Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

The World of Henry Orient Blu-ray Movie Review

Silk stalkings.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 21, 2015

Those of you who delight in patently odd news items, and especially those of you who delight in patently odd news items about classical music (of all things), may recall the viral video of Portuguese virtuoso pianist Maria João Pires which made the rounds a couple of years ago (sometime after the fact it had been recorded, actually) wherein Pires was horrified to hear conductor Riccardo Chailly and Amsterdam’s legendary Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra launch into Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 after she sat down at the piano to perform with them. Why should that cause panic, you might well ask. Well, unfortunately Pires had been planning on playing another one of Mozart’s many (27 to be exact) piano concerti. (This brings to mind a joke a music theory professor of mine once offered when Haydn’s Symphony Symphony No. 85 in B-flat major, La Reine "The Queen" came on the radio one day when I was in his office. “Oh! Haydn’s Symphony Number 85,” he stated, obviously recognizing the piece. “Easily distinguishable from Haydn’s Symphonies 84 and 86 by its number!”) Pires was actually able to recover incredibly gracefully and went on to play the “correct” Mozart offering from memory, earning Chailly’s (and the audience’s) undying admiration. The “flip side” (to purloin a term from the LP era) of this situation is played out (no pun intended) to hilarious effect in George Roy Hill’s winning 1964 film The World of Henry Orient, when the titular character, a concert pianist (played by Peter Sellers) takes his audience and a profusely sweating conductor on a trip through sonic madness due to the fact that Orient has not indulged in sufficient practice to actually know what he’s supposed to be playing, and is in fact “winging” (and or “fingering”) it, albeit in a supposedly avant garde mien where his doodlings are decidedly less diatonic than in the world of Mozart. That sequence is one of the few typically “Sellers-esque” lunatic moments in The World of Henry Orient, a film which is otherwise a rather sweet and even touching treatment of two young girls emerging from the playful innocence of adolescence into something at least more relatively mature.

Marian “Gil” Gilbert (Merrie Spaeth) climbs off of a school bus in a rather tony area of Manhattan and is trying to remember some of her geography homework when some panicked cries and a veritable flock of flying papers catch her attention. Fellow eighth grader Valerie "Val" Campbell Boyd (Tippy Walker) has lost possession of a huge sheath of music class notes, and screams at Gil for help. While the two aren’t able to fully recover the lost sheets of paper, the incident at least gives the pair the opportunity to get to know each other, and they develop an almost instant camaraderie based on their mutual dislike of various teachers and their ongoing tribulations with their braces. It’s obvious that Val is a bit of an iconoclast, and she tempts Gil with promises of “adventuring” that weekend, indicating that Gil should meet her at Central Park’s iconic sailing pond.

The two do indeed get together and create a scenario where they’re two “white nurses” being chased by Chinese nemeses of some kind. They’re still innocent enough that they talk about not wanting to have the supposed villains “radish” them (one assumes they meant ravish, but who knows?). In an unfortunate accidental “meeting” which will then propel much of the rest of the plot, the two stumble upon concert pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellers) having a pretty serious makeout session with one Stella Dunnworthy (Paula Prentiss). Orient notices the girls, which sends them squealing off into the distance, and as he makes conversation with Stella in their post voyeur conversation, it becomes apparent that Stella is in fact married and is carrying on a dalliance with the musician.

Meanwhile, the home lives of the two girls are explored in some detail. Gil lives with her divorced mother Avis (Phyllis Thaxter) and a family friend nicknamed Boothy (Bibi Osterwald). Val on the other hand seems parentless in the early going, being doted on by the family cook and indulging in some rather virtuosic piano playing. It turns out Val does of course have parents, but they’re extremely dysfunctional. Her mother Isabel (Angela Lansbury) is a harridan, and father Frank (Tom Bosley) is largely in absentia.

In a plot arc which mirrors the girls’ own maturation process, the film’s early ebullience starts to give way to a more dramatic mien as things continue. The girls keep running into Orient (more and more by design), something that puts his relationship with Stella on the skids. The girls, especially Val (due to her musicality), are not immune to Henry’s perhaps questionable charms, and they indulge in some potent adolescent fantasies about their “mark”. When Isabel catches wind of things, she assumes that Orient may be a pedophile and decides to handle the issue herself, with a completely unexpected outcome which then propels a rather surprisingly melancholic chain of events.

Peter Sellers had something of an annus mirabilis in 1964, with both the first two Inspector Clouseau offerings (The Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark) and his eventually Academy Award nominated turn in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb making him virtually unavoidable to film going audiences of the day. He’s surprisingly restrained throughout a lot (if not all) of The World of Henry Orient, and in fact despite his top billing, the film is really more focused on the teens than the adults. Both the young girls do exceptional work, and the large and colorful supporting cast adds a lot of impact along the way.

Daughter and father team Nora and Nunnally Johnson provide an extremely sharp screenplay that is able to segue fairly effortlessly between farce and drama, giving The World of Henry Orient a perhaps surprisingly integrated and organic feeling tone. Musical theater geeks will know that Nunnally Johnson and director George Roy Hill attempted to musicalize this property a few years later with the Bob Merrill tuner Henry, Sweet Henry, a show which was featured prominently in William Goldman’s fascinating tour of 1967-68 Broadway, The Season. Henry, Sweet Henry closed after a not exactly record shattering 80 performances and lost a ton of money, but as Goldman rather archly documents, due to the disastrous runs of every other musical that opened that season, Henry, Sweet Henry was the biggest “success story” of the year.

The World of Henry Orient Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The World of Henry Orient is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. While some releases culled from the vast archives of MGM have been at least relatively lackluster, this is one of the nicer looking offerings in recent memory, one which retains most if not all of the original's color palette and which maintains a nicely resolved fine grain structure which capably supports a very organic looking appearance. Reds might tip ever so slightly toward the orange side of things at times, but overall the palette looks natural and convincing, with decent flesh tones and good accountings of the exterior Manhattan locations. Close-ups offer very good fine detail, with elements like flyaway strands on costumes easily discernable.

The World of Henry Orient Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The World of Henry Orient offers a functional lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track which easily supports the film's dialogue and musical elements. The frequent use of piano cues never sounds brittle or overly bright, and Elmer Bernstein's perhaps rather oddly Latin inflected score comes through with excellent clarity and precision. Fidelity is excellent and there are no problems of any kind to warrant concern.

The World of Henry Orient Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.


• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:38)


• MGM 90th Anniversary Trailer (1080p; 2:06)


• Audio Commentary features Jeff Bond hosted by Twilight Time's Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman.

The World of Henry Orient Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The World of Henry Orient might have been more accurately entitled The World of Gil and Val, for the film is really more about the teens than about the semi-competent concert pianist. Sellers gets a chance to strut some of his manic stuff in dribs and drabs here, but the film's real allure is the nicely detailed account of two starstruck "little girls" finding themselves at various crossroads and figuring out it's time to start growing up. Technical merits are generally strong on this release, and The World of Henry Orient comes Highly recommended.