BLACK NARCISSUS 1947

No I won’t be a nun

No I cannot be a nun

For I am so fond of pleasure that I cannot be a nun.

                                                                                    19^th century British Music Hall song

It’s impossible for me to imagine what affect Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's astonishing film Black Narcissus would have had on me had I been aware of it back when I was still a kid in Catholic school. Back when I still found solace in religious dogma, when elaborate church ritual held me in a sense of wonder, and when nuns were still these mysterious, almost mythic, beings. But on the occasion of seeing this breathtaking, sensually overwhelming film for the very first time just last month (!), my adult self was captivated by how lyrically evocative this dramatization of the age-old conflict of sensual passion vs. pious repression turned out to be (decades before Ken Russell’s The Devils).
Coming to this now-classic movie with considerable maturity, a hefty dose of Catholic disillusion, yet little to no foreknowledge of even the film's storyline and theme, I was left awestruck by the operatic scope of its opulent visuals and delighted by the brashness of its over-emphatic emotionalism.

British director Michael Powell (Peeping Tom - 1960) and longtime collaborator Eric Pressburger apply a rapturously lush gloss and striking visual distinction to his Oscar-nominated 1947 screen adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel. There seems to be something overheated and audacious about the entire enterprise, which, like the harem-house turned convent perched atop the Himalayan mountainscape that serves as the film’s primary locale and chief metaphor, allows Black Narcissus to recklessly skirt along the edges of high melodrama, camp overstatement, and visual poetry. If it was Powell & Pressburger's goal to submerge the audience in a barrage of sensual excess parallel to that experienced by the white-clad nuns in the film—to indeed create a film as visually heady as the fragrance of the Black Narcissus flower—then they succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation.

Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh

Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth

David Farrar as Mr. Dean

Jean Simmons as  Kanchi

Sabu as Dilip Rai, The Young General

Flora Robson as Sister Philippa

Five Anglican nuns in British-occupied India are sent by their somewhat dubious Mother Superior (Nancy Roberts) to establish a mission school and dispensary in a remote area high in the Kanchenjunga Mountains. The designated site, donated to the convent by a philanthropic peacock of a General named Toda Rai (Esmond Knight) in the interest of serving his subjects in nearby Darjeeling, is a desolate edifice perched dizzyingly atop a mountain shelf and known as The Palace of Mopu. The deserted palace, which overlooks a vast mountainscape the locals call “The Bare Goddess,” was previously known as “The House of Women” and stood as a harem residence for the General’s father to house his many concubines.

May Hallat as Angu Aya

Angu Aya, the estate’s longtime caretaker, is correct in citing that the arrival of the nuns preserves the palace’s status as a house of women, the difference in the main being that these particular women “…won’t be any fun.” 

Sister Clodagh (Kerr), a young nun of rather severe and inflexible nature with a killer side-eye, is assigned as head of the convent which is to be rechristened “The House of Saint Faith.” She’s given reluctant, cynical assist from the General’s agent, Mr. Dean (Farrar), an Englishman gone conspicuously “native” yet still capable of wielding colonist superciliousness like a champ. 

The nuns’ external struggles in adapting to the people of the village—whose exotic “otherness” they find challenging; and coping with the elements—the incessantly blowing winds, too pure water, and rarefied air produce negative health effects; are compounded (if not dwarfed) by the intensity of their inner conflicts. Mopu’s color-saturated vistas and perfumed splendors of flora and fauna conspire to distract the nuns from their sense of practical and spiritual purpose, inflaming hidden passions and bringing about the recollection of the very things a life of devout asceticism was intended to blot out.

As Mr. Dean observes: "There's something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated." 

Sister Ruth is a little thirsty 

The natural elements of Mopu are at perpetual odds with the nuns’ emotional self-regulation and the control they attempt to exert over themselves, the land, and its people; resulting in the environment itself proving to have a progressively detrimental and disruptive effect on the convent as a whole. This conflict plays out in the escalating infatuation the already agitated and unstable Sister Ruth (Byron) develops on Mr. Dean. Too, in the distracting effect the introduction of the flamboyantly-attired Young General (Sabu) has on the all-girls school, specifically Hindu hotbox Kanchi (Simmons), an orphan girl who’s as serene in her sexuality as the nuns are restrained in theirs. 

The Prince and the Beggar-maid
The intoxicating perfume the Young General wears gives the film its name 

As repressed passions and jealousies intensify, Black Narcissus’s fevered melodramatic structure by turns takes on the shape of: a love story, a humanity vs. ecology war film, an imperialist allegory, and an ecclesiastical horror movie. Sometimes all at once.

My oft-stated fondness for Le Cinema Baroque (where nothing exceeds like excess) instantly brands Black Narcissus a lifelong favorite; but I’m equally fond of any film which attempts to explore that curious need we humans have to suppress that which is most natural in us, and to so often do so by hiding behind religious dogma.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Having grown up attending Catholic schools, I have to say that the pomp and circumstance of church ritual superbly primed me for the extravagant visual onslaught that is Black Narcissus. It’s a thing of beauty the way Jack Cardiff’s (Death on the Nile) Oscar-winning, deeply-saturated, old-school Technicolor cinematography so sublimely conveys the vastly shifting moods and sensations at the center of Black Narcissus; a strikingly stylized look at sexual repression and madness amongst a group of passion-seized nuns.

There are moments when the screen bursts with the jubilant colorfulness of a musical (these hills are alive and virtually crawling with nuns, but here Julie Andrews would be in way over her head); other times, the film is gripped by the melancholy high-contrast shadows of German Expressionism and film noir (reinforced tremendously by the sweep of Brian Easdale’s goosebump-inducing musical score). 

Sister Philippa worries that the exotic beauty of  the mountain
distracts her from her sense of religious purpose

Perhaps because the nuns I encountered during grade school bore so little resemblance to the serene, well-meaning nuns portrayed by Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn on The Late Show (mine were strictly of the stern, prison warden variety), I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from Black Narcissus’ then-controversial depiction of nuns as beings susceptible (perhaps more than most) to the character flaws of pride and ego, basic human desires, and crisis of faith.

In fact, the demystification of the whole nun mystique is one of my favorite things about the film. The scenes depicting Sister Clodagh lost in memory of her earlier life as a girl in Ireland are poignant and very moving. I can’t often relate to the idea of nuns “hearing the call” of religious service, but in this instance (and as played so winsomely by Deborah Kerr), it touches me to contemplate how a young woman’s heart can be so broken and pride so wounded that she would seek to bury her pain behind the emotional shelter of a cloistered existence. Hoping to lose her memory of herself in a life of devout service.

Sister Clodagh was once no stranger to vanity and allure of jewels and self-adornment

PERFORMANCES

Very much late to the party in regard to my recognition of this film, but much like my late-in-life appreciation of Joan Crawford, I’ve really turned a major corner when it comes to Deborah Kerr, who is fast becoming one of my favorite classic film actresses. I had the grave misfortune of having my earliest exposure to the actress in some of what must arguably be her worst films: Marriage on the Rocks (1965) and Prudence & the Pill (1968). I’m no big fan of The King and I, either, so for the larger part of my life, Kerr fell into that limbo of actresses whose work I largely avoided.

It took the enthusiastic recommendation of a reader of this blog to get me to check out Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), a film that really turned the tide for me in my assessment of Deborah Kerr. Her performance in that film is tremendous. Seriously one of the very finest examples of screen acting I’ve ever seen. Ever. She is absolutely brilliant, and on the strength of that movie alone I’ve come to reevaluate the work of this woefully underappreciated actress (by me, certainly, but her outstanding work in The Innocents got nary a nod from The Academy).  

There’s not a moment when Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh is on the screen that she doesn’t command. The dramatic arc of her character is sharply and heartbreakingly delineated, and Kerr's is precisely the kind of performance of which I’m most fond; the inner life of a character is read easily through the eyes. You can actually see what her character is thinking, just as you can plainly read the emotions subtly playing across Kerr's face. I’ve said it before, but playing repressed, emotionally inhibited characters must be as challenging for an actor as comedy; for with no big, showy displays of technique, an actor must credibly fashion a dimensional, complex character of sympathy and depth.

Kerr, while embodying the “stiff-necked, obstinate” characteristics attributed to her character, also shows Sister Clodagh to be a woman who is also imperious, sensitive, funny, wise, over-proud, kind, petty, overwhelmed, and in the end…so very human. For me, nothing I have so far seen of Deborah Kerr’s work can touch her performance in The Innocents, but her movingly unforgettable and finely-realized Sister Clodagh is right up there in being one of my favorites.

Kathleen Byron is mesmerizing as the neurotic and passion-inflamed Sister Ruth. As the unfettered sexual Id to Sister Clodagh's circumspect Ego, Byron's physical resemblance to Deborah Kerr informs the film's themes dramatizing the environment's ability to affect the dual natures of the nuns.
The naked ferocity of Byron's emotionalism suits Black Narcissus' grandiloquent visual style. Plus, once she really starts to lose it, she's absolutely terrifying!

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I cite Black Narcissus as one of the most sumptuously beautiful films ever made, betraying nary a single note of overstatement. In its current digitally restored form, it’s truly something to behold. Breathtaking doesn’t even cover it.

But to a large extent, the effectiveness of the film’s visual style (production designer Alfred Junge won the film’s only other Oscar) is that it isn’t pretty for the sake of being pretty; its extravagant look is in direct service to the plot.

I was struck by how, in much the same way the vistas distract the nuns from their work, Black Narcissus’s Technicolor gorgeousness helped to shroud the film’s indulgence in racial stereotypes and soften the narrative’s colonialist fantasy elements (the Western infantilization and fetishizing of the exotic “other”).

Eddie Whaley Jr as Joseph Anthony
The nuns are forced to rely on the interpreting skills of a youngster
in order to communicate with the "childlike" natives

One of the more astounding things about Black Narcissus is that, while set in India, it was filmed entirely in England. Sabu is the only cast member of actual Indian descent, meanwhile, brownface and quaint cultural stereotyping abounds. The film was released the very year India won its freedom from British imperialist rule, a historical fact that goes a long way toward making the film’s, shall I say, archaic attitude towards the childlike “natives” feel more like an indictment rather than an endorsement.

As the convent’s plans to westernize the people of Mopu collapses under the inability of the nuns to either understand or adapt to the land they inhabit, it’s not difficult to project a subtheme of anti-imperialism running below Black Narcissus’ surface. 

A critic keenly noted that the peaked cowls of the nuns' gleaming white habits
echo the steep mountain peaks overlooking The House of St. Faith

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

While I'll always wonder what my younger, far more impressionable, film-besotted self would have made of Black Narcissus, I'm glad my first exposure to this film wasn't in grainy black and white on a tiny TV set with commercial interruptions; nor was it by way of a scratchy, faded copy at a revival theater. It's fortuitous that when I finally got around to seeing Black Narcissus, it was by way of a pristine, full-length, digitally restored version.

I'm aware that I'm still very much caught up in the first-blush daze of new discovery (I've only seen Black Narcissus twice); but even so, I don't hesitate in labeling it a genuine masterpiece. Not perfect, which art has no obligation to be, anyway, but an authentic work of stylized aesthetic beauty.  I know in my heart that this particular cinema gemstone would have fueled a million dreams and fantasies for me as a boy, but I guess we all discover the right things at the right time.

BONUS MATERIAL

I recommend checking out Painting with Light (2007) - A fascinating documentary on the making of Black Narcissus featuring interviews with cinematographer Jack Cardiff and actress Kathleen Byron.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

THE HEIRESS 1949

“I’m sure you recognize this lovely melody as ‘Stranger in Paradise.’ But did you know that the original theme is from the ‘Polovtsian Dance No. 2’ by Borodin? So many of the melodies of well-known popular songs were actually written by the great masters….”

Thus began the TV commercial for 120 Music Masterpieces, a four-LP set of classical music selections offered by Columbia House and Vista Marketing from 1971 to 1984. This ubiquitous and long-running commercial featured British character actor John Williams (famous for the Hitchcock films Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief, but known in our household as the “fake Mr. French” from the sitcom Family Affair) touting the joys of  discovering how many classical melodies were appropriated for contemporary pop songs.

This commercial and Williams’ cultured English accent unfailingly come to mind whenever I watch The Heiress. The reason being that The Heiress’ oft-repeated love theme—the 1784 Jean-Paul-Egide Martini classical composition Plaisir d’Amour (The Joys of Love)—had its melody borrowed for the popular ballad Can’t Help Falling in Love in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii. The unfortunate result of all this is that every time the melody is played in the movie (and that’s quite a lot) it evokes for me not Victorian-era romance, but Vegas-era Elvis Presley.

Ever the Method actor, Clift learned to play the piano for this scene
in which Morris sings The Joys of Love to Catherine

Others feel differently, I'm sure, but this pop music cross-referencing has always only had the effect of cheapening the original compositions for me. Coming as it did a full 12-years before Elvis serenaded Joan Blackman in Blue Hawaii, it’s not The Heiress’s fault Elvis’s version (never a favorite) is so hotwired into my brain that I fairly wince every time Plaisir d’Amour swells on the soundtrack, wrenching me out of the The Heiress' scrupulously rendered 19^th century New York, and thrusting me onto some kind of Gilligan’s Island vision of Hawaii. (I have a similar reaction to the now-distracting use of 1939’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow in the 1941 film noir I Wake Up Screaming.) Happily, my personal aversion to the song Plaisir d’Amour and its use in the film's score (something I might share with the film's Oscar-winning/Oscar-disowning composer Aaron Copland) is the sole complaint I have with William Wyler’s classic romantic melodrama, The Heiress.

Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper

Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend

Ralph Richardson as Dr. Austin Sloper

Miriam Hopkins as Lavinia Penniman

The Heiress is one of my favorite popcorn movies. And that’s “popcorn movie” in the old-fashioned sense: an enjoyably entertaining film, well-acted, with a good story intelligently told, no heavy message. Not the current definition signifying a check-your-brain-at-the-door exercise in sophomoric cretinism (cue my usual Adam Sandler, Fast & Furious diatribe).

Based on the 1947 Broadway play by Ruth & Augustus Goetz, which itself was adapted from Henry James’ 1880 novel Washington Square, The Heiress is a serious drama to be sure. But anything deeper to be found in its subtext regarding the emotionally stifling social class system or the lingering imprint of love lost (The Heiress overflows with widows and widowers who live in the memory of the departed, never entertaining the thought of finding someone new), remains in service of a not-unfamiliar “Poor Little Rich Girl” romantic melodrama.

As a motion picture adapted from an esteemed literary work, The Heiress was Paramount’s “prestige film” for the year, its pre-release publicity suggesting a Grand Romance between fated-to-be lovers kept apart by some shadowy adverse obstacle. In truth, the film is really a rather severe, withering rumination on love (familial love, romantic love, self-love) and the injurious cost of its absence.

Three is the Magic Number
The Heiress was Montgomery Clift's 3rd film, and his co-star was three years older 

Catherine Sloper (de Havilland) is an unprepossessing, socially awkward young woman whose very existence is a source of nagging disappointment to her widowed father, physician Austin Sloper (Richardson). Dr. Sloper’s beloved wife died giving birth to Catherine, yet lives on as an idealized, phantom presence in Dr. Sloper's heart and in the household he shares with his daughter. A presence to whom Catherine, in her failure to live up to even a modicum of her mother’s beauty or social graces, is ceaselessly compared and judged. Forced to grow up in the shade of her father’s barely contained reproach and resentment, Catherine’s natural virtues (visible to us in private moments where she reveals herself to have brains and a winning sense of humor) have understandably failed to flower.

Sharing their home in Washington Square is Dr. Sloper’s sister Lavinia (Hopkins), a somewhat frivolous but prototypical example of the kind of aimless social butterfly women were expected to be in Victorian times. Given to silly flights of romantic fantasy and hyperbole, yet well-versed in the dos and don’ts of society protocol, Lavinia is tolerated for her ability to assist Catherine in developing the social graces. Supportive of her niece and devoted to not seeing her drift heedlessly into spinsterhood with only her embroidery to keep her company; Lavinia is nevertheless one more pitying voice reminding Catherine of her lack.

Miriam Hopkins is the queen of the silly and superficial busybody.
No matter how extremely her character is written, she finds both the humor and the humanity

Although Dr. Sloper and Lavinia are both of the mind that Catherine’s failings in looks and charm are significantly mitigated by her being an heiress with a considerable fortune, Lavinia is too much of a romantic to ever admit to such base pragmatism, while Dr. Sloper regards the assessment as indisputable fact…like a medical diagnosis.

Curious, then, that when an outside party is suspected of appraising Catherine by similarly pragmatic terms—the outside party being the dashing, obscenely handsome and penniless young suitor Morris Townsend (Clift)—it is Dr. Sloper who lodges the loudest protest.

What I like about The Heiress is that it does a remarkable job of putting us in the middle of the film's dramatic/romantic conflict without specifically telling us how we should feel about it. At times it appears as though Dr. Sloper is unnecessarily brusque in his assessment of his daughter, but he isn't entirely wrong. At the same time we also see that there is more to Catherine than her retiring demeanor belies, making us hope that "someone" comes along and sees in her what those around her fail to recognize.
When that someone comes in the form of Montgomery Clift, playing a man in possession everything that Catherine lacks except money; we can't help but feel (hope) that at least in some ways, this pair is well-suited. Certainly the superficial attractions of physical beauty are no more a barrier to true love than the superficial allure of wealth?

Playboy After Dark
Does our distrust of Morris come from the reversal of the beauty ethic (women are supposed to be the pretty ones), or the reversal of the patriarchal tradition (men are expected to support women)?

The Heiress deviates from the play in that it never makes the honorableness of Morris' attentions entirely clear. At least not initially. As the film progresses we are manipulated back and forth, forced to view Morris' whirlwind courtship of Catherine through the alternating perspective of Dr. Sloper's suspicious eyes or Lavinia’s willfully rose-colored gaze.
Provocatively, we’re placed in the position of preferring to be right rather than see Catherine happy (her father, again), or hoping…perhaps beyond reason…that Townsend is not really what he seems and merely a penniless suitor genuinely seeing in Catherine that which we ourselves have been witness to: her very real charms have just not been given the opportunity to develop in the loveless home she shares with her father in Washington Square.

The film tugs at our beauty biases, our belief in Cinderella fantasies, and our weakness for ugly duckling myths. It also, in providing an emotionally and dramatically satisfying ending which deviates from the novel, taps into the kind of visceral revenge scenario beloved of any individual who has ever felt undervalued or underestimated. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Popular Hollywood movies all tap into common fantasies. There's clearly a market out there for romantic comedies about cloddish, schlubby boy-men who win impossibly beautiful women simply because they possess an ounce of common decency. That is to say, I assume there to be a market for it based on the sheer number of Seth Rogen films out there; I'm just happy I don't know that market personally. 

Because of the unique circumstances of my adolescence: shy, a member of one of the few African-American families in a largely white neighborhood, gay in an all-boys Catholic high-school—I find myself drawn to stories about outsiders. Those who are habitually overlooked and underestimated because they don't conform to established norms.

"I'd never contradict him."

I'm afraid my response to my formative years are reflected in the brand of "outsider" films which have become my favorites over the years: Carrie (shy teen kills entire senior class), That Cold Day in the Park (shy spinster kills for and imprisons sex slave); 3 Women (shy enigma engages in personality theft - deaths to follow)...you get the picture. While never seriously interested in purging the patina of my youth in such melodramatic ways, I'm aware that revenge fantasies rate inordinately high amongst the films in my collection. Vicarious projection, I guess.
The Heiress fits easily into this informal sub-genre, it being a kind of tragic pop fairy-tale that tells the story of a woman who, having misguidedly invested her sense of self and happiness in finding someone who deems her worthy of being loved, seeks that tenuous approbation in the eyes of not one, but two woefully inadequate men. Though her path is one both heartbreaking and life-alteringly painful, Catherine nevertheless comes to arrive at a place of self-discovery, self-acceptance and, ultimately strength. 

And, conforming to the ambiguous emotional tone of all that went before, the ending of The Heiress can be viewed as either tragic or triumphant with no loss to the film's overall effectiveness and poignance.

"That's right Father. You never will know, will you?"

Olivia de Havilland's thorough and complete transformation from doting daughter to embittered adversary is as chilling as it is heartbreaking.

PERFORMANCES

When writing this essay, it came as something of a surprise to me to discover that I've only seen Olivia de Havilland in six films; four of them from her less-than-stellar, post- Lady in a Cage period. But this is more a reflection of the type of movies she appeared in (westerns, period adventure films...neither particular favorites) than a reaction to the actress herself, who, as of this writing, is still with us at age 99.

The Heiress represents Olivia de Havilland's 5th (and final) Oscar nomination
and 2nd win in the Best Actress category

Within my admittedly narrow sphere of exposure, I have nothing but admiration for de Havilland's work in The Heiress. It cannot be an easy feat to imbue an outwardly plain, reactive character like Catherine with as much depth and feeling as de Havilland achieves. Perhaps a flaw in the play's structure is that it is impossible to adapt it in a way in which Catherine can ever be seen in a light reflective of how her father sees her. (Wyler encourages us to identify with and like Catherine. Her comic resilience in the face of humiliation after humiliation wins us over.)
In our being able to so readily appraise and recognize Catherine's worth, her father becomes a villain before he gets a chance to show the sympathetic side of his case.(Marginally sympathetic, anyway. One can empathize with a man missing his wife, but to withhold affection from a motherless child due to repressed resentment or blame is cruel and tragic.). But as I've stated, the narrative tipping point falls to the casting of Morris, and whether or not the actor playing the role is able to conceivably play sincerity and knavishness with equal credibility.

Recreating the role he played on the London stage, Ralph Richardson (knighted Sir in 1947)
is remarkable as the over-assured and unyielding Austin Sloper. The sureness of his performance
serves as the virtual touchstone for everyone else in the film 

I like Montgomery Clift a great deal, but if reports are true that he was deeply dissatisfied with his performance in The Heiress, I can't say his feelings are entirely unfounded. Simply put, he seems to be outclassed and a tad out of his depth when it comes to to the performances of de Havilland, Richardson, and Hopkins. To be sure, this could merely be an instance of clashing acting styles, his co-stars representing a more formal, old-guard style of acting to his more relaxed contemporary technique. The latter resulting in the actor occasionally coming across as stiff and uncomfortable.

However, in his defense, Clift's very "otherness" in manner and speech (whether intentional or not) works marvelously within the context of the story. His Morris Townsend is a character we are meant to be unsure of; unaware of where the real person ends and the artifice begins. He introduces passion and impulse into the Sloper's world of strict formality. Clift's awkwardness, which wreaks havoc with the viewer's ability to ascertain his character's sincerity, winds up adding a great deal to Morris' ambiguity.

Sizing Up The Interloper

Montgomery Clift's Method-era naturalness comes from somewhere so genuine, you don't entertain for a minute that he is not as he seems. His beauty is suspicious, but his behavior is not. He seems ill-suited to a certain level of showy artifice, so his scenes with de Havilland have a warmth that has you rooting for their union even as you sense it is ultimately impossible.
I like him a great deal in the film, even while recognizing his Morris Townsend is perhaps not one of his strongest performances.

As Audrey Hepburn did in Two for the Road, Olivia de Havilland is able to convey very distinct stages in the emotional maturation of her character simply through her facial expressions, body language, and voice modulation. Here, Catherine Sloper has grown into a woman at peace with herself 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Heiress garnered a whopping eight Academy Award nominations in 1949: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Richardson), Cinematography - winning in the categories of Best Actress (de Havilland), Music (Aaron Copland..a matter of contention), Art Direction (J. Meehan, H. Horner, E. Kuri), and Costume Design (Edith head, Gile Steele).
I'm particularly fond of the costume design and art direction in The Heiress, which is truly gorgeous. Even more so with today's digital restorations and HD TV screens.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Adapted from a Broadway production, The Heiress shows its stage roots in being a somewhat stagy and talky motion picture more reliant on dialog, performance, and characterization than action. In this instance I wouldn't have it any other way, for The Heiress has such marvelous, quotable dialog.

"No child could compete with this image you have of her mother. You've idealized that poor dead woman beyond all human recognition." 

"Headaches! They strike like a thief in the night! Permit me to retire, of course. It's not like me to give in, dear, but sometimes fortitude is folly!"

"He must come. He must take me away. He must love me. He must!...Morris will love me, for all those who didn't."

"How is it possible to protect such a willing victim?"

"Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters."

"I can tell you now what you have done. You have cheated me. You thought that any handsome, clever man would be as bored with me as you were. It was not love that made you protect me. It was contempt."

BONUS MATERIAL

Composer Aaron Copland's original music theme for The Heiress, before it was controversially reworked by Nathan Van Cleve under director William Wyler's orders.

Washington Square (1997): Agnieszka Holland - the director of the 2014 TV-movie remake of Rosemary's Baby - helmed this impressive-looking adaptation of Henry James' short novel starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, and Maggie Smith. It's truer to the book than either the play or the 1949 film, so purists should be happy. But in spite of the good performances and lovely cinematography, the film failed to stay with me very long after seeing it. Some are sure to prefer it to the William Wyler film, but it reminded me of the kind of faithful movie adaptation you're required to watch in a high school English class after having read the book.

The legendary 120 Music Masterpieces  TV commercial

Copyright © Ken Anderson

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS 1944

I don't believe in perfection, but were someone to really press me to name what I consider to be the most perfect musical ever made, I wouldn't hesitate a second before placing Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis at the top of any list. An unpretentious gem of a movie that's small in scale, meager of plot, modest in ambition, and blissfully devoid of any of those so-called "sure-fire" elements associated with most major movie musicals; Meet Me in St. Louis is nevertheless a nonstop, smile-from-ear-to-ear delight that features more moments of genuine magic than all eight Harry Potter movies, combined.

Judy Garland as Esther Smith

Margaret O'Brien as Tootie Smith

Lucille Bremer as Rose Smith

Meet Me in St. Louis is a nostalgically idealized little memory book of a musical chronicling a year in the life of a suburban family in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, MO. Divided into a series of charming and delightfully idiosyncratic vignettes, each designated by a season of the year, Meet Me in St. Louis presents itself as a slice-of-life Americana—circa 1904—with nothing loftier on its mind than a desire to pay gentle tribute to the imperishable bond of home and family. What it ends up being is a buoyantly delightful, utterly enchanting little musical whose narrative manages to strike the perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality.

Setting a tone of lighthearted innocence and old-world charm that Minnelli captivatingly (not to mention, miraculously) manages to sustain throughout the entire film, Meet Me in St. Louis opens with an introduction to the members of the Smith household that's a study in cinematic economy and ingenuity. Structured practically a musical number in itself in the way narrative exposition and character information are seamlessly interwoven in a choreographed introduction, we first meet the level-headed lady of the house Anna (Mary Astor); no-nonsense housekeeper Katie (Marjorie Main); college-bound only son Alonzo "Lon" Jr. (Henry H. Daniels); next-to-youngest daughter Agnes (Joan Carroll); grandpa (Harry Davenport), a collector of hats and firearms; Esther (Garland), the romantic pragmatist; eldest daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer); precocious (and downright weird) youngest daughter, Tootie (O'Brien): and, last but not least, Alonzo, the quintessential father figure (Leon Ames).

You and I
Mary Astor as Anna Smith /  Leon Ames as Alonzo Smith

Director Vincente Minnelli, whose third film this is, displays a remarkably sure hand with this opening sequence. For not only do we come away from it with a vividly distinct sense of each of the main characters, but the seamless manner in which the action and camerawork are interwoven with the impromptu singing/humming of the title tune is positively balletic. It's a virtuoso bit of narrative filmmaking worthy of Kubrick or Hitchcock.

We accompany the Smith family throughout the year as they weather sundry domestic and romantic crises. The story's chief conflict, such as it is, being the zestful anticipation surrounding the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair vs. the dispiriting news of the impending uprooting of the family to New York City.

Boy Meets Girl
Tom Drake as John Truett / Henry J Daniels Jr. as Alonzo "Lon" Smith Jr

The uncluttered simplicity that is the screenplay by Irving Brecher & Fred F. Finklehoff (the DVD commentary makes mention of the excising of a superfluous subplot) is based on the largely autobiographical stories of author Sally Benson. Stories first serialized under the title "5135 Kensington" in The New Yorker in 1941, expanded and novelized later in 1942 as "Meet Me in St Louis."  

I've never read the novel, but as a fan of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (to whose screenplay Benson was a contributor), Benson seems to have a disarmingly quirky eye when it comes to family. Meet Me in St. Louis is funnier than most films of its ilk, mainly due to a great many wonderful throwaway comic lines and the characters being afforded humanizing traits like vanity ("It would've been nice to be a brunette." "You should have been. Nothing could've stopped us. Think how we'd look going out together, you with your raven black hair and me with my auburn."), self-seriousness ("I hate, loathe, despise and abominate money!" "You also spend it."), precocity ("You're nothing less than a murderer! You might have killed dozens of people!" "Oh, Rose, you're so stuck-up!"), and eccentricity ("The ice man saw a drunkard get shot last night, and the blood squirted out three feet!" – that would be Tootie again).

All of this is tunefully buoyed by a lovely musical score comprised of period standards and four original songs composed by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine. 

I've seen it a million times, but Judy singing the Oscar-nominated
  The Trolley Song is always such a thrill to watch

A treat for the eyes and ears, Meet Me in St. Louis never fails to win me over with its charm and heart, but I really get a kick out of its character-based comedy. And while many other films have tried to duplicate its formula (the rather dreadful Summer Holiday - 1948), they only wind up getting the material trappings right. Meet Me in St. Louis—from its talented cast and their inimitable chemistry, to the creative artists behind the scenes, to the degree of loving care lavished on this entire production by Vincente Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed (who co-wrote the lovely song "You and I" and dubbed Leon Ames' singing voice)—is a film that remains in a class by itself.

Marjorie Main as Katie

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

From all this gushing praise you'd think Meet Me in St. Louis was a movie I've been in love with all my life. On the contrary, I saw the film in its entirety for the first time in 2007. My avoidance of Meet Me in St. Louis for so many years stemmed from an assumption on my part that it was just another one of those aggressively quaint, synthetically folksy period musicals that tend to cause me to break out in hives (think The Music Man or Hello, Dolly!). Nothing wears me down faster than hardened show biz pros barnstorming their way through cloying depictions of homespun simplicity.

But of course, it's within this very arena that most critics contend (and I agree) that Vincent Minnelli scores his greatest triumph. In convincing the actors not to play down to the material, to treat the characters, dialogue, and situations seriously, he infuses this gossamer-light fairy tale with genuine warmth of emotion. The result is a sincerely sweet and touching family movie devoid of the usual mawkishness and sentimentality.

The entire "Long-Distance Phone Call" sequence is hilarious.
A favorite scene in a film loaded with standout sequences

Considerable assist is given by the Oscar-nominated screenplay (Meet Me in St Louis was nominated for four, winning only a special juvenile Oscar for O'Brien) which consistently keeps clichés at bay by subverting anticipated payoffs with unexpected twists. Every time a scene threatens to become too sentimental or hackneyed, some bit of business or dialogue is introduced to wrest the proceedings back to something amusing or emotionally honest. This is especially true of the two youngest Smith girls, Agnes and Tootie; angelic of face but mischievous and possessed of extravagantly gruesome imaginations (Agnes, after being told [in jest] that her pet cat has been harmed: "Oh, if you killed her I'll kill you! I'll stab you to death in your sleep, then I'll tie your body to two wild horses until you're pulled apart!").

I think what appeals to me most is Meet Me in St. Louis' refreshing lack of schmaltz. Where a less thoughtful film might have the characters express their feelings through manipulative emotional outbursts and maudlin displays designed to elicit a sentimental response from the audience, I'm impressed by the way the closeness of the Smith family is illustrated in the ways they treat one another, and not by the voicing of false-sounding bromides.

This beautifully composed shot is a testament to Minnelli's painterly eye. The detailed production design and eye-popping Technicolor cinematography only add to Meet Me in St. Louis' enduring appeal

1) When Rose's much-anticipated long-distant call turns out to be a bust, I'm always so charmed by how Ester rescues her sister from embarrassment by putting a positive spin on the events.

2) Instead of opting for the overworked device of having two sisters vie for the attentions of the same man, I like how Rose encourages Esther to strike up an acquaintance with the boy next door. 

3) The "bond of family" theme is reinforced by how quickly Esther puts aside her feelings for John Truett and is ready to go to battle when she believes he has harmed Tootie.

4) The most touching (for me) is the tender way the mother, despite being upset by the news of uprooting to New York, kisses her husband and, in effect, reaffirms her affection by playing him a love song. Multiple viewings of this scene reveal a plethora of little intimacies and routines of family togetherness enacted in the background. It's no small wonder that so many people consider Meet Me in St. Louis' Autumn sequence (combining the Halloween and move to New York announcement scenes) to be the strongest in the film.

Grandpa schools Tootie & Agnes on the finer points of flinging flour
into the faces of victims on Halloween

I have a bit of an aversion to the trite, artificial sentimentality of "wholesome" family programming like The Brady Bunch and Father Knows Best (Hazel is another matter...that Shirley Booth can reduce me to tears in an instant, even in a sitcom). And I flat-out reject the alternative trend that asks me to find snarky, wise-ass children to be adorable. That's why Meet Me in St. Louis is such a marvel. Minnelli & Co. found the magic formula to get me to care about a family that genuinely cares about one another.

I'm not sure I'd trust anyone who was immune to the absolute
adorableness of Esther's crush on neighbor John Truett

PERFORMANCES

The cast of Meet Me in St Louis could hardly be better. Ensemble acting at its finest, with the standout performances only serving to add luster to the already glowing efforts of the rest of the troupe. I'm partial to the delectably neurotic Margaret O'Brien (I always crack up when in one scene, out of the blue, apropos of nothing, Tootie announces plans to start digging a tunnel to a neighbor's terrace for the express purpose of grabbing her leg when she walks in her garden), but lovely Lucille Bremer has many fine moments ("The plans have been changed!"). Everybody's favorite dad, Leon Ames, the master of confounded exasperation, is solid as always. I'm citing these particulars, but the truth is that every single character in the film is exceptionally well-cast. The result is that we not only like the Smith family and care what happens to them, we appreciate why they feel so strongly for their town and friends. 

The Smith Family

Depending on the source, any number of people have claimed responsibility for casting the reluctant Judy Garland in this, my favorite of her non-Oz roles. But the who doesn't matter so much as trying to imagine what this film would be like without her. Even if everything remained exactly as it is, without Garland I'm 100% certain the result would merely be one of those disposably competent, workaday musicals MGM churned out with regularity in its time. 

Judy Garland is the element that makes this film magic, and it's amazing to me that she was overlooked come Oscar time. People don't tend to think of vocal performances as acting, but just check out the variance in Garland's singing of "The Boy Next Door" contrasted with the performance she gives during "The Trolley Song" and ultimately, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Were one to regard each of these unforgettable moments as a dramatic scene, scenes Garland commands and puts over with touching sincerity and depth of feeling...well, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett would both have to concede they're not in her league.

Striking a perfect balance between spunk and youthful innocence ("I've worked all my life to be a senior!"), Judy Garland's Esther Smith is a testament to her uniquely accessible and likable star quality 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
I'm always taken a little aback when I realize just how few musical numbers there are in Meet Me in St Louis. It always feels like wall-to-wall music! One listen to the score of the 1989 Broadway adaptation of the film, expanded by at least eight more songs by the same composers (and in which we learn Tootie's name is Sarah), and you're likely to come away with a better appreciation for the virtues of brevity.

Under the Bamboo Tree

I've written before (in reference to the dull soirees in every version of The Great Gatsby I've ever seen) that parties in movies rarely ever look to be much fun. The going away house party the Smiths throw for brother Lon is the exception. This lively, well-staged sequence features a clever reworking of "Skip to My Lou" and of course, the cute Margaret O'Brien / Judy Garland duet, "Under the Bamboo Tree."

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Movie musical magic moments don't get much better than Judy Garland's sublime rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I love the song and the way Garland sings it, but it's truly how the song is used in dramatic context of the story (along with Margaret O'Brien's doleful performance) that makes it the memorably heartbreaking classic scene it is. As the pivotal event necessary to inspire the father to change his plans, this number delivers both narratively and emotionally.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS 
Like the character of Lon Smith, I grew up as the only boy in a household of four sisters (hence my desire to escape to the movies every chance I got); only in the pecking order of age, I was where Agnes would be. My earliest memories of my family, before my parents divorced in 1967, have a veneer of nostalgia surrounding them that takes on more and more of the shimmering Technicolor glow of Meet Me in St. Louis the older I get.

The youthful quirks of my sisters stand out in my mind: One had her room plastered with posters of the Beatles; another was part of a neighborhood girl's singing group, modeling themselves on The Supremes; one sister was drawn to anything artistic, and the youngest seemed to be in constant telepathic communication with the family dog. My parents stand out in my mind as these two perfect problem-solvers. It seems there was no problem you could come to them with that they couldn't fix or vanquish, whether it be the strap on a roller skate, or the certainty there was a monster hiding in the bedroom closet when the lights went out.

When we were that young, it felt like we were indeed a unit, looking out for one another, the feelings of love, concern, and companionship all melding together under the instinctual, unexamined union called family.

Any sense of accuracy in my memories of Christmases, picnics, and birthday parties, is forever lost in the alchemic process which turns that which can no longer be accurately retrieved into that which we need it to be. Both of my parents have since passed away, my sisters no longer speak to one another, and the success of my current (isolated) relationship with each of my siblings is firmly rooted in my living several hundred miles away from all of them. 

The word "family" should appear in dictionaries right next to the word "imperfect" because that's what they are (even the Smith family left St. Louis for New York in real life). But growing older has shown me that familial love, equally imperfect, can be incredibly durable, flexible, forgiving, and remarkably impervious to time, distance, and the holding of grudges.

When I watch Meet Me in St Louis, I know I'm looking at a vision of family life that never existed anywhere, at any time, ever. But this movie, like a fairy tale or my own hazy, half-remembered, half-idealized, wish-fulfillment memories of my childhood and family; makes me believe, if only for 113 minutes, perfection is possible. And that's what dreams are for.

"I can't believe it. Right here where we live. Right here in St. Louis."

BONUS MATERIAL
The one clear advantage to it taking me so long getting around to seeing Meet Me in St. Louis is that it ultimately afforded me the unforgettable opportunity of seeing it for the first time in the presence of an audience at one of Los Angles' great restored movie houses. The Palace Theater in downtown Los Angeles was built in 1911.
Not only was it a thrill to see this classic on the big screen and experience the collective audience response (applause and huge laughs throughout, and not a dry eye in the house by fadeout) but getting to be inside this magnificent theater was a wholly unforgettable experience.

In 1989, Meet Me in St. Louis was (as is the trend these days) adapted for the Broadway stage. It was nominated for four Tony Awards and looks absolutely insufferable.

A photograph of the actual 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition 

Meet Me In St. Louis opened on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 1944 at the Astor Theater in New York

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014