Reviews


Meet Me In St. Louis (Special Edition)

Colorama: The Charms of Meet Me in St. Louis

There's just something about Technicolor that makes it perfect for stories of nostalgia. In real life, our memories may fade, but it doesn't stop us from reinventing the past into a more beautiful, impossible shape. And so does Technicolor, really. It paints in hyperreal images, creating the world we dream of rather than the one we have. Small wonder then, that movies like Gone With the Wind, Heaven Can Wait, and The Quiet Man all chose ravishing, knock-you-over-the-head color cinematography to convince you that antebellum Georgia, Gilded Age Manhattan, or rural Ireland were the most magical and blissful places ever known. But for me, the high point of Technicolor nostalgia movies is Vincente Minnelli's 1944 hit, Meet Me in St. Louis. If there was some kind of Triple Crown honor for movie escapism, this one would win on all three points. One, it's in gorgeous color. Two, it's a wartime movie that makes absolutely no mention of conflict or struggle at any point. And three, it's a musical. Meet Me in St. Louis doesn't just escape from reality. It pole vaults right over it. The plot centers on Esther Smith (Judy Garland), the middle daughter of the happy and harmonious Smith family. It's 1904 and Esther is dreaming of the World Fair that will hit their hometown of St. Louis in only a few months. But the World Fair isn't the only game in town. Esther's also angling after 'the boy next door,' John Truett (Tom Drake). And she has a good shot at making both her dreams come true. That is, until her father (Leon Ames) comes home with calamitous news. His work is going to transfer him to New York. Esther and the rest of her family find themselves reeling at the thought of leaving everything they love. It'll take a miracle (and lots of singing) to get them through this. Meet Me in St. Louis thumbs its nose, not just at realism, but at narrative, too. The Smith family has already reached the pinnacle of happiness by the time we meet them. They're well-off and want for nothing. The parents are still in love after all these years. Their only son is doing well in college. The older daughters are beautiful and popular and utterly confident in those facts. The younger ones are adorable, scene-stealing moppets. Their housekeeper is down-to-earth Marjorie Main and she makes the best hickory nut cake there ever was. How can we possibly worry or even care about these perfect people? And yet we do. Somehow the film manages the uncanny trick of making the Smith family and their small, silly problems into a bewitching story. This movie glides through one minor incident after the other, with a brazen confidence that the audience will take this just as seriously as the characters do. The oldest sister gets a phone call, Esther tries to get John to kiss her, The baby, Tootie, wants to be the 'most horrible' trick-or-treater; nothing is too trivial to care about. The only real conflict in the first half is Esther's attempts to win John's oblivious heart. The second half deals with the family's fears of moving away from their beloved St. Louis to the unknown wilds of New York City. The characters discuss these problems with the resolve and determination of generals drawing up battle plans. (One of the film's funnier bits of dialogue has Esther and her older sister Rose talking before a dance. 'If we can create a breathtaking effect, it'll be simple to monopolize all the worthwhile men,' Rose tells her. 'They'll only be about twenty, we can certainly handle twenty men,' Esther replies.) The movie's subtle irony is that the Smiths treat everything from a dance card to a ketchup recipe like a campaign to be won-and yet they live in a sheltered paradise that's as far from the realities of 1944 as you can get.
The true enemy of the movie isn't romance or New York, it's time. Minnelli plays his hand early on by introducing each 'act' of the movie with a filigreed illustration of the Smith house. This family belongs to a more glorious and peaceful past. Minnelli stages each scene like an elaborate pantomime, overflowing with knick-knacks and bright colors and carefully posed characters. To American audiences in wartime, the Smith family was a loving tribute to an innocent, older generation. The Smith family's struggle against change is a bittersweet reminder that their world will quickly erode whether they move to New York City or not. Despite the candy-bright colors and lustrous costumes, Minnelli's film has an undercurrent of darkness to it. The movie's middle sequence is a surprisingly unsettling Halloween excursion, complete with a roaring bonfire, twisting shadows, small children plotting violence against every house in the neighborhood, and the tiny girl Tootie walking to a strange man's house, alone and terrified. The episode ends on a triumphant but bloodthirsty note when Tootie succeeds in striking the man with flour and runs back screaming, 'I killed him, I killed him!' Her reward is the title of 'most horrible,' and the honor of throwing more broken furniture into the fire. According to Minnelli, he made the movie just because he wanted to do that Halloween scene and had to fight for its inclusion. In his autobiography, he wrote, 'The burning of feet and slashing of throats they envisioned, almost a wistful longing for horror wasn't the sweet and treacly approach so characteristic of Hollywood...this was the type of fantasy that real children...would have.' Minnelli understood the material could be more than just a sugar-paved road to the box office. It's his control of the story's shifting tones that keeps the movie from becoming unbearable. Just as soon as you're finished oohing over the scene-stealing cakewalk between Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien, Minnelli segues into a soft, breathlessly romantic scene of Esther turning off all the house lights, while clinging to the boy she adores. In one shot, Minnelli swoops down from the burning candles flickering out on the chandelier, down the boy's arm, and right to the faces of the two lovers as the intimacy of the moment dawns on them both. The shot has a visual echo later in the climactic scene when the father realizes he can't drag his family away from the home they love. After seeing his youngest daughter break down in undeniable despair, Mr. Smith retreats into the shadows to light his pipe. The camera zooms in on his face and the burning match until he too, has a moment of revelation. A moment later, the lights are on again and Mr. Smith is making a speech for his happy, confused family, but the scene was staged so perfectly that it doesn't seem rushed. The genius of Meet Me in St. Louis is that it never forgets that the emotions are real, even if time and place are not. Meet Me in St. Louis is often classed as a Christmas film since it contains one of the most famous (and most depressing) renditions of a Christmas song ever filmed: Judy Garland's mournful version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.' The song is so heartrending, it drives Margaret O'Brien to run out and decapitate a bunch of snowmen, all while sobbing hysterically. But then, don't most our favorite Christmas flicks usually have that special added touch of misery? George Bailey contemplating suicide in It's a Wonderful Life, Peter Billingsley being kicked in the face by a department-store Santa in A Christmas Story, Scrooge realizing he's thrown away his life in every Christmas Carol ever made. The Smith family never even comes close to true despair but for a family in a Louis B. Mayer-approved musical, they come closer than you'd ever expect. Meet Me in St. Louis may be nostalgic, it may be cute, it may be MGM, but it never becomes trite. It's smart enough to keep the sugar under control and irresistible enough that you don't mind if it overflows a bit now and then. Add one of Judy Garland's best performances, some classic songs, some of the era's most gorgeous Technicolor cinematography, an excellent supporting cast, and peerless Minnelli direction, and you have one movie that's always worthwhile, whether you watch it at Christmastime or not. Aubyn Eli blogs about color movies-and a whole of black-and-white ones-at The Girl with the White Parasol.