair so unique had become commonplace. However, the exuberance of the performances & the enduring appeal of some of the songs makes this movie version of Hair, even today, entirely impossible to dislike.

Jan Tomáš Forman, better known as Miloš Forman, is a film director, actor & script writer. Forman was born in Čáslav, Czechoslovakia. He was orphaned at a very young age when his parents died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz for their membership in a Czech Resistance group. After the war, Miloš attended King George College public school inthe spa town Podebrady, where his fellow students were Václav Havel & the Mašín brothers. Later on he studied film direction at the School of Cinema in Prague. He directed several Czechoslovakian comedies before leaving for the United States in 1968, after the Warsaw Pact invasion of his country. In spite of initial difficulties he started directing in his new home country, achieving his first success with the adaptation of Ken Kesey s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in 1975, which won five Academy Awards including one for direction. Another notable success was Amadeus. Posters Of Hair

Editors Choice: Man On The Moon, The People Vs Larry Flynt, Amadeus, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Ragtime, Hair, Loves Of A Blonde, Valmont, View DVDology

©2004-2008 DVDArk.co.uk