La danse inachevée

I am a grandma now, but as a five year old, I viewed this movie in a very small town theater. After I saw this movie with a five year old's eyes, I not only wanted to be a ballerina, but I wanted to be Margaret O'Brien. Not being able to have dance lessons, I danced on my own. My aunt made me a beautiful outfit, and I was in heaven. Now, move ahead 20 years. I have a daughter who wanted to dance, and of course I sent her for lessons. She is now a very successful, and talented dance teacher. I would love for her to see this movie, but I don't know where, or how to get it. This movie has not only been an influence on one generation, but on two. I wish there were more movies of this calaber. Simple, but oh so good.

When Cyd Charisse made THE UNFINISHED DANCE (1947) she was still a young starlet in the MGM stable, before her rise to stardom in 1950s Arthur Freed musicals like SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952), THE BAND WAGON (1953), BRIGADOON (1954), and SILK STOCKINGS (1957). (You can tell it's from her "early years" by the way her face is made-up.)

Fans and admirers of Charisse will want to check out this film for a chance to see her at home in the world of ballet. Many dancers in Hollywood were tap dancers, but Cyd Charisse came from a ballet background. The ballet influence is evident in her work in things like BRIGADOON, for instance, but in THE UNFINISHED DANCE we get to see Cyd Charisse do some real ballet, in a tutu and everything.

The real focus of the movie, however is Margaret O'Brien, MGM's child actress extraordinaire. THE UNFINISHED DANCE is a Hollywood remake of a fascinating French film LA MORT DU CYGNE (a.k.a. "BALLERINA") (1937). It concerns the girls of a dance academy and a sort of tragic mistake. O'Brien is a young dancer who idolizes ballerina Charisse and perceives a visiting prima ballerina (Karin Booth) as a threat. With her idol's best interests at heart, O'Brien sabotages Booth's performance. Booth suffers a career-altering injury and O'Brien is haunted by her guilt, even as Booth becomes a mentor for her at the academy.

Margaret O'Brien was a major child star in the 1940s and MGM adapted LA MORT DU CYGNE as a vehicle for their young actress. What's impressive is that MGM got ten-year-old Margaret O'Brien to actually learn ballet. O'Brien had never been known as a dancer, but she does her own dancing here and is convincing enough. Karin Booth, too, seems to do her own dancing on camera.

MGM adds Hollywood gloss to the plot from the original French film. The tragedy isn't quite so tragic. The irony not quite so defined. While it's a darker role than some would expect from Margaret O'Brien, it's not *too* dark. Danny Thomas plays O'Brien's gentle, vaguely ethnic, de facto guardian and sings a couple of cutesy tunes. The ballet sequences are staged in glorious Technicolor.

The plot is probably good enough for those who haven't seen the French film, although I personally feel the remake suffers by comparison. I prefer the French film for aesthetic and thematic reasons. I would highly recommend checking out LA MORT DU CYGNE ("BALLERINA") if the opportunity arises. It seems to be rather obscure but I caught it on Turner Classic Movies a few years back.

This was a 1947 film featuring Margaret O'Brien and Cyd Charisse. It also showcased Danny Thomas in his first film role. I initially recorded this film because I was intrigued by the synopsis in the Dish guide: "A ballerina arranges an accident to cripple her mentor's foreign rival." It sounded very dark, especially for a movie with Margaret O'Brien and Cyd Charisse. I thought the film was pretty good, even if the film didn't follow through with the plot described in the synopsis.

While O'Brien did plot to sabotage her mentor's rival's performance, she wasn't trying to cripple or injure her. What was interesting about this film was the way it framed O'Brien's struggle with her conscience versus her reality. While the film was so-so, I thought that O'Brien's was the standout performance in the film. It's a shame that she wasn't able to make the transition between child and adult performer. She may have been able to achieve a Patty Duke type career as I believe that O'Brien had the chops. I also thought that O'Brien executed her ballet steps very well.

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.

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 ...