The Unfinished Dance

I have to give this film 7 out of 10 stars for originality (yes, I saw it was a remake of a 1938 French film, but it is still quite original). It's always great to see Cyd Charisse dance or do anything in a movie, and she is certainly showcased in this film as an alluring but slightly shallow prima ballerina. The real draw, though, is Margaret O'Brien as Meg, a frighteningly intense little girl who idolizes Charisse as the resident ballet star. Meg's rather shocking actions are equally shockingly glossed over in the end. The would-be feel-good coda is not the least bit convincing! What a high price Meg's victim had to pay, despite the faraway look of goodness in La Darina's glamorous eyes! But O'Brien specialized in intense, scary little girls, didn't she? Her crime in this film and the way in which she is haunted by it remind me of her hysterical confession to "murder" in "Meet Me in St. Louis." She was a strange and very talented little girl, and she is an impressive dancer in this film, too. You can't fudge dancing "en pointe," or you couldn't in 1947, anyway, with the camera focused simultaneously on your face and feet. This is not your everyday forties movie ...

Even if it had turned out very badly, "The Unfinished Dance" would have been an extraordinary film. Back in the late 1940's, making a large budget film was actually a more corporate decision than it is today. Which makes you wonder how something that is a weird mix of "The Red Shoes" and a pre-teen "Crime & Punishment" was ever approved for production.

Fortunately things turned out very well and for today's viewers the film's uniqueness is not the only reason to watch it. Most likely it was intended as a vehicle to showcase nine year old Margaret O'Brien's acting and dancing talents. O'Brien was an extremely hard working and motivated child actress, and "The Unfinished Dance" is the most accomplished of her many solid performances. She really gets to demonstrate her range, moving between her standard self-parodying cuteness and a convincing demonic side that should be quite a nice surprise to first-time viewers.

There are some extremely slick ballet scenes, with Cyd Charisse and Karin Booth (if it is not Booth's actual dancing they did a seamless job of matching close-ups and master shots). The Swan Lake scene is especially effective with the stage floor covered in mirrors to simulate the surface of the lake.

Little Meg Merlin (O'Brien) worships the featured dancer Ariane Bouchet (Charisse) at her ballet school. When guest dancer La Daria (Booth) displaces her for the season, Meg and her friend Josie (a very young Elinor Donahue) conspire to sabotage her performance by turning off the stage lights in mid-dance. Things go horribly wrong when Meg throws the wrong switch. La Daria suffers a career ending injury. Meg and Josie promise to keep Meg's involvement a secret.

This gives O'Brien the whole second half of the film to play the Raskolnikov role, as she is torn between satisfaction that her idol has reclaimed the top spot in the company and guilt because of the unintended consequences of her actions. The guilt becomes too much to bear when La Daria becomes her instructor and demonstrates far more interest in Meg's dancing than her idol Bouchet ever did.

"The Unfinished Dance" has a more contemporary shot selection than the standard 1940's-50's film. The story benefits from many close-ups of O'Brien's face, with the use of reaction shots more frequently than I can recall in any other film from this time period. O'Brien's expressiveness is nicely showcased and she is certainly up to the challenge.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This movie is okay. A pleasant but saccharine MGM Technicolor musical film used as a vehicle for showing off beautiful Cyd Charisse's skills as a ballet dancer. But this film is actually a remake of a brilliant film, the truly thrilling "Ballerina" (aka "La Mort du cygne") a 1938 French film. This unforgettably romantic and atmospheric classic film about the price of art and ego starred the great dancers Yvonne Chauvire and Mia Slavenska along with a wonderful cast. The moody black and white photography vividly conjures the world of the Paris Opera House, both center stage and backstage. The film creates a world that is unforgettable.

If you liked "Unfinished Dance" don't miss the incredible original film.

"Unfinished" does have also have some interest for the rare glimpses of great dancers, George Zoritch among them, that it offers.

The genius of this movie is how it deconstructs backstabbing, bribery and alliances-making by portraying adorable little girls in tutus enacting an all out war among the pre-teen chorus of a New York Ballet. The object they're leveraging around? Sabotage of a prima ballerina by one girl who desperately supports a rival. It may sound cute, but the outcomes are very serious. When you see an 8 year-old child leaning on a roommate and angling bribes, it really takes all of the "honor" out of strong-arm tactics.

On the other hand, the most adorable scene is when a 3 year-old performs an audition for a tiny tot solo. You'll giggle out loud (even my grandfather did).

For anyone who would like to catch this movie, it's on rotation on TMC, a basic cable channel (I think that's Turner Movie Channel, but correct me if I'm wrong please).

In all my years as a film buff, my only exposure to THE UNFINISHED DANCE (1947) was a black-and-white still image from it in a publication I don't recall. It never ran on television when I was growing up, it never played at revival theaters, and no one ever wrote about it or called attention to it in any of the thousands of articles and book chapters on classic Hollywood cinema I've read over the decades. So when I finally watched it, after recording it off TCM on October 8, 2013, I was astounded at how good it was. Why had no one remarked on this film before? Why is this not touted as, perhaps, Hollywood's greatest film about ballet? Everyone talks about Powell & Pressburger's THE RED SHOES (1948), made in England a year later, but no one mentions this film. Granted, THE RED SHOES is some kind of artistic milestone, when judged by its cinematography, sets, costumes, choreography and prestige cast, but it always left me a bit cold emotionally. It depicts a rarefied world with characters that seem more literary creations than drawn from real life. THE UNFINISHED DANCE operates on a much more expressive emotional plane and its characters seem much more real to me. These characters are truly passionate about dance and they live and breathe it every waking moment the way so many dancers in real life do. The young girls in the film who attend the ballet school come out of working-class New York and we can feel the hunger and the energy these characters bring to their chosen art. And the dance numbers, while not quite as long or lavish as those in THE RED SHOES, are all beautifully shot, staged and orchestrated, all in glorious MGM Technicolor.

What fuels this whole film, of course, is the intensity of Margaret O'Brien's central performance as Meg Merlin, a struggling ballet student who worships the company's prima ballerina, Ariane Bouchet (Cyd Charisse), and would, it turns out, do anything to propel her rise to stardom. When a visiting ballet star, La Darina (Karin Booth), is seen as a rival, Meg commits a surreptitious act that injures La Darina and threatens to end her ballet career forever. Meg's guilt drives the rest of the film, going so far as to ruin her close friendship with fellow student Josie (Mary Eleanor Donahue), and possibly derail her future in ballet. Eventually, she reaches out to La Darina and begins the journey to forgiveness and redemption. It's quite a stirring and emotional spectacle and showcases some wonderful actresses who dominate the narrative.

O'Brien, who was all of ten when she made this, gave closeups steeped in feeling like no other child actress. Every emotion that arises during the film plays out on her face. I don't know that I've ever seen another performance by a child star in Hollywood that comes close. One can make a case for Peggy Ann Garner's performances in JANE EYRE (1943) and A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945), and even O'Brien's earlier performance in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944), but I think THE UNFINISHED DANCE has them all beat. Cyd Charisse and Karin Booth merely have to react to O'Brien to give fine performances. I've seen Booth in other films, but I don't know why she didn't have a more substantial career. She's quite good here, especially in closeup where her striking features are best appreciated, and more than adequate in those dance scenes where she's seen up close. She was, however, doubled in the long shots. As for Charisse, I've seen a number of her MGM musicals, but I've never seen her do the kind of furious ballet dancing she does here. It's quite breathtaking and I wish she'd had more opportunities to display this side of her talent.

Interestingly, the largest male role in the film goes to a then-newcomer who was "introduced" in this film, none other than future sitcom star Danny Thomas. He plays a Greek immigrant shopowner named Paneros who runs a clock store and is the sometime boyfriend of Meg's aunt, who's seen only briefly before heading off on a vaudeville tour and leaving Meg in the care of Paneros, an arrangement that would raise plenty of eyebrows if depicted in a film today. Thomas is certainly charming, but his accented performance is much more self-consciously "folksy" than it would have been if played by one of Hollywood's more skilled character actors at the time. Still, as someone who watched his sitcom ("Make Room for Daddy") as a child, I found his presence here quite comforting and it gave the film added resonance. Another future sitcom star on hand is Elinor Donahue (billed as Mary Eleanor Donahue). I had no idea she'd started as a child performer and it's a fun challenge to imagine how Josie, who knows Meg's secret and holds it over her like a dagger, leading to some vicious behavior, would morph into Robert Young's beloved and level-headed "Princess" on "Father Knows Best." Who knew? She's quite good here and I wonder what other good parts she had as a child.

I'm pleased to see that this film has other positive reviews here. I just wish it were better known and more widely seen. There is a DVD out from the Warner Archive, but it has no extras, not even an audio commentary. It would be great to get one from Margaret O'Brien while she's still with us.