Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Abstract

While there is a rich literary and pictorial tradition of the Rape of the Sabine Women, the only song about it may be “Those Sobbin’ Women” from MGM’s 1954 musical comedy, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. For Hollywood in the 1950s, movies about Rome were generally either quasireligious epics set in and against the ancient city, such as Quo Vadis (1951) or Ben Hur (1959), or romances employing the modern city as a charming backdrop, such as Roman Holiday (1953) or Three Coins in a Fountain (1954). Seven Brides, on the other hand, involves neither ancient Christians nor postwar jetsetters but rather a group of lonesome homesteaders living nowhere near Italy but instead in the “God-fearing territory” of 1850s Oregon. Some of the preconceptions in the film, and particularly this song, in fact, may be brought into sharper focus by a consideration of the times of the Pax Romana under the emperor Augustus. Behind the invocation of the ancient Roman story can be found deeper insecurities about the genders in the period of the Pax Americana.