Watch The Pirate Judy Garland and Gene Kelly 1948 - In honor of tomorrow being Halloween, I've set to debate and post scenes from one among the best (and most often overlooked) musicals of the so-called golden age, Vincente Minelli's "The Pirate", starring Gene Kelly and judy Garland. What has "The Pirate" to try to to with Halloween? easy. My son is being a pirate for Halloween.
"The Pirate", with a score by Cole Porter, was released in 1948 and an aura of disappointment immediately descended over it, one that the film has nevertheless in some ways in which to shake. Widely thought of to be over-indulgent and somehow not up to MGM's highest commonplace, it's remained on the backburner with musical enthusiasts over the years. For my cash, it's infinitely superior to the overrated "An yankee In Paris" (Kelly and Minelli once more, now with Gershwin music) and contains a number of each the director and therefore the stars most spectacular work. It's actually superior to the opposite Kelly/Garland collaborations, the pleasant however innocuous "Summer Stock" and therefore the fully unnecessary "In the nice previous Summertime."
I think the arch nature of the material--the terribly subtle and unusually mocking tone of the screenplay--contributed to people's discomfort with the image. it's not "sincere" in any traditional method. a lot of of it's blatantly artifical, self-reflexive (it is, a technique or another, a paean to show-biz and therefore the rouge actors we have a tendency to like to mock) and sometimes quite fantastical. The soundstagey look--you never for an instant believe you are within the Carrabean--was deliberate and maybe somewhat unsettling to audiences (and critics) of the day.
In some ways in which it's ahead to Baz Luhrman's "Moulin Rouge" in its strange fascination with itself as an object of beauty--call it the self-fetishization of musical-making. I realize it's posture an enthralling and strange one. although the below variety, the pleasant "Nina", goes on for twice the length that it might have in most alternative musicals, I realize it endlessly beautiful to watch--Kelly's dancing has never been higher and therefore the sequence could be a veritable master category within the now-lost technique of "invisible" directing of a musical variety (lost forever thanks largely to the success of Rob Marshall's bravura however exhausting technique in "Chicago"...) The below variety runs seven minutes and contains no over 10 set ups, most of that run for slightly over a moment. The fluidity of the long take staging, the outstanding set and Kelly's humorously over-the-top lechery build this a gold commonplace number--yet you wont realize it in "That's Entertainment" (at least i feel you wont) or perhaps in several of the clip reels dedicated to quickie histories of dance in musical films. And who however Cole Porter may write a love song that rhymes "Nina" with "neurasthenia"?
More on "The Pirate" to return.
More on "The Pirate" to come.
