Il pirata

Vincent Minnelli makes sumptuous use of color, costumes and settings in this lush MGM musical teaming Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in their prime. The score may not be one of Cole Porter's best (in fact, Garland expressed her open dislike to the composer for some of her numbers), but just watch her do magic with 'Mack the Black' and 'Love of My Life'. To be honest, it's really Kelly's movie. Garland was having problems at the time and Minnelli decided to give him ample opportunity with additional dance numbers excluding Garland. However, their teaming in 'Be A Clown' is a joyous one, each trying to upstage the other in full exhuberance. And the Nicholas Brothers are worth the price of admission for their climactic routine with Kelly. Gladys Cooper, as always, is a joy in a supporting role as Garland's stern aunt--but it's the comic flair of Kelly that distinguishes much of the fun. Walter Slezak has fun too with his role as the mayor who just happens to be the real Mack the Black. A colorful treat with some of the best color photography ever! Some of the fights between Kelly and Garland get a little strident at times, but overall it's a real gem with Judy showing that her comic timing with a line was just about perfect.

Gene Kelly and Judy Garland stepped into some mighty big shoes when they accepted the lead roles in The Pirate. On Broadway, The Pirate ran in the 1942-43 season for 177 performances and the shoes that Kelly and Garland were filling belonged to Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. True it's probably one of the lighter vehicles that Lunt and Fontanne ever did, still it might have been interesting to compare what they did with the snappy dialog of S.N. Behrmann.

Cole Porter signed on to write the score for this musical adaption of The Pirate. Porter had been in a creative dry spell for a few years, most notoriously he was associated with a flop musical based on Around The World In 80 Days, a couple of years back. Believe it or not, he was having trouble getting work in Hollywood and on Broadway when he signed with MGM for The Pirate.

According to the George Eells biography of Porter, it was Gene Kelly who asked Porter to write a clown number for him and Judy Garland. Porter responded with Be A Clown which turned out to be the hit of the film. The rest of the score is not top drawer Porter, but mediocre Cole Porter is better than most songwriters can come up with.

Judy Garland plays another starry eyed youngster in The Pirate which is set in the 18th century Caribbean. She's first seen reading what would later be called a dime novel about the legendary Makoko the Pirate. She's getting into an arranged marriage with the mayor of the town, staid and settled Walter Slezak. When a troupe of strolling players led by Gene Kelly come to town, under hypnosis she reveals that she longs to be the bride of Makoko. What's Gene Kelly to do, but pretend to be Makoko.

That's all well and good except that Walter Slezak is the real Makoko now just trying to live in peaceful obscurity away from the authorities who want to hang him. All this leads to some interesting complications that of course get all sorted out in the end.

Judy gets to do two ballads in her unmistakable style, Love Of My Life and You Can Do No Wrong. And she stars in a rousing production number where the proclaims her enchantment with the legendary Makoko in Mack The Black.

The film got a tepid response in 1948, it's given far better critical notice in retrospect. The Pirate was produced by MGM's legendary Arthur Freed and his unit and directed stylishly by Vincent Minnelli who was Judy Garland's husband at the time. Today's audiences would far better appreciate the combined wit of S.N. Behrmann and Cole Porter.

As for Porter, his next writing assignment would stop all talk of his going into decline. The following year Kiss Me Kate debuted on Broadway which was Porter's biggest critical and commercial success. No one ever said that score wasn't up to his usual standard.

There's something in this movie which make it stand apart from other MGM musicals of that period, and I believe it was precisely this reason the movie ended up as a marketing flop.

First of all, the whole movie has very exaggerated and stylized tone, which combined with the vivid cinematography of Vincente Minnelli, creates rather fantastical, storybook-like (remember the movie actually starts with turning of storybook pages) mood, which might feel too alien to the audiences who expected to see another typical MGM musical like For Me and My Gal.

Of course, other period musicals like Meet Me in St.Louis or The Harvey Girls are far from realistic also. But while we can say that Esther's family or the Harvey House in those are rather idealized or exaggerated, they are by no means fantastic or surrealistic like such an imaginary Caribbean island where things like a pirate in his hot pants cutting ears off a bunny hat look like 'normal'.

If such an intention can be misinterpreted even by a modern reviewer to make him to criticize the movie, based on ethnic demography of a typical Caribbean island, then it's hardly surprising to see why some audiences from the 40s found it to be 'over dramatic' or 'over the top', for example.

As to the movie itself, I think I should give more credit to Gene Kelly than to Judy Garland even though I'm a big fan of the latter, and actually it was because of her that I first decided to watch this movie.

Aside from the "Mack the Black" or "Be a Clown" numbers, which are nice but can't be said to be top notch, music scores of the movie aren't very impressive, so regretfully we don't have much occasion to appreciate Judy Garland's legendary talent.

But as to Gene Kelly, the movie serves as a great showcase to prove that he's much more than a mere good looking actor with some tap dancing skills. By adapting elements of ballet or even pole dancing, he tries to innovate the musical dancing to a whole new level, and sequences like "Nina" or the "Pirate Ballet" feels like a precursor to his later efforts which successfully enlarged and redefined the field.

All in all, it's one of those movies which can be termed as a 'successful failure', which was successful in making a lasting impression with many bold and innovative attempts, and be a marketing flop for the very same reason.

If there were a bit more memorable music numbers, which would give Judy Garland more chance to shine, it might have been remembered as one of a cult classic of MGM musicals.

Though Gene Kelly is superb as the athletic strolling player Serafin, and is given some of the best dancing opportunities of his career, this is Miss Garland's film all the way. And what a film! How strange that it isn't better known.

In one of their rare moments of scenic largesse, Metro released Garland from the small town confinements of Hardy--ville, and/or the sweet girl who makes it to Broadway with the corn stalks still in her suitcase, and gave her something of genuine wit and sophistication.

For here, she is Manuela Alvarez, of the colonial Virgin Islands, a well born, cloistered 19th century maiden, (presumably convent educated, i.e., Gladys Cooper to Judy, "...we'll take refuge in the church!") whose only psychic escape from her self enclosure consists in fantasizing about the notorious pirate, "Mack the Black Macoco." That she is tricked into believing a dashing actor, Serafin (Kelly) is the real Macoco, while in fact he is none other than her lumpy affianced, Mayor Dom Pedro (Walter Slezak) is the spindle upon which this cinematic yarn spins its glories.

And what phantasmagoric glories they are! This ranks with "Yolanda and the Thief," (sorry "American in Paris" fans) as Mr. Minnelli's most accomplished Technicolor visual achievement. For working with Jack Martin Smith, he concocts a Caribbean sea port a swirl with color and characters--one can almost smell the salt air a waft with spice and languor, and including as well: a quay brimming with turbanned negroe vendors, a village of Salmon and off white stucco walls, and black filagreed wrought iron against a cerulean sky, and bevys of extras dressed in a fortune worth of rainbow colored moire, velvet and brocade flounces, furbellows, snoods, and gauntlets. The shaded interiors are replete with empire furniture, carved ebony, and bamboo blinds and palmettos.

The effect is dreamlike in an operetta sort of way and deliberately so. A storybook come to life but one which successfully combines the conventions of 19th century aristocratic propriety, (in which young women of quality do not walk out without their duennas) against 20th century show biz colloquialisms to great effect, (one thinks here of Mr. Kelly's delightful reference to a review in the "Trinidad Clarion comparing him to David Garrick","No Noose is Good Noose," and "You should try underplaying sometime."

The players are at the top of their form: Mr. Kelly is in full command of his powers here: his partnering with the Nicholas Brothers in "Be a Clown," as well as the "Pirate Ballet" (in which he pivots with a javelin against a cinnabar sky lit with explosions) almost literally take ones breath away.

But it is in "Ninia" that he achieves the most felicitous display of solo Terpsichore, with Robert Alton's choreography, Harry Stradling's fluid boom camera following his cat like moves over up and through the town, and the delightful Cole Porter lyric and melody, culminating in flamenco steps with torrid and tempting MGM contract dancers in and through the striped poles of a circular gazebo.

Of Miss Garland enough cannot be said. No more Betsy Booth! Manuela offers her a chance to broaden her range in a direction in which (sadly) she would never venture again.

Here her exasperated intonations wring humor out of every line and situation, "Oh Casilda I do wish you were a little more spiritual!" or "Do you call it fun to live in a tent? to go hungry ?, to be looked down on by all decent people?!" give full vent to the drollery the script affords. Indeed, she channels her trademarked nervous energy into her character in such a way, that she, (as "Parent's Magazine" noted in its review) gently spoofs some of her earlier film characterizations. Thus we get the Dorothy like: ("I know it, something dreadful is going to happen, something dreadful...") It's a performance that one cannot simply imagine any other actress playing. Thus, she claims the role and makes it her own.

And who can forget the scene where she pretends to believe Serafin is Macoco once she has discovered the deception, "I can see us now, you with your cutlass in one hand and your compass in the other, shouting orders to your pirate crew, and I, I spurring you on to greater and greater achievements, won't that be magnificent?!" to which she pounds her fist against the table with sugar dipped venom.

Musically she is also a delight from start to finish.

Moreover, she has never been seen to such pictorial advantage in the post war period as she is here, gowned by Tom Keogh and Madame Karinska in one of the most arresting (and beaded!) wardrobes she ever wore on screen, and just as importantly, effectively coiffed throughout, (most particularly in the "Love of My Life" sequence where she is adorned with a coral diadem and matching earrings.)

Similarly, her close-ups are meltingly lovely, such as the nightgown clad scene wherein she begs Gladys Cooper to take her to Port Sebastian, "I'll make him a good wife Aunt Inez--really." (what a vision in feminine charm she is here!) or slightly later when, clad in a broad brimmed straw hat she gazes upon the Caribbean, or perhaps best of all, with a conch shell at her ear, and under hypnosis, she whispers of Macoco to dazzled interlocutors.

Supporting players are top of the mark, and it is interesting to see Garland interact with Gladys Cooper and horror veteran George Zucco.

After it was completed, MGM relegated Garland back to formula vaudeville hokum, but thankfully "The Pirate" was already in the can. Musical film scholar Douglas McVay has declared it to be the best musical film of 1948. He's right. See it to find out why.

They certainly don't make movies like this one anymore! "The Pirate" shows how MGM dominated the musical genre with stars of the magnitude of Gene Kelly and Judy Garland under Vincente Minnelli's direction, and music by Cole Porter.

The story is just a pretext to present the stars doing what they did best. The film is totally dominated by Gene Kelly, who makes a wonderful contribution to the film as Serafin, an itinerant entertainer who happens to be in Calvados, the Caribbean, a fictional island where the beautiful Manuela is about to get married to a powerful man, Don Pedro Vargas.

After being pursued by Serafin, Manuela's resolve to marry the much older, fatter, and uglier, Don Pedro, is reduced to seeing the would be husband by what he really is, a bully and a man who she will never bring herself to love. The revelations at the end and the happy conclusion gives the film a great finale.

Gene Kelly and Judy Garland were at the peak of their careers. Ms. Garland looks so beautiful in the film and she makes an adorable Manuela. Mr. Kelly gives an excellent performance as the song and dance man who can put people in a trance as he hypnotizes them. The musical numbers in which Mr. Kelly dances are superbly staged.

The supporting players are a delight. Gladys Cooper, makes a great Aunt Inez. Walter Slezak is perfect as Don Pedro, a man who hides deeply rooted secrets. Reginald Owen and George Zucco are also seen. Best of all are the Nicholas Brothers who were amazing in their number.

The glorious Technicolor utilized in the film has kept its luster as it has aged gloriously.