This may be my favorite Christmas movie, even though I’m not sure it rightfully belongs in the genre — for one thing, only about a quarter of the action takes place in the correct season, and the organizing event is as much the climactic World’s Fair as it is the central Yule. From a purist point of view, it can’t be called a great musical either, since about half of the songs were pre-existing standards dating to the early twentieth century and simply plugged into the narrative arc of a string of Sally Benson’s New Yorker short stories. But it is, I submit, one of the great family movies, looking back to The Magnificent Ambersons and forward to The Royal Tenenbaums, all of which films transcend their apparent artifice and get something importantly right about the frustrations and consolations of family life. One thing I notice, watching it again this year, is how selfish everyone acts: despite its reputation (probably on the basis of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”) as a sentimental tearjerker, all of the characters are pretty much out for themselves, looking to land their husband or advance their career or whatever, and relations within the family are at best strained and at worst competitive. The feeling of foiled privacy is the reigning emotional tone of the movie: everybody’s constantly on top of one another, wants something different, and is willing to mildly inconvenience someone else to get it. (I also enjoy the fact that seven-year-old Tootie, played by the terrifyingly focused Margaret O’Brien, is pretty much a budding sociopath, prone to causing major trolley accidents and knocking the heads off snowpeople.) And then there’s Minnelli’s utterly perfect sense of period detail, placing us in a very precise era and locale without overstating anything (and, of course, ignoring a lot: did you know at the 1904 World’s Fair they had human zoos?). If one wants one’s holiday classics secular, nonsupernatural, and slightly bittersweet, then accept no substitute.
by Evan Kindley | Source: Warner Video DVD
24 Dec 2008 8:37 AM | Comments (2)
I think you can call it a great musical. Singin’ in the Rain has hardly any original songs, and I call it a great musical all the time. That aside, your comments are quite spot-on.
Yeah, I guess it was pretty common practice in pre-Oklahoma! days to use existing songs and write a story around them, but to me it still seems a little like cheating. And while Singin’ in the Rain actually feels like a musical (maybe partly because it’s also about musicals; same goes for The Band Wagon), to me Meet Me In St. Louis feels like a great movie which just happens to have a handful of great musical sequences. But what do I know…
Happy holidays, everybody!
Victoria
24 December 2008
9:01 AM