denti alligator wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:22 pm
So I finally watched Meet Me in St. Louis. Oh, boy. What am I not seeing here that is apparently so beloved? I found it tedious in just about every way. Only the Halloween sequence was engaging. Anyone want to smack me upside the face and set me straight? I'd love to hear it.
It's been a bit since I've seen the film, so, forgive any small misrememberings.
Well, I think the first line of defense for
Meet Me in St. Louis is its visual beauty. There are few Technicolor films that match its aesthetic splendor, the quality of the bright daylight early on, the glow of diffused close-ups of Judy Garland, the popping colors. Minnelli's always made beautiful movies but rarely do his 50s ventures match
Meet Me in St. Louis for visual splendor (the American in Paris ballet, the climax of
Tea and Sympathy). I understand that this may not be thrilling, but, it's certainly frequently astonishing.
If I had to guess from your language and what you find interesting (the Halloween sequence, a truly grotesque curiosity compared to the rest of the film), it's the banality of the subject material. The very first image of the film gives us an indication of what the film is: as the sepia tinted photograph of the house they live in fades into the Technicolor life of the movie, it's clear that this is about a time and place, it's a slice of life in a way that musicals rarely are. The major plotlines of the first episode are noticing the cute boy next door, how to make good ketchup, and awaiting the novelty of a phone call from a suitor in New York. Any hopes for a prominent plot are bound to fail, the pleasures are the interplay of the characters and the culture they exist in, and most of all, the radiant nostalgia of the imagery that Minnelli conjures up. Just think of the dinner that everyone in the family tries to rush through so that the older sister can have her phone call in privacy––a viewer hoping for more plot, a quicker pace, anything like that, is like the family, and meanwhile, the father wants everyone to slow down and cool their jets.
It's key, however, that things go this way. If we cannot fall in love with these things, the simple objects: the brilliant red of the ketchup in their bottles, or grandpa's hat, or the vivid green lawns, then there's no hope for us when father announces that he's going to sell the house and move them all to New York. The bitterness of the other family members when he selfishly announces it must come from our own desires to remain in this gorgeous place, this Technicolor Eden, otherwise you're left siding with father, feeling that everyone in the family is just being selfish and silly (which they are, of course).
It's all anecdotal. The Halloween episode is of course a treat, exciting and bizarre, grotesque, but also morally troubling. Without demanding an entire film's worth of plot to be reallocated to it, the children's Halloween prank that gets them in hot water with the Truett boy produces a disturbing disruption in the otherwise wholesome world of the film that the older character's briefly react to negatively, before moving along. The first time I watched it, I was deeply stunned by how disregarded it became only moments later as they all burst into laughter.
But the moments I find most affecting and that speak to the film's power are the "You and I" duet between Mary Astor and Leon Ames. A genuinely beautiful duet, tender and quiet, perhaps even more beautiful than even Judy Garland's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (which itself is perfectly sentimentalized through the little wind-me-up music box). Astor and Ames truly feel like a long married couple, and while I've always found Astor's comeback in
The Maltese Falcon overrated, here she is sublime. The way she responds to her husband's voice breaking, and changes key.
As the family regathers around them, it provides the stepping stone, the counter moment for when he sits alone later on, having just witnessed his two daughters crying over the impending loss of their home; the camera tracks in on his slowly realizing face as he puts off lighting his pipe––and he realizes it, and reverses course on his plans. A moment of reunification of the family under father's orders (ironically, comically played by him telling them that they don't realize how great a city St. Louis is). There's just a treasure trove of lovely moments scattered throughout the film: I've never found Judy's love interest particularly charming, but them going through the house and turning the lights off is so romantic to me, and so mired in period detail.
Meet Me in St. Louis is perhaps the quintessential old school musical, before songs and narrative were perfectly integrated. It's central that each song slow us down, bring us to the moment of it happening rather than move the plot along, as this is a film about remembering a place, living in it, recalling the details and savoring them. It's a truly indulgent filmn in that way, as theoretically the cyclical nature of the film could continue, as one season gives way to another, as more details arise in fine Technicolor brilliance.
It's also a film of fantasies and nightmares: the dreaming of a Prince Charming, the transformation of an old man into a young one at the ball, the evil man with his evil dog, being forced to leave your home. All these things fringe the film which is otherwise concerned with the routines of the day, of the dinner, of the year (we see the morning routine first thing, as one character to another sings, "Meet Me in St. Louis"; or the dinner process; or the ritual of Halloween; or the big events of the year, one by one). And it's this oscillation between reality and fantasy that results in such striking uncanniness, as the Halloween children's bonfire, or the snowman mass murder, which speak to dark undercurrents that the film nostalgically sweeps away.
All in all, it just seems to me a very rich film, precise and vibrant in its details, and uninsistant on its importance. It's a film to luxuriate in, just relax and fall back into 1903-04 St. Louis. To quote Robin Wood, "The life of a film is in its detail."