Grease
Greaseis much love today for its depiction of fifties culture , but what year(s ) precisely is the movie melodic theorise to be dress in ? Based on the long - running phase melodic , the 1978 film interpretation ofGreasefollows the high-pitched schooltime romance betweenJohn Travolta ’s Danny Zuko and Olivia Newton - John ’s Sandy Olsson . benefit from the success of Travolta’sSaturday Night Fever , let go of the late year , Greasehas enjoyed consistent popularity , with audiences draw off in by the same accessibility that has made it a staple of mellow shoal and community theater .
A bit of the songs inGreasehave becomepopular classics of both phase and screen musicals . " Summer Nights , " " Greased Lightnin ' , " and " You ’re the One That I Want " are a few of the best - known , even though the latter was n’t in the original stage production . Many of these , like the sardonic " Beauty School Dropout , " are written and perform in a style evocative of ' L pop euphony , which , in increase to giving them a wider solicitation than is typically afforded to show tunes , also serves to tie the film more closely to its setting .
Related : Grease : How Old Sandy & Danny Are Compared To Their Actors
The motion picture begin with Danny and Sandy ’s initial romance in the summertime of 1958 , a escort which can be inferred from the fact that the T - Birds and the Pink Ladies are members of the category of ' 59 atRydell High School . The sentence frame of what follows this chess opening is unusually clear - cut : after the quicken claim successiveness , the story start in sincere with the characters ' first Clarence Day of their aged year of high school , follows them through the ' 58-‘59 school year , and end precisely on their last day of school .
Despite its explicit connexion to the 1950s , it ’s of import to remember that even the original stage melodious ofGreasepremiered more than a decade after that time time period and in fact actively sample to debase ' fifty tropes . The bright , cleans exercise set of the celluloid are clothe up with definitive ' fifty signifier , like malted milk shop anddrive - in theater , but those are purposefully undermined by the crude behaviour of the characters . This was originally meant to review pop finish ’s wholesome , idyllic visual sense of the ' 50s as unrealistic , and yet , in the current public cognizance , Greasehas come to symbolize just that . Musically , such an intentionally ironical disconnect can be felt in the songs that were bestow to the movie which were not in the stage production , most notably the Barry Gibb - penned , Frankie Valli - perform " Grease , " which has a distinct , anachronic disco music influence .
Greasecontinues to compromise its ' 58-‘59 setting as metre passes . Much like the addition of a disco song in the ' 70s , 2016’sGrease : Livetelevision production included a rendition of " Cake by the Ocean " by DNCE at the mellow school dance . And far from being an issue , the show ’s malleability may be one of the reason why it persist so popular . So while the plastic film version ofGreaseundoubtedly adopt blank space in the closure years of the 1950s , the perspective of its story as a whole is very much a merchandise of both the late decade in which it was produced and the present tense in which hearing continue to recontextualize it .
Next : Where Are They Now ? The Cast of Grease
