DORIS DAY – “Que Sera, Sera”
“Que Sera, Sera” is a slippery little song – its fresh optimism seems to conceal something a shade darker (the sentiment could as easily front a glum shrug as a carefree grin), but in the lyric only good things do seem to happen, so any fatalism you find is of the chirpy variety. It’ll all work out in the long run! In the real world such homilies might be dangerous, or at least an excuse to sit on one’s arse all day (as if I needed one). But pop music, thankfully, is not the real world.
Doris Day treats “Que Sera, Sera” as quite the happiest song ever written – a “Favourite Things” of predestiny and human impotence. She carries the arrangement along with her – the music-box tinkling behind the “Now I have children of my own’” verse just an extra tier in a wedding-cake production. And of course the chorus is indelible. The result is that rare thing, a pop song trying to sound less deep than it is.
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And for a new generation (or two) it’s indelibly associated with the meteorite-heading-for-Springfield espisode of The Simpsons. I guess if you’re going to be fatalistic, you may as well be happy about it…
It originally appeared in Hitchcock’s remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the way she sings it in the film, alone and in tears, to the daughter she knows is being held hostage in the next room, is beyond heartbreaking…
(She sings it as a sort of coded message)
i’m sure on the haloscan comments we must have touched on:
a. the song’s ubiquity on the terraces
b. “we hope it’s chips, it’s chips” dalepack beefsteak advert of the early/mid 80s
which of these caused the other i’m unsure…
“fried onion rings”!
In response to marcello’s comment last Hallowe’en. It was her son she was singing to in the movie. She and Jimmy Stewart only had the boy, no daughter at all actually.
And can I get hold of a DVD of The Man Who Knew Too Much? Can I fuck! I was disappopinted but not altogether surprised not to get hold of Hall Bartlett’s Unchained – the film’s signature song has a completely independent existence and it’s not by all accounts (although I’ll be the judge when I get the chance) a particularly good film. But TMWKTM is Hitchcock, for fuck’s sake, and if it’s no Rear Window or North by North West it’s still pretty good stuff.
Did I really make the last comment? Well, I did get hold of a DVD of TMWKTM mk II and Marcello was right on the money – Doris sings it more than once in the film, but the scene he mentions is a cracker even by Hitchcockian standards.
I really must see the film. I’m quite a Doris fan, and I do like Hitchcock…
A lovely song, well executed by Dodo. What more can you ask for?
It was a ‘present’ from her A&R man Mitch Miller to her. One of those rare 50s #1s that remains well-known today. I knew it long before I knew anything about Doris.
Yes, fried onion rings.
Do vegetarians eat those? They never seem to eat things like that.
I know a few vegetarians who only eat things like that. Not many vegetables, at any rate.
I like the mix of serenity and slight uncertainty in the song, much like Memories Are Made Of This. A new kind of post-war calm – “I think we’ve made it, boys” – just as R&R blows this pop world apart.
Wichita – I think Marcello put a similar point beautifully in his first post on this thread:
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popular/2003/09/mantovani-moulin-rouge-theme/
Yes, you’re right. I was attempting to suggest that Que Sera Sera is a tentative step forward, though, from O Mein Papa and Moulin Rouge – less of a swaddling lullaby for the immediate post-war years, more forward looking. This and Memories Are Made of This at least suggested people weren’t about to have their lives abruptly terminated by a doodlebug or an atomic bomb. And if they were, well, the future’s not ours to see.
I have quite a bit more to say about this song in the next TPL entry, which will be written as soon as everything is sorted out (i.e. unpacked) in our new home (into which we moved last weekend hurrah!).*
*hence lack of recent blog activity since we have been busy house-hunting and then actual house-moving.**
**hence also delay in BiA EoY list but it is coming!
Good luck to you both in your new home, then!
As good a place as any to announce that TPL is indeed back, and is in part knocked sideways in ways it didn’t expect by this long-time chart-topper: http://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2011/02/various-artists-20-all-time-greats-of.html
@16 I enjoyed that piece on TPL immensely. Looking forward to your next entry, Marcello.
DESERT ISLAND DISC WATCH (Up to 11/04/11)
Jack Fingleton, Athlete, Cricketer, Writer, Broadcaster (1961).