LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) ***1/2

Though often counted as a Film Noir, "Leave Her to Heaven" is more of a Soap Noir. But that doesn't disqualify it as a good view. Far from it, "Leave Her" is a first-rate psychological thriller.

Ellen (Gene Tierney) meets a writer, Richard (Cornell Wilde) on a train to New Mexico. They're staying at the same place, and within a day, she's taken off her engagement ring and tossed it around Richard's neck, much to the annoyance of her former fiancee, Russell (Vincent Price) who, improvidentially, is a DA. We find soon enough that Ellen is a borderline psycho who, in her mother's words, "loves too much." In fact, she loves Richard so much that she kills off his beloved but crippled kid brother (Darryl Hickman), terminates her pregnancy in a deliberate fall down a flight of stairs, and mounts a suicide attempt to destroy her sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain) and Richard. This brings Ruth and Richard to trial on criminal charges prosecuted by (you guessed it) vengeful Russell.

The script has more than a few sappy and awkward passages--the antithesis of real film noir. But what distinguishes this movie is its beauty--it's just gorgeous in every way. The opening scene, in an Art Deco train smoking car, will take your breath away. The exteriors, shot in New Mexico, Maine, and right here in Prescott AZ, are sensational. Every interior set, every piece of upholstery, every bolster, window curtain, every dress and pair of shoes, is perfect. And all filmed in that soft, pastel Technicolor of the period. "Lush" is the best descriptor. It took an Oscar for cinematography.

Of course, the most beautiful element in the film is Tierney, the most gorgeous creature ever to grace a screen (though Crain is no slouch in the looks department, either). But Tierney is more than just a pretty face. Plenty of women have played nut cases, but Tierney is far more subtley wacko than a Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwick would have been in the same role. She never goes over the edge, but her soft, deadly determination is all the more menacing. She won an Oscar nomination.
Just beatiful!

I just saw "Bridge to the Sun" (1961) for the first time and was totally blown away by it. What an excellent movie!!

It stars Carroll Baker and James Shigeta. She's from Tennessee and he's a Japanese diplomat in the U.S. in the mid 1930's. They fall in love and marry and have a kid and then comes December 7, 1941.

He gets deported back to Japan and Baker and daughter go with him. It's an excellent telling of the war with a pronounced Japanese perspective and it's a great love story.

It's one of the most haunting movies I've ever seen and would highly recommend it to anyone desiring to watch a good, deep story with wonderful acting.

Yeah, I had been meaning to check that movie out and hate that I missed. Next time its on, I'll check it out simply because of your recommendation.

btw, tomorrow night on TCM at 2AM is THE APPLE....which I've not seen, but from what people have told me, its one of the more surreal pictures to have ever been produced (shot by the same producers of Cannon Films, which produced mostly Jean Claude Van Damm/Chuck Norris/Sylvester Stallone B-action movies)....

Plus, its a bad picture apparently. But hey, TCM is airing it now.

Never heard of it. Just before TCM is airing that, they're showing "Love With the Proper Stranger" with Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood. Great movie!!

Cool, and what of THE BEST MAN?

Sounds like a nice idea for a movie, or one produced back when people thought politicians had integrity and decency....but I'm a sucker for those when they're done right.

If you're talking about the movie with Henry Fonda (playing a presidential candidate) then it's a decent flick. I don't remember many of the details but it's about a presidential election with Fonda playing a basically decent guy running against a real bastard (and for the life of me I can't remember the actor's name and I'm too tired to look it up).

Well, I still might check it out. TRAPEZE sounded like nothing more then "decent at best"...and it was a pleasant surprise.

Cliff Robertson.
I saw "The Best Man" when it was on the Broadway stage a few years ago. Ordinarily I'd rather have carnal knowledge of a dog with scarlet fever than go to a Broadway show--especially a drama. But I leaped at it because the one and only Charles Durning was playing the former President. He was great, as usual. Chris Noth ("Mr. Big" on Sex and the City) was the bad guy.

My previous Broadway show was "Inherit the Wind," starring Durning and George C. Scott. Both were great.

That's it!!

Oddly enough, I kept thinking of JFK (I guess because of "PT 109").

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE is on tomorrow night at 6...one of Kirk Douglas' own personal favorites, that some people swear to me is a pretty underrated damn good movie.

Well, shall we discover if they're correct?

It was a pretty decent movie. I just watched it (for the first time).

Very dark film, and well acted. Reminded me a little of "Cool Hand Luke" with an added touch of a man out-of-date with his time.

What an ending!

One of the Top 5 movies* ever produced is on right now, the ultimate "Men on a Mission" aka "Squad" Movie....the one that the American THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN greatly ripped off.

That's right, Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI from 1954.

*=Or, the 5 movies you should at least see before you die.

Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) - "A Darker View"
From: Jim's Review's

--Movie reviewer Jim, of the GLBT website, is surprised upon further watching to find out that this 'charming' and 'nostalgic' musical is eerily provocative and offers a darkened outlook on the human condition...Post Oz Judy Garland is in love with the boy next door (literally), and off screen in love with director closeted bi-sexual director Vincente Minnelli. Eerie tales of children's 'anarchic' Halloween rallies and 'Nazi' type initiations under the guise of Trick or Treaters abound. Garland introduces the world to Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas but according to this reviewer (and I concur), this glorious love story with music--of the most decorative of the age--offers a "surprisingly darker look at a turn of the 20th century family,"...with more than a hint of the existential dread of '40s Film Noir."

Maybe the greatest film I've ever seen and certainly one of the more dreary. But the fact that Minnelli hides and conceals this darkness within his plush costume & design and luminous cinematography (only to to quickly fade to black) is what makes it all the more frightening; which in itself is a commentary on the duality of light/dark; good/evil; and life/death.


The landmark original film musical comedy, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), offers a stylistically brilliant but surprisingly dark look at the lives, circa 1903, of the well-to-do Smith family: the father Alonzo (Leon Ames; singing voice dubbed by producer Arthur Freed), his wife Anna (Mary Astor), their four daughters, one son, "Grandpa" (Harry Davenport), and garrulous maid Katie (Marjorie Main). The focus, of course, is on star Judy Garland as daughter Esther, who pines for "the boy next door," John Truett (Tom Drake). On Halloween night, Alonzo announces that his law firm has offered him a better position in New York City, and that they will be moving there in two months. This throws the family into turmoil, not only because they are so accustomed to life in their sprawling Victorian mansion in St. Louis, but because of the respective romantic entanglements of Esther, her sister Rose (Lucille Bremer), and brother Lon (Henry H. Daniels Jr.), not to mention the acting out it inspired in little sister "Tootie" (Margaret O'Brien).

Although Meet Me in St. Louis is invariably described as a 'charming' and 'nostalgic' family musical, when watching it for the first time in many years, in this near-perfect DVD transfer, I was struck by its many layers of darkness, both literal (most obviously seen in the dark, shadowy interiors of the Smiths' Victorian 'gingerbread' house; also almost the entire second half of the film, as family members sometimes violently confront the prospect of relocating to New York, is set at night) and thematic, as we will see below. Intriguingly, the darkness seems to rise directly out of the characters, despite their ingratiating energy, and the recesses of their world which they take for granted, from romantic relationships to their traditional yet brittle definition of home. There's plenty of fun in this film (that's guaranteed by Marjorie Main – 'Ma Kettle' herself – as the delightfully cantankerous maid, and many other colorful characters), and it's easy to see why then 21-year-old Judy Garland considered it the finest performance of her career, but there's also much more. I'm not saying that this is some sort of crypto cautionary tale, but the many tensions in this "glorious love story with music" (to quote the original 1944 poster) – which reflect both the purely decorative musicals of its era as well as more than a hint of the existential dread of '40s Film Noir – give it the emotional weight which perhaps explains why it remains, after six decades, not only one of the most revered but evocative of all film musicals.

Although producer Arthur Freed bought the rights to the autobiographical stories by Sally Benson (the real-life Tootie), it is Minnelli, with his complex – some might even say conflicted – vision (he was reputedly the most closeted of Hollywood's gay or bisexual directors), who makes the film his own. Before briefly surveying his career, it's worth noting that a year before this film, Benson was a co-writer on the Hitchcock masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which also focused on an infatuated teenage girl even as it explored the darkness underlying a seemingly happy middle-class milieu. That film and this one would make quite a double bill.

ImageVincente Minnelli (1903–1986) created some of the most substantially entertaining films of the mid-twentieth century. Among the three dozen pictures he directed are Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Pirate (1948), Father of the Bride (1950), An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Lust for Life (1956), Gigi (1958), Bells Are Ringing (1960), and two films with overt GLBT content: the groundbreaking drama Tea and Sympathy (1956), which directly looks at the complexities of sexual orientation, and the rarely-shown fantasy/comedy Goodbye Charlie (1964), about a womanizing gangster who is murdered but comes back to earth as a woman (Debbie Reynolds, no less!).

Born into a vaudeville family, Minnelli's first show business jobs were as a highly-touted costume and set designer in Chicago, then Broadway, and inevitably Hollywood. There producer Arthur Freed brought him into his legendary "Freed Unit" at MGM, and oversaw his directorial debut with the folk musical Cabin in the Sky (1943), featuring Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, and an entirely African-American cast. Minnelli continued at MGM for a quarter century (longer than any director in the studio's history), specializing in musicals, romantic comedies, and melodramas.

Although for inspiration he often turned eclectically to art history, especially Surrealism, his visual imagination is genuinely cinematic. He loved flamboyant color in his sets and costumes, and intricate visual patterns, but never allowed those elements to freeze into static compositions. From the first, he was a master of intricate movements, both with the camera and in editing. He employed sometimes dramatic crane shots and swirling textures of fabric, color and light, while skillfully – and sometimes subversively – playing those foreground effects off the carefully-chosen background details. As we will see in Meet Me in St. Louis, only his third film as director, Minnelli is able to create a subtle counterpoint between foreground and background, both visual and dramatic, to comment on, and enrich, his characters and themes. Although meticulous in his research, he was not afraid to exaggerate historical authenticity for the effects he wanted. In an interview, Minnelli once noted, "I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things."

Minnelli also excelled in his work with actors, bringing out career-defining performances from stars as diverse as Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Leslie Caron, and Kirk Douglas. His best works are not only wonderfully engaging on a first viewing (The Band Wagon is maybe the funniest film ever made about the theatre; Lerner and Loewe's Gigi is arguably the finest musical ever written directly for the screen), their visual complexity and sometimes emotional and thematic density also repay close attention.

In Meet Me in St. Louis, among the most unexpected changes from a standard musical comedy were the genuinely raw emotions which Minnelli elicited from the two stars, Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien. In fact, if this film were just one more of the hundreds of movie musicals churned out by studios it would certainly have shared their fate: oblivion. Instead, it is enjoyed, celebrated, and (sometimes) analyzed in an attempt to get at the source of its special power.

There is a lot of energy in this film, both through great character actors like Marjorie Main as the delightfully irascible maid Katie (who was based on the real-life woman of the same name) and young O'Brien (whose role we'll look at more below), a rich variety of songs (both four new ones – including three which became standards: "The Boy Next Door," "The Trolley Song," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" – and others from the turn of the century period when the film takes place), and genuine narrative momentum. Of course, there is also the energy of Minnelli's dazzling, and original, visual style. But part of the film's power also comes from the unexpected darkness at its heart.

Perhaps some of the tensions which run throughout the entire film, and sometimes burst into the foreground (most notably in the Halloween sequence, which significantly comes at the center of the film), can be explained by the times in which it was made: the anxious middle years of World War II. In a way, it yokes together, in a strangely satisfying fashion, two of the most popular genres of its day. On the one hand, we see the largely decorative romantic musical comedy (some of the most successful of which were made at MGM and starred Judy Garland, including Strike Up the Band and Babes in Arms – both of which Minnelli helped choreograph before being promoted to director); on the other hand, the brooding existential tensions of Film Noir. Also released in 1944 were such masterpieces of that genre as Double Indemnity, Gaslight, The Woman in the Window, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet.

Another source for the tensions onscreen can be found behind the camera, primarily in Minnelli himself. Although he was married four times, and is of course the father of Liza Minnelli – from his marriage to Garland (which lasted from 1945 till 1951), he was gay/bisexual. In Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, biographer Gerald Clarke details some of Minnelli's same-sex experiences, both before and after his most famous marriage. Yet he lived perhaps the most closeted life of Hollywood's many GLBT filmmakers (an outstanding resource is William J. Mann's Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910–1969; he devotes one section to discussing the many key members of the 'Freed Unit' who were GLB). Some people also detect a distinctly "gay sensibility" in Minnelli's films, very much including this one, in the way he brings out the elements, both stylistic and emotional, which other pictures left in the background, from over-the-top color and intricate background textures to the surprising intensity of emotion, which musical comedies invariably gloss over "with a laugh and a smile and a song" (to borrow a line from Bells Are Ringing).

Judy Garland as Esther Smith (which she said was the favorite role of her entire career, which of course included The Wizard of Oz, Cukor's A Star is Born, Judgment at Nuremberg), contributed not only to the film's romantic appeal, as she captures yearning to the final degree, but arguably to the many offscreen tensions as well. To keep her sveltely appealing to a mass audience, MGM's studio doctors began giving her prescription "speed" to lose weight and then tranquilizers to help her sleep, beginning a destructive cycle that would continue until it killed her in 1969 at age 47. Garland's many biographers have also noted her countless romantic frustrations, including her infatuation with the All-American "boy next door" in this picture, actor Tom Drake, who was gay. After a failed night in bed, she didn't speak to him for the rest of the shoot. Although Garland apparently knew that Minnelli was gay, she married him anyway; happily, Liza was one of the joys of her life.

And what about Vincente Minnelli? He had a desire for artistic acclaim, commercial success, and a lovingly secure home life, yet he was fully aware that as a gay man he could never have any of those things working within the studio system – which he knew he needed to provide him with the costly materials he needed to embody his artistic vision. At close to $2 million, Meet Me in St. Louis was then a very expensive film, although its lavish sets and costumes were re-used many times over the years.

It might also be argued that symptomatic of the film's subtle but pervasive onscreen tensions was the never-ending plague of illness and injury which bedeviled the cast and crew. Garland reported sick for three weeks during production, but almost all of the major performers were stricken for at least a few days during the five months of principal photography (November 11, 1943 through April 7, 1944), which saw the film go substantially over budget. MGM had nothing to worry about, though, as it went on to become one of the year's highest-grossing attractions, not to mention one of their signature classics.

I believe that an important part of this film's genuine power – and one reason why it still resonates so strongly after sixty years – comes from an aspect which is all but subliminal. While it works beautifully as a musical comedy, it is also suffused with an extraordinary and unexpected interplay of tensions, even darkness. That split, between sweetness and anxiety, works so well because it is completely integerated – you might even say hidden (in plain sight) – into every aspect of the film: musical numbers, dramatic structure, characters, and the extraordinary visual design.

Before exploring that resonantly dark recesses, let's briefly look at the film in historical context. Meet Me in St. Louis was being conceived in 1943 even as Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway show Oklahoma! was changing the form of the musical, both stage and film, forever. Many theatre historians consider Oklahoma! the single most important musical ever written because it clarified, and perfected, the complete integration of character, story and musical number – and that ideal became the high standard against which all subsequent works in the genre were measured, including this film. In the opening sequence notice how Minnelli keeps driving the action forward even as he introduces the major characters, by running the title song through a half dozen continuous mini-scenes, some of which are spoken, others sung (emphasizing the age contrast in the Smiths, only young Tootie and, a moment later, the elderly Grandpa sing). Rodgers and Hammerstein would certainly have smiled approvingly, even as they received royalties for a deleted song ("Boys and Girls Like You and Me") from Oklahoma! which almost made it into this film, until it was cut to bring down the lengthy running time (the DVD includes a fascinating photo reconstruction of the number along with the complete unused soundtrack recording). (Let me also note that Rodgers and Hart prefigure this fluid musical narrative structure in Rouben Mamoulian's landmark musical comedy film Love Me Tonight (1932), in which the infectious song "Isn't It Romantic?" is picked up by one character after another throughout a dozen scenes, creating one of the greatest musical sequences in film history; Mamoulian not only directed the original Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (1933), Oklahoma! and Carousel (1945) but several classic films including the definitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1935) starring Fredric March.)

In perhaps a tip of the (top) hat to musical modernism, only a couple of songs (Garland's solo "The Boy Next Door" and her chorus number "The Trolley Song" – which sold an astronomical 500,000 copies before the film even opened!) are structured like those in a traditional Broadway show, with characters bursting into song and reality be darned. Most of the numbers are integrated realistically (ahem!) into the action.

ImageThe four original songs were written by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin, hot off their Broadway hit Best Foot Forward. Although the two shared credit on all of their work, they actually almost never collaborated. Each man wrote the full music and lyrics himself for any given song; and both have remained mum for decades about who wrote what. However, we learn from a documentary on this DVD that Hugh Martin is the sole creator of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." In fact, he almost threw it out because he didn't know how to finish it and because his initial version of it was bleak, almost despairing: this was to be the "last Christmas" for the Smith family. Of course, that reflects the many dark elements of this film, which I will look at in a moment. But even in its final more-cheerful final version, this beloved Christmas song is used dramatically to emphasize the despair of Esther and especially Tootie, to whom she sings the song while the two are alone in a dark, empty room on the eve of the family's relocation (below, the entire house is dark and empty, except for stacks of boxes and suitcases). Immediately after the song ends, Tootie runs out into the night crying and smashing all of the elaborate snow people she's built.

Another of the three standards from this film, "The Boy Next Door," is as much a paen to yearning, frustration, and melancholy as young love. Even an uptempo number like "The Trolley Song" can be seen as a reflection of the pervasive anxiety which underlies the film's gaily-colored exterior. Think about what this song is actually saying (or singing): Esther is blurting out, with melodious hysteria, her innermost feelings of desperation to a group of total strangers. Weirdly, they join right in. Perhaps strangest of all is that Garland sings much of the song, before her heartthrob John Truett finally arrives, to a carefully-groomed young man who's a dead ringer for Vincente Minnelli. From one point of view, this number is even more unsettling than buoyant, even with its exhilarating production values and smart choreography by Charles Walters (who later directed the Garland classics Summer Stock, Easter Parade, and many more pictures – and who was able to lead a relatively open and happy life as an out gay director with a life partner, as we learn in Mann's book Behind the Screen). And let's not forget that immediately after this ride (I wonder if that streetcar was named "Desire"?) we are in the creepy Halloween sequence at the film's structural – subtextual and emotional – center.

ImageMinnelli also puts the period songs in contexts which can be seen as disturbing. Before the high spirits of the Esther and Tootie cakewalk duet of "Under the Bamboo Tree" (although I can't ignore the overtly racist lyric, that aspect would have raised fewer eyebrows in 1944), we have Tootie singing "I Was Drunk Last Night." I don't profess to being the most politically-correct film reviewer, but the sight of a little girl in a nightgown feigning drunkenness to an adoring crowd disturbed me, as if W.C. Fields somehow had been crossed with Jean Benet Ramsey: yecch!

The strangeness in several of this film's musical numbers are matters of inflection, as well as song choice. But the dramatic structure is unusual on a deeper level. Unlike any other musical, Broadway or Hollywood, of its time, Meet Me in St. Louis is not plot-driven; rather it is based around clearly-defined but loose situations which highlight character and mood. Surprisingly, this accumulative dramatic technique – which is not strictly speaking episodic – looks ahead to later works, such as the films of Robert Altman (Nashville, Gosford Park), Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise), and several other often independent filmmakers. There has even been a provocative comparison made between the narrative form of this film and Yasujiro Ozu's Early Summer (1951). We can be thankful that MGM lost the bidding war on the Broadway play Life With Father (with 3,224 performances this 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (father of actress Lindsay Crouse) remains the longest-running non-musical play in Broadway history) and had to "settle" for Sally Benson's autobiographical stories. (Michael Curtiz's 1947 film of Life With Father, which I just re-saw, is at best lackluster – a far cry from Casablanca and Mildred Pierce.) To the eight original "5135 Kensington" pieces, published in The New Yorker between 1941 and '42, Benson added four more to the book version, with each of the dozen vignettes taking place in a different month during 1903–04. The screenplay is credited to Irving Brecher (who had previously written for the Marx Brothers) and Fred Finklehoffe (who co-wrote several earlier Garland pictures), but it also employed a battalion of uncredited writers (which was typical of the studio system), including Benson. Minnelli had the writers whittle the twleve months of tales down to four sequences, one for each season, beginning with summer 1903.

In keeping with my dark reading of this film, note how much of the action revolves around lying. The picture begins with the maid and family in collusion trying to get the father out of the house so that Rose can have some privacy for the long-distance call from the boy she's in love with. As with so many of the other little "schemes" in this film, the plan fails. Notice how when Rose's beloved "Yale man" Warren Sheffield calls her long distance from New York, Minnelli composes the shot with her wedged into the left while the remainder of the frame shows her entire staring family, just a few feet away, craning their necks to hear whatever they can. Lack of privacy can be hilarious... or unsettling... or both.

You will see many more instances of characters' duplicity througout the film, but for me the most disturbing involves Esther and John. Desperately in love with the handsome All-American boy next door, Esther concocts a scheme in which, as soon as she's alone with him, she feigns fear of putting out the lights alone (there might be a mouse!). During the most romantic scene in the film, Minnelli has the young would-be lovers literally, and metaphorically, gradually plunge the house into darkness. It's also significant that as the scene progresses he progressively shoots it from a higher angle – until the camera is literally overhead looking down at the pair – even as he creates increasingly unbalanced, skewed compositions. For some viewers this may be the height of True Romance, but I found it – like so much else upon re-viewing this film – unsettling, although that made the film more emotionally complex and involving than ever before.

Yet another striking narrative technique which Minnelli employs comes in the late scene, at the winter dance, when John proposes to Esther. Although Minnelli has shown us, in great detail, the events leading up to this momentous scene (including Rose helping Esther squeeze into her corset to the point where Esther can't even breathe: there are many Procrustean forces at work in the world of this film) he omits the actual marriage proposal. He has that moment pass 'between the frames,' as he brings us back to Esther and John, shivering in the freezing outdoors, as she gets both literal and metaphorical cold feet (ostensibly because her familiy will be moving away in a couple of days).

There is a lot of humor throughout the film, which is no surprise since this is a musical comedy. But the laughs often have a nasty undertone, as we've already seen in several scenes. Note that when, at the end of the film, Mr. Smith finally caves in and agrees to give up the better job in New York, he says, "We're going to stay right here until we rot." Mrs. Smith adds, smiling, "We haven't rotted yet": to which I add, Hmmm. A moment later, Rose's fiancee (not knowing that she and the family are remaining in St. Louis) storms in in a hypermasculine huff and shouts, "I've decided that we're going to get married at the earliest opportunity and I don't want any arguments." Pause. "I love you." Then he immediately storm out. Whether or not Rose's matrimonial machinations have led to his declaration, this would-be comic moment casts a troubling shadow over their incipient married life. The film is also filled with scenes of miscommunication, perhaps the most melodramatic (and would-be comical of which) occurs, on that fateful Halloween, when Esther slugs John after misinterpreting the injured Tootie's remarks. When I watched the film yet again, I noticed dozens – and dozens – of moments which are both "funny" yet unsettling in their implications. If you also choose to go looking for barbs amidst the brightness, happy hunting!

In the absence of a clearly- and traditionally-structured narrative, the film relies heavily on character to give it coherence. We have already looked at the major scenes of Esther, but the most revealing character is Tootie. Not only is she played with ingratiating abandon by Margaret O'Brien (who won a special so-called Oscarette for the role), she allows Minnelli many opportunities to set up a subtle but striking counterpoint between the brightly-colored surfaces of this family comedy and the subtextual undercurrents which I sense interest him even more. (Although The Pirate is far from a perfect film, it is Minnelli's most overtly dark musical, and it provides for an intriguing comparison with this film.)

"It will take me at least a week to dig up all my dolls in the cemetery," Tootie exlaims with disgust, when Mr. Smith announces – on Halloween night – that he has accepted his law firm's promotion to head the New York office. Tootie's line is a scream, of course, but it takes on resonances which are less comical and more disturbing when seen in the full context of her character. For instance, she makes other comments throughout the picture about how she's mutilated and buried her dolls. You wonder if she might be an ancestor of the Addams Family.

Although Tootie pops up in most of the scenes (which helps hold this "plot-less" film together), and usually steals whatever scene she's in, her biggest moment occurs at the structurally central Halloween sequence. This is not only the best part of the film but also perhaps the most influential: you can see its influence on films as diverse as Night of the Hunter, To Kill a Mockingbird, Spielberg's 2002 director's cut of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (which restores his extended Halloween sequence with its thematically-important moments of genuine anarchy), and many more. Speaking of Spielberg, having recently re-seen Schindler's List, I was especially non-plussed by Tootie's actions. Not because of her ghoulishly elaborate get-up as the ghost of a bearded tramp (I'll let you speculate about what an upper-middle-class girl knows about homelessness) but because of how she interacts with the other kids, most of whom are also in cross-dressed costumes, throwing what looks like perfectly good furniture and books into a giant bonfire and giggling about "killing them all." The apparent ring-leader is a boy dressed as a woman with enormous breasts and a stock villain's twirling moustache, who tells Tootie, "If you don't hit Mr. Braukoff in the face with flour and say 'I hate you' the banshees will haunt you forever."

Tootie has never met her neighbor Mr. Braukoff, but that does not stop her from going to his gabled manse, which looks eerie but no more so than the Smith family mansion. Minnelli has just shown us how Tootie pumps herself up into a hysterical rage by telling her slightly-older sister Agnes and other kids about how he kills cats, "beats his wife with a red-hot poker," and has "whiskey bottles in his cellar" (what else: weapons of mass destruction?) The climax comes when she knocks on his door then screams "I hate you!" to Mr. Braukoff, whom she does not know at all except through gossip, and actually throws a handful of flour into his face. Whoah! Cute touch that his fierce-looking but actually gentle bulldog laps up the flour (although I doubt any dog is a flour-lover). But even with the pooch, this scene is the most overtly disturbing in the entire picture.

ImageThat was quite an initiation ceremony for Tootie – but initiation into what? Isn't this the same kind of mindless indoctrination Hitler was then using, only the Nazis used something rather more toxic than flour on their hated enemies. When Tootie returns, the other kids tell her how great she is. Shrieking with laughter, Tootie throws a chair onto the bonfire, shouting "I'm the most powerful!" I think it's worth asking, What does that mean? The core of darkness running throughout the film provides a tacit explanation. This motif of childhood violence is picked up later, during the eerie scene in the snow immediately following "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," in which the frustrated Tootie, who fears that imminently she'll be forced to leave St. Louis (her provincialism and self-deception are revealed "cutely" in an early scene when she tells a delivery man, "Wasn't I lucky to be born in my favorite city") violently smashes the snow figures representing her family. Minnelli visually emphasizes this climactic moment by bathing the nocturnal yard in huge swathes of blue and yellow, making the scene both more abstract and, extraordinarily, more visercal too.

Throughout the film Minnelli reveals his genius through the way in which he uses visual style, in many forms, both to (re)create the long-lost world of the film even as he exposes the anxieties which it desperately wants to gloss over.

This was Minnelli's first film in color; and it was shot by George Folsey (who did most of Minnelli's films, as well as Adam's Rib, Forbidden Planet, and dozens more) with art direction by Lemuel Ayers (who had just designed Oklahoma!; he later produced the original Broadway production of Cole Porter's classic Kiss Me, Kate), Cedric Gibbons & Jack Martin Smith, set decoration by Edwin B. Willis, and costume design by Irene Sharaff. Although I have seen this film used as an example of "flat" studio lighting of the period, that is not accurate. As you can see in this pristine new DVD, it is a film filled with shadows and dark recesses (recall the first love scene between Rose and John in which they literally put out all the lights in the house). The film's second half begins during the extended Halloween sequence, and in fact almost all of the remaining major scenes (Mr. Smith announcing the move a few minutes later, the big winter dance sequence and its aftermath, the final scene at the World's Fair) occur at night. And except for that brief World's Fair coda, the second half of the film occurs during the cold, dark months of the year. Structurally, and with apologies to Eugene O'Neill, you could waggishly retitle this film A Long (Summer) Day's Journey into Night.

The winter dance scene begins with an evocative break-away shot, as the camera – after remaining outside – literally breaks through the wall of the house and continues tracking (in both the cinematic and predatory senses of the word) the lavishly-dressed dancers. This shot reminds us of how often Minnelli employs a voyeuristic inflection throughout the film, showing us hidden moments which the characters would likely prefer we never glimpse, including Rose repeatedly pouring out her heart.

Garland's Esther, even more than the Tootie, is the center of this film, both as a character and as star, giving one of the greatest acting and singing performances I know. But strangely, her face has a mask-like quality in this film, very different from her earlier "kid" pictures. Although she had by now played a couple of adult roles and consequently balked at returning to a juvenile role again, Minnelli convinced her of what a great role Esther was. He also concocted a whole new look for her. I assume that she is wearing a wig, because her hair seems unnaturally long and straight. But the major change, which Garland continued to use for the rest of her career, came through makeup. With Minnelli and makeup artist "Dottie" Ponedel (who had previously created Marlene Dietrich's "look"), Garland had her hairline tweezed, eyebrows raised, eyes made to look bigger (through white liner on her lower eyelids), and lower lip made fuller (by extending her lipstick). Garland loved her new "look;" but I find it subtly wrong and distancing. Minnelli even emphasizes the masklike look of her face in the early scene with Esther and Rose singing a brief reprise of the title song by paralleling them with two plaster busts on the opposite side of the frame. And that unreal – even vulnerable and brittle – quality connects, on a deeper level, with the film as a whole. While the surface – of Esther, her family, even their house – is beautiful and bright, you can sense the strain needed to keep it that way. And near the end of film, the rawness of Garland's heartbreak at the thought of having to give up John is palpable. That connects with the equally intense and painful emotions which O'Brien as Tootie revealed. And visually, Minnelli underscores just how fragile and mutable this world is by those stark images of the bare, dark house, littered with packing crates, which Esther and Tootie return to after the opulent, brilliantly-lit winter dance.

In fact, throughout the entire film Minnelli offers trenchant visual commentary on Esther, and her world, with the countless shots of her, and others, framed – or is it trapped? – within or behind bar-like verticals: window frames, doorways, bannisters and other rigid structures, whether at home or even while singing on a trolley. (Shades of Fassbinder's Effi Briest.) A few shots would be one thing, but Minnelli returns to this 'entrapment' motif dozens of times. It also points up the tension between the bright colors of the elaborate costumes (despite the thorough period research, they are obviously exaggerated) and the heavy, dark, oppressive – and repressive – Victorian decor (recreated in meticulously oppressive detail by Minnelli, right down to the filligrees). For all the eye-popping color of what characters wear, the Smith house has ample room for Noirish shadows in every corner, even before we see it deserted at Christmas.

The film's primary visual device is the constant reiteration of darkness – both literal and metaphorical – which serves as more than a motif; it gives a dramatic and emotional coherence, an organic feel, to the entire picture which, from the perspective of conventional structure, is disjointed and 'un-dramatic.'

The final scene is a perfect capstone. The (majority of) Smiths get their wish to attend the World's Fair in what is still their own home town. Yet even this 'happy ending' has an underbelly: virtually every time that the Fair was mentioned, here and throughout the film, some character inevitably reminds us that it is "built over a swamp" – and that theme is reinforced by Tootie's otherwise incomprehensible gushing over seeing a recreation of "the Galveston flood," which climaxes with "dead bodies" everywhere. The conservative side of family values has literally kept them rooted (or as Mr. Smith implies, 'rotted'), for better or worse, right where they've always been. And does the Fair itself, with its superficial tipping of the hat to various (sanitized) 'world cultures' enrich the Smiths? The film doesn't say. But it does present us, in its final shot, with the most egregiously phony image in the entire film: the World's Fair as a shockingly cheesey matte painting – the art of which had been perfected decades earlier.

Surprisingly, this image reminds us that although there is a deep split in the film between darkness and light (reflection, understanding, integration), the film is basically "straight," shorn of irony: think of how often, say, Buñuel dealt with these themes while brilliantly wearing irony on his sleeve. Perhaps if Minnelli had been able to let the film to become more overtly reflexive (which of course MGM would never have allowed), its precarious structure would have collapsed in on itself. But instead he layers it with commentary both subtle and provocative, not to mention deeply subversive. Instead of larding the picture with easy ironies, Minnelli uses the very conservatism of the characters and their world to point up both their rigidity and their strength.

Watching the film again, the darkness – which permeates every aspect of the picture – makes the light all the more pungent, even as knowing something about the tormented private lives of the director and star makes the film (even) more poignant. As the film reveals its troubling depths, which I had missed (or perhaps only intuited) when seeing it as a child, it also seems more honest and deeply moving than ever.

Interesting take on the movie, and one I've never considered (or realized). I'll watch it again with this in mind.

Notwithstanding this "take", it's a wonderful movie and one of my favorite songs from a movie is in it - "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

We've already talked about a cpl of numbers from MMISL, but just to add an rejoinder to the review I posted I'll note the line in "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow. Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow. This of course delivered to her teary-eyed little sister, who then proceeds to destroy the snow men she made of her family...It's not that MMISL is Tales From The Crypt, but I think it really touches nicely on the fragility of human existence.

And yeah, the music is amazing and it always helps to remember that there's always something under the surface. According to the review above (and I concur) the man in this scene looks frighteningly similar to Minnelli. This is perhaps my favorite song from any musical. EVER..!!

Judy Garland - The Trolley Song (Meet Me in St. Louis)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hka8jKueLaQ

I watched it the first time a cpl of Christmas Eves ago and I had somewhat an eerie feeling from the first line on.

Plus, there's a very Kubrick type scene in the beginning of the movie's second act. It's Halloween night and the two youngest daughters--one of whom is morbidly obsessed with death and the afterlife--stuff an old dress to look like a body, and laid it on the trolley tracks to sabotage the trolley car. And when someone answers the doorbell during trick-or-treating, the girls' goal is to 'kill' the 'victim' by throwing flour in the flustered person's face.

A few years ago we had a discussion on Christmas songs (I'm too lazy to search for it now) and the subject of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" came up. The song originally was written with the line, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last". Judy Garland refused to sing it as such (especially to a young kid, Margaret O'Brien) and it was re-written.

I have to agree with Judy on that call.

I've heard it said more than once that, allegedly, they got Margaret O'Brien to sob in that scene by telling her that they'd taken the role from her and she wasn't allowed to be in the film anymore.

It wouldn't surprise. This set had to be one of the more fiery and electric in the history of Hollywood. Minnelli, a brilliant director of musical and non-musicals alike, was extremely eccentric and a very closeted bi-sexual. Judy Garland's Wizard of Oz days were five yrs in the past and the public had began to see a different side to the Garland Girl. She had already entered her "black eye" days working 100 hr weeks at the studio, and the budding relationship between the two of them on set must have made the energy involved in production all the more intense and absorbing.

Also, a line in that review I found interesting: "Perhaps if Minnelli had been able to let the film to become more overtly reflexive (which of course MGM would never have allowed), its precarious structure would have collapsed in on itself. But instead he layers it with commentary both subtle and provocative, not to mention deeply subversive. Instead of larding the picture with easy ironies, Minnelli uses the very conservatism of the characters and their world to point up both their rigidity and their strength."

It really points to the fact that artists of the past have been subjected to barriers that contemporary artists have not. However, b/c of these barriers, the works are all the more clever b/c the artist has to find various forms of disguising the work's true intentions. The same with works from the Renaissance Age, etc., always subject to the criticism of the church. Artists such as Da Vinci had to veil the work's themes, thus, in the process making it all the more complex or mysterious, such as The Mona Lisa's smile mystery..

I just think it's really interesting that the restrictions imposed on these works actually made them better. The artist has to show all the more ingenuity to shadow his/her true motives; forcing the viewer to peel through even more "layers" to discover the story's moral.

Holiday in Mexico (1946)

This musical marked the MGM debut of Jane Powell, "The Sweet Little Songbird," TCM showed the musical during Summer Of The Stars a cpl of yrs ago and itt was the first film I ever watched on TCM. I've been fan of both ever since.

It's a musical comedy about a widowed ambassador's 15 yr old daughter (Powell) who pretty much serves as mother, daughter, and secretary for her beloved father. More specifically; it's about the love life of the two while on holiday in Mexico. Jane's 15 yr old character thinks she's fallen for her MUCH older piano teacher b/c a new "love" in her father's life appears to move her out of the way in a very Freudian like manner -- really quite racy, even by today's standards. It's a story about love, relationships, and the many forms they take -- the love in a widowed daddy-daughter relationship; trans generational romance; and the sometimes up hill-battle of a younger man trying to pursue a young lady who's a bit more on the "up and up" and matured than he. The five of them (six if you count the 16 yr old local interested in Jane's father) get caught up in a he said-she said case of misinterpreted meanings, which provides some nice comedic moments. And I'm a huge classical music fan and this one is sprinkled with Jane's performances of hits from the Baroque age such as this one:

Jane Powell performs Ave Maria in: Holiday In Mexico
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ApGVdhZ1Po
Jane is the GOLDEN epicenter in this grandiose conclusion and rendition of the Schubert classic. It's as if you're listening and viewing a Teutonic maiden from another time and period, she's really just quite out of this world.

(Jane Powell is of course now married to fellow child star, Dick Powell - the marriage came very late in their lives and the name similarity is coincidental, of course. Dickie has the dubious title of being Shirley Temple's first film kiss.)

TCM has been doing a "Asian Images on Film" series, which has been interesting*, but I think they're sort of defeating their purpose when they air RUSH HOUR 2 tomorrow night.

Oh well, at least we get DEATH RACE 2000 at friday at 2AM. Now that's an awesome little cult classic.

*=Katherine Hepburn in Yellowface. Wow....

Spinout (1966)

Spinout is a 1966 musical film and comedy starring Elvis Presley as the lead singer of a band and part-time racecar driver. This has been known for many years as one of Presley's worst films, but recently it has been seen as a parody of the teen film genre and this reassessment has given the film new-found appreciation. However, there has never been any evidence that the film was an intentional parody; this theory is very new, surfacing around the time of its dvd release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinout

I usually talk about rather serious films but this one is rather cheesy -- but fun. I know there are a plethora of better Elvis flicks, but I watched this in passing the other day and found it rather entertaining. I was definitely 'lol' quite a few times. This would be a fun movie to watch on a date or with a group of friends who are coming in a little 'high,' if you know what I mean, dude. (And you know what I mean.)

The whole film though is just way too cheesy to NOT be an overt parody on the teen genre. Elvis has a very apathetic approach, I think, in his moments of comedy, and it's part of the film's charm. Some of the acting is laid on a little thick; especially when it involves the comedic element (necessarily, it would seem), and this greatly contributes to the overall laugh factor of the film.

And the music is pretty damn good, too.

Elvis Presley - Spinout
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnU7VuzM32I
The Movie's title track, the chicks are hawt and you gotta love the shaking going on here.

Elvis Presley - Am I Ready
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vvjWST9iJw
This is very beautiful. He's performing to a spoiled, rich chick against his own will, pretty much. Her dad lays down a load of cash to get him there for her 16th birthday. He ends up falling for her by the song's end, though. This clip gives you an idea just how enthralling 'The King' was.

I found a book called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and it pretty much confirmed that critics just haven't quite known exactly what to make of this film. It's so bright and boisterous on one hand, and then we see the Halloween scene and Tootie crying along to Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and we don't know quite what to think.

MMISL is from the age of "humanism", whereas most movies after the 1950's and beyond are considered "post-structuralist." Films made prior the onset of post structuralism took quite a different approach to film theory. There are obviously many elements to this, but, in the humanist view, each film is a work of art in itself, and thus the amount of analysis that goes into each particular film is quite extensive. Films from the post-structuralist era are not concerned with evaluating each and every nuance involved in dialogue, scenery, and every other nuance that goes into the film; they are instead focused on the particular film's relation to the themes and ideas that exist in the art/film world as a whole at that moment. Films in the post-struc world are concerned with adding to the always expanding field of ideas and themes that further a rather particular discourse -- that discourse, generally consists of ideas that stem from "post-structuralist" thought, which is very similar to "existentialist" and "post-modernist" thought. MMISL and films from the humanist age, on the contrary, are not necessarily evaluated based on their relation and contribution to the other prominent ideas and themes of the day, but instead every speck of possible evaluation and analysis from a film in the humanist age must be exercised, despite the fact that many of these themes and messages might have little meaning and little to say to no one in particular...It's quite tiresome, yes, but tis the nature of (some) classic movies, and some contemporary movies as well. Many elements of the "humanist" or "realist" age still exist in the post-structuralism world, much to the chagrin of many post-struc ideologues.

I just tuned in to TCM evidently just missing Casablanca. They have a short documentary narrated by Robert Reford, regarding Natalie Wood and their film (Inside Daisy Clover).

Anyway to SC and other old movie buffs. One of my favorites, that I haven't seen in many years is beginning, Witness For The Prosecution, with Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich. I loved that movie.

I remember first seeing it as a fairly young kid (13/15????) Anyway, the ending blew me away. I always loved Tyrone Power (especially in Zorro) and thought he was great in this film. I know most will think me crazy, but I was never a big Dietrich fan, although, she too was very good as well.

I know they made a remake but the original is tops IMHO.


TIS

A wonderful movie!!! And don't forget Charles Laughton (in an excellent role).

TCM is showing some awesome movies today. Besides "Casablanca" and this one, "The Apartment" (with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine) is next and then followed by Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and then the Robert Donat version of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips".

SC,

Yes Charles Laughton, what a treat. You probably can find the humor in this line from Witness. Laughton is getting pampered and doted on by his nurse who always insists he takes medicine, and gets rest, etc. BTW I believe it's Elsa Manchester?) Anyway she tells Laughton, "We must go upstairs now and go to bed" to which Laughton's straigt-laced, straigt-faced, deadpan reply is (loosely), "We? The prospect of that is rather nauseating madam."

TIS

What makes it even funnier is that they (Laughton and Lanchester) were married to each other in real life.

That's right Lanchester, not Manchester. I didn't know that they were married. That is funny. Wasn't Lanchester also the "Bride Of Frankenstien"?


TIS

Yep. Many years before this was made.

From Frankenstein to Laughton.

THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) ****

Although I've seen this film at least ten times, I finally got to see it on the big screen last week, while I was in Florida. It certainly did not disappoint.

This is a wonderful film based on the true story of the largest escape from a German POW camp in World War Two. The story comes straight from Paul Brickhill's book of the same name, THE GREAT ESCAPE. The film is loaded with stars, was shot in scenic Bavarian locations, boasts excellent cinematography, and is accompanied by the late Elmer Bernstein's memorable score.

The story: Allied prisoners devise a mass escape from Luft Stalag III near Sagan, not too distant from Breslau, Germany (in an area in present postwar Poland). It is a Herculean undertaking in that the Kriegies dig three tunnels simultaniously complete with electric lighting, hand-powered trolly system, and forced ventilation. All of this takes place 30 feet under the heels of vigilant German Luftwaffe guards. Despite numerous setbacks and constant German interference, more than seventy Allied flyers escape captivity with three eventually making their way to freedom.

The movie also has a tragic side. Fifty recaptured prisoners were executed.

The escape tied up German manpower as the military districts throughout Germany were mobilized to round up the escapees. Though not portrayed in the movie, Hitler originally ordered that all recaptured POWs would be shot. Luftwaffe Chief and Reichsmarshal Herman Goering intervened and the quota was reduced to 50. The movie condenses this tragic event to a solitary remote pasture. In Brickhill's book the executions took place at several different locations.

THE GREAT ESCAPE has some great elements. The tunnel scenes are claustrophobic. No matter how many times I watch the film, I still empathize with the prisoners as some of their efforts are discovered by the Germans. At the latter part of the movie we follow the separate groups of escaped prisoners and their adventures in fleeing their captors. Each time I see the movie I still hope that these guys make it to freedom.

Time to also bring the film into historical perspective. The movie does a great job in conveying the spirit of POWs and their brilliant escape. However, also realize that this blockbuster had to be marketable to a wide audience.

The dirt, grime, overcrowding, and unshaven faces are missing from this portrayal of life in a Stalag. Movies like STALAG 17 and HART'S WAR were closer to the mark. The Sagan P.O.W. compound is brand new fresh cut pine and the Kriegie inmates are immaculately dressed and clean shaven. For convenience, the compound set was carved from a wooded lot adjacent to the Munich movie studio where the interior sets were being filmed.

In order to sell the movie in the United States, Americans had to play a role in the film. In real life, American flyers were involved in the early tunnel escavation, but were moved -- lot, stock, and barrel -- to an adjacent compound long before tunnels were anywhere close to the wire. History was slightly twisted and some of the roles stretched to keep some Yanks involved in the escape. As such, James Garner was an Eagle Squadron officer while James Coburn played the part of an Australian and Charles Bronson a Pole.

Steve McQueen was definitely the hook to draw an American audience -- and he knew it. By the time THE GREAT ESCAPE came along, Steve McQueen already had a reputation for being a difficult actor. Traditionally, McQueen's roles have always been that of an anti-social loner. His part is no different in THE GREAT ESCAPE both on and off screen. At one point, McQueen went AWOL from filming and threatened to abandon the production entirely. When his costars caught up with him, McQueen stated that he wanted to be the "hero" of the movie. However, in a film chock full of movie stars and story where only three flyers make it to safety, there was little room for a solitary hero.

To sooth McQueen's ruffled ego, he was offered a contrived motorcycle chase scene. The motorcycle sequence is typically McQueen as he insisted in playing both pursued and the pursuer in German uniform. McQueen even had his motorcyle buddy flown in from the States to double for him in the barbed war motorcycle jump sequence.

Okay, so some of the individual escape vignettes are more sensational than in real life. How long would anyone watch a film with escaped prisoners peeking around corners or hiding behind trees? There are enough truthful moments to sustain the story. For example, the theft and subsequent crash of the German airplane did actually happen, albeit without the assault on the German sentry.

I first saw this film on CBS as a two-part movie in the 1970s. At the time, I was not much of a POW movie fan (I was still a teenager). HOGAN'S HEROES was about all I experienced in terms of World War Two POW escapes. Immediately after watching THE GREAT ESCAPE I borrowed the Paul Brickhill's book from the library. Soon after I was reading other POW escape books such as KRIEGIE and THE WOODEN HORSE. THE GREAT ESCAPE started it all.

Over the years there have been several attempts at retelling THE GREAT ESCAPE both in book and movie form. In the 1980s a televison movie premiered titled THE GREAT ESCAPE: THE TRUE STORY. Unfortunately it was a pitiful attempt to update the 1960s original. About the only thing it had going for it was the fact that it more accurately portrayed the execution of the selected 50 officers and the postwar hunt for the war criminals responsible. Likewise there have been several books published that only serve to prove that Brickhill's researched account is better.