 |  |
| Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) | |
| Background
This gem of cinematic, picture-postcard Americana and youthful romance, is richly filmed in Technicolor. It marked the beginning of the golden age of MGM musicals (and producer Arthur Freed's unit), and ultimately became the second most successful film for MGM (behind Gone With the Wind (1939)). The story is based on the book of the same name from Sally Benson's memoirs of her life in St. Louis, Missouri from 1903-4 - they were recalled and written in multiple issues of The New Yorker Magazine from 1941-1942 (originally published under the title "5135 Kensington" and eventually gathered together as The Kensington Stories). The charming stories, a dozen in all to represent each of the twelve months of the year, are expressed in the film in its musical numbers. The film abandoned the 'put-on-a-show' mentality of so many other backstage song/dance films. Its songs and wonderful performances are carefully and naturally integrated into the story of the close-knit family's day-to-day life, and serve to advance the action and plot from one season to the next. This most popular and financially-successful film was produced by the legendary Arthur Freed and directed by its star's future husband, newcomer Vincente Minnelli (who married 23 year-old Judy Garland a year later on June 15, 1945 - it was Garland's second marriage). The slice-of-life musical was only Minnelli's third film (after the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (1943) and the musi-comedy I Dood It (1943) with Red Skelton) and it was Minnelli's first full-length film in color. After their marriage, Garland and Minnelli also worked together on The Clock (1945) and The Pirate (1948). Meet Me in St. Louis was nominated for four Academy Awards (without any Oscar wins): Best Screenplay (Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe), Best Color Cinematography (George Folsey), Best Song ("The Trolley Song" with music and lyrics by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin), and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture (Georgie Stoll). The film's awards promotion was subverted by MGM's support of its suspense thriller and gothic melodrama Gaslight (1944). However, young star Margaret O'Brien was awarded a Special (miniature) Oscar as the most outstanding child actress of the year. And this film marked the first significant film role, and probably her career-best effort, for beautiful actress Judy Garland since The Wizard of Oz (1939). Structurally, the film is a series of coming-of-age vignettes (four in number): different acts representing the seasons from summer 1903 to spring 1904 that conclude in the year of the St. Louis World's Fair/Exposition. Each segment marks changes and rites of passage - and is introduced by a filigreed tintype from the Smith family album - each static, initially sepia-toned image turns into color and comes to life. Although the Winter segment is one of the shortest vignettes, the film is still considered a favorite Christmas movie. Plot SynopsisSummer, 1903 The First Vignette opens with a static view of a greeting card (or family album snapshot) picturing a lovely, sepia-colored Victorian house in St. Louis, Missouri. When the camera zooms in, the picture springs into an animated, full-color enlargement, showing the mansard-roofed home with dormer windows and a veranda, surrounded by green lawn. The camera tracks down the unpaved street, following an open, horse-drawn wagon carrying Circle Star Beer. It then turns left to track up the lawn, following a young man (son Lon) riding his bicycle onto the Smith house's lawn. The summer scene dissolves into the kitchen. There over the stove, happy housewife Mrs. Anna Smith (Mary Astor) is making ketchup, testing and critiquing its taste with Katie (Marjorie Main), the household's maid. [The opening scene is centered around everyone in the family tasting the ketchup simmering on the kitchen stove, and humming the film's title song.] Two of the five children enter, only son Alonzo "Lon" Jr. (Henry H. Daniels, Jr.), casually humming a bit of the tune of the title song after setting down a load of groceries. (The title song is sung by the whole family in the house.) Then, second-youngest daughter Agnes (child star Joan Carroll) comes in, her bloomers still wet from swimming. As she walks through the kitchen, through the hallway and up the stairs, she picks up the song: "Meet Me In St. Louis." Inside the bathroom, her Grandpa Prophater (Harry Davenport) (Mrs. Smith's father) continues the refrain. He crosses paths with Agnes in the upstairs landing, and then continues singing into his room, where he tries on samples from his exotic lodge-cap collection. He goes over to the window when he hears a foursome arriving, completing the chorus. Outside, he sees auburn-haired Smith daughter Esther (Judy Garland, a twenty-two year old playing a seventeen year old - and off-screen already showing signs of future neuroticism), and her friends pull up in front of the house in a pony cart. Alighting from the cart, Esther carries a tennis racket and enters the kitchen. Back in the kitchen, more taste-testing results in different opinions about the ketchup recipe. Esther whispers a secret request to Katie - exhorting her to arrange to have dinner served an hour earlier than usual, something that normally wouldn't be approved. Katie snaps at Esther's white lie after permission is granted:
Katie asks Esther why she was asked to lie. Esther explains that eldest sister - a second auburn-haired daughter Rose (Lucille Bremer in her film debut), unmarried at twenty, expects to receive a long-distance call at 6:30 pm from New York City from a far-off, admiring beau named Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully). Rose needs privacy to maneuver a proposal out of her boyfriend, because the phone is located in the dining room: "She may be loathe to say the things a girl's compelled to say to get a proposal out of a man." Katie comments on Rose's use of the telephone - a new invention:
Katie announces the arrival of a coquettish Rose, sauntering up to the front steps of the house: "There's the poor old maid now." Standing on the neighboring lawn is a young, handsome Boy-Next-Door dressed in white with a pipe firmly in his teeth, a new neighbor named John Truett (Tom Drake). Rose gazes at him, trying to attract a glance while entering the house. Rose quickly persuades Esther to join her and stand on the front porch to look at the boy. Attempting to be non-chalant, both desperately want to be noticed and admired. Unsuccessful in attracting his attention, he is oblivious to them and imperviously wanders inside. Rose thinks: "He's not very neighborly, I must say." They also go inside their house, where they anticipate the evening's events. When Esther reminds Rose of her fateful phone call, stuck-up Rose disdainfully mentions her disinterest in boys before drifting upstairs to wash her hair:
Unconvinced of that fact, a winsome Esther gazes toward the camera with a dreamy look, cued up to sing a soliloquy of longing with a lush, rich voice, "The Boy Next Door." She muses about her beloved:
Esther ambles over to the window seat, sitting and looking out over the neighbor's place in the direction of the Boy-Next-Door ("at 5133") as she continues singing about her crush on the teenager who lives closeby:
During the playing of the song's melody, Esther primps and prances in front of the hallway mirror, and then does a little dance with herself at the foot of the stairs. She returns to her window vantage point to repeat the final two lines, lovingly photographed with a rapturous closeup of her secret longing expressed in song:
With a last lingering glance out the window, she slowly releases a translucent, white lace muslin curtain at the edge of the window - bewitchingly, it falls in front of her as the song ends. A closeup of the tureen of the batch of ketchup being stirred in the kitchen dissolves into view. Fussing continues over the ketchup's taste when Grandpa pronounces it "too thick." Agnes bursts into the kitchen looking for her cat named Little Babbie. No-nonsense Katie brags about having kicked it down the cellar stairs, joking:
To Agnes' relief, the cat is found closeby in the kitchen. While preparing cabbage at the sink, Mrs. Smith advises Rose about her anticipated phone call: "If I were you, I wouldn't commit myself one way or another...after all, we know very little about him. Why, we haven't even met his folks." She also suggests keeping it a secret from Mr. Smith, due home shortly from work: "Not a word of this to Papa. You know how he plagues the girls about their beaus." Esther enters the kitchen and asks where 'Tootie,' the youngest Smith family member is. Nonchalantly, Mrs. Smith replies: "Oh I suppose she's working on the ice wagon." In the next scene on Kensington Avenue, precocious five year old 'Tootie' (Margaret O'Brien) is shown blissfully happy, helping the ice man Mr. Neely (Chill Wills) on his horse-drawn ice-wagon rounds. She sits on the back of the wagon, sucking a piece of ice and singing a few bars of "Brighten the Corner." 'Tootie' joins Mr. Neely in the front seat, where they begin a marvelous discussion about the near-death state of her favorite doll, Margaretha. 'Tootie' is pleasurably interested in gruesome games and the macabre, but frets about her pale-looking doll. She is seriously discussing her mortally-sick doll's fate and preparing to bury it:
The conversation shifts to a new subject - the town of "St. Louis" - Mr. Neely mispronounces it. She corrects him and tells him the proper pronunciation. Then, when he calls it a "grand old town," she again corrects him, expressing her hometown pride and exulting in the coming fair:
Back in the Smith household, Esther (singing and waltzing in her bloomers) and Rose (on the family upright piano in the parlor) are performing a spirited, reprised rendition of "Meet Me in St. Louis." At the start of the second chorus, Esther rejoins Rose at the keyboard where they sing in close harmony together. In a low-angle shot tilting upwards, the two girls are to the right of the frame, with a ceramic miniature of twin Victorian damsels above the piano to the left of the frame. Breaking the spell, a very hot and grumpy Mr. Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames), the well-to-do lawyer and head of the household trudges up to the house after work at the office and squelches their performance in the parlor: "For heaven's sakes, stop that screeching!" Wiping his sweaty brow, he collapses into a chair and mutters:
His day has been miserable - he's lost a case. Esther isn't very sympathetic and offers a practical solution: "Well, Papa, if losing a case depresses you so, why don't you quit practicing law and go into another line of business?" As master of the house, he blows up again when he learns that dinner will be served an hour early. He refuses to be coerced into an early dinner, asserts his authority and disrupts carefully-laid plans: "Dinner will be at 6:30!" He stomps off for a cool, soaking, restorative bath upstairs. At dinner time, the concerned family gathers around the dinner table trying to rush the meal while they glance up at the still-silent telephone. When the 'Lord and Master' of the house arrives, after slipping on one of 'Tootie's' carelessly-discarded skates, he wants a leisurely meal, but Katie the maid hurriedly speeds everyone through each course. He answers and then hangs up the phone the first time it rings, chided by Esther and then informed: "You've just ruined Rose's chance to get married, that's all...That was Warren Sheffield calling long-distance to propose." The only member of the family unaware of the expected phone call is Papa, and he feels like an outsider:
When the phone rings a second time, Rose answers and hesitantly (but yelling throughout in order to be heard) speaks to Warren while the entire family hangs on her every word. During the phone conversation, Mrs. Smith closes the window to keep the neighbors from overhearing. Rose is unable to coax Warren to propose, though Esther looks on the bright side and breaks the ice: "Well, I'll bet there isn't another girl in St. Louis who's had a Yale man call her long-distance just to inquire about her health." In a letter, Rose invites next door neighbor John Truett (spelled Truitt in the letter) to her Princeton University-bound brother Lon's going-away party, to be held in the Smith's parlor. While dressing upstairs the evening of the party, Esther confides to Rose:
Esther makes a grand entrance down the staircase, greets a few guests, and then deliberately backs into her brother who is talking to John Truett. Esther and John are finally introduced. The youthful dancing party begins in the cramped confines of the Smith parlor. Young Lon participates in the music making - he and Esther sing and the group dances to a lively hoe-down called "Skip to My Lou" - a traditional production number. By the end of the dance, Esther has been gently pushed into John's arms. In their nightclothes at the foot of the stairs, John discovers 'Tootie' and Agnes watching the party hosted by their big sisters: "There are mice in the house, two of them." Tootie is allowed to stay up and sing a song for her elders. She chooses "I Was Drunk Last Night, Dear Mother" and shows off, to everyone's delight:
Esther joins a night-gowned 'Tootie' in a spontaneous, delightful little song and cakewalk to "Under the Bamboo Tree," complete with straw hats and canes in a home-style minstrel shuffle. Later, as the guests depart, Esther has hidden Truett's hat as a way to detain him and make him the last one to leave. As they say goodbye and shake hands many times together, she makes an "untoward request." She asks him to accompany her throughout the house to turn off the gas lights - a beautifully-executed scene in which the camera moves non-stop from light to light. As the lights are extinguished in the parlor, the dining room and the landing, she shyly courts the boy next door in the darkness - hoping (in vain) to be offered a goodnight kiss. As she gazes at him with undisguised love, he compliments her: "You don't need any beauty sleep." She renders a sweet old song to him: "Over the Bannister." At its conclusion, he shakes her hand goodbye one more time, awkwardly complimenting her a second time:
In the final scene of the summer vignette, Esther joins an expectant crowd of young people (the ladies are sporting colorful flowery hats and shirt-waist dresses) - they are friends that have gathered for a picnic to ride a trolley bound for the under-construction fairgrounds (the fair is still six months away). She is wearing a black outfit trimmed with white without a hat, nervously noticing and despairing that John, her love, hasn't arrived yet. As they begin to ride off - to the "clang, clang" of the trolley bells, they all belt out "The Trolley Song." It's an extravagant five-minute production number:
Without singing, an anxious and tense Esther moves around the train amidst the swirl of pastel colors and song, continuing to look for John. He is late as usual from basketball practice and must run after the trolley to catch it. She is relieved when he runs after the trolley, catches it and boards - she happily finishes the song on a high note, leading all of her friends in her musical tale of flirtation with a handsome man:
[In a scene filmed but later excised from the final release of the film, Esther and John stroll through and explore the unfinished fairgrounds - John carries her in his arms through one of the muddier sections of the grounds. During the walk, Esther sings Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Boys and Girls Like You and Me."] == Plot Synopsis (continued)
The Second Vignette also opens with a greeting card view of the Smith house. The first shot of the house is at nighttime in late October at Halloween - the Gothic windows are lit with a eerie yellowish light. Upstairs, Agnes and 'Tootie' are getting costumed for trick-or-treating for 'Tootie's' favorite holiday ('Tootie' is always morbidly obsessed with death and murder.) Their plan is to gleefully take revenge on an allegedly-mean and hateful St. Louis neighbor, Mr. Braukoff (Mayo Newhall):
In the kitchen, the two girls set the mood for the scary night. They frighten Agnes with their suitably gruesome costumes - 'Tootie' is dressed as an unburied "horrible ghost," who "died of a broken heart" (with an oversized coat, bowler hat, and long rat's nose) and Agnes with a white ghost's mask is "a terrible drunken ghost...murdered in a den of thieves." 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, while telling them how awful they are. They join other neighborhood children who are erecting a huge bonfire [with furniture that they've stolen for fuel?]. Deciding who they will take revenge on, the children discover that nobody wants to "take on" the local ogre Mr. Braukoff, so they choose other targets instead. Agnes, a representative of the older kids, dashes 'Tootie's' plans when she tells her younger sister that she is "too little" to take part. In an exactingly-executed sequence that builds up a frightening, creepy mood, 'Tootie' bravely volunteers for the job - it is her bewitching, nighttime Halloween adventure. She is warned that if unsuccessful, "the banshees will haunt you forever." She goes off alone, approaching the fearsome Braukoff house. Her walk is filmed in one long traveling shot in front of her as she proceeds stealthily to the victim's front door. Quaking and shivering with fear in the darkness of the night, a horse's neigh makes her jump with fright. Her eyes widening with terror, she builds up her courage, creeps onto the porch and peers in the front window - she becomes more horrified by the sight of Mr. and Mrs. Braukoff sitting in their living room. Angular shots accentuate their strangeness. She rings the doorbell, stares straight at her victim for a fearful moment - filmed at a slightly-upward angle to approximate her own view, flings flour in his glowering face, shouts "I hate you, Mr. Braukoff," shrieks, and then scampers off to safety, (filmed with a reverse traveling shot). To provide another more realistic perspective, Mr. Braukoff wipes the flour from his face with a handkerchief while his bulldog licks up the spilled flour on the doorstep. 'Tootie's' tattered costume flaps behind her. Successful and triumphant, she rejoins the older children, exclaiming with pride: "I killed him." They gather around and witness Agnes' account of the deed:
Immediately accepted for her daring deed, Tootie is asked to pile on more debris on the kids' bonfire. She exclaims:
Back at the Smith residence on the same evening, Rose is escorted home by her latest conquest - young Colonel Darly (Hugh Marlowe) - to have ice cream (at the Halloween party). Esther marvels over Rose's latest beau, extending her congratulations. Moments later, they are interrupted by Tootie's screams off-screen down by the trolley. Frightened and injured, she arrives home bloodied and sobbing. She is carried into the house and surrounded by the concerned family, as she whimpers and wails: "He tried to kill me." Mrs. Smith decides to summon the doctor rather than the head of the household, declaring "What could he do?" 'Tootie' alleges that John Truett attacked her. A close-up of Esther's face reveals her horror and shock and she first reacts that it's "a monstrous falsehood." When the doctor arrives and examines 'Tootie', he finds a tuft of Truett's hair clenched in her fist, announcing: "She must have had quite a struggle fighting him off." With that, Esther runs next door (plucked violin strings play "The Boy Next Door" on the soundtrack) and without explanation attacks Truett, punches him, knocks him down, and bites him, as she exclaims:
When Esther returns home, she tells Rose: "I got him. He didn't even have a chance to scratch me." 'Tootie' has already been attentively pampered and cared for. And then Agnes rushes in the bedroom, telling 'Tootie' what had happened down at the trolley, where they had both stuffed an old dress to look like a body, and laid it on the trolley tracks to sabotage the trolley car. 'Tootie' gleefully exclaims: "It looked just like a body, a live body too." Rose is upset with Agnes:
So Truett had fought with Agnes and 'Tootie' only to try to hide them from the police. 'Tootie' thinks Truett's precautionary concerns were unnecessary: "No police men ever pay attention to girls." Esther is enraged at 'Tootie' for fooling her: "You're the most deceitful, horrible, sinful creature I ever saw, and I don't ever want to have anything to do with you again." Esther again rushes next door to John's front porch to reconcile with him - he accepts her apology: "If you're not busy tomorrow night, could you beat me up again?" He grabs her and she finally receives her first kiss from him, after which she retorts: "You've got a mighty strong grip for a boy." On the home front, the convalescing 'Tootie' is brought downstairs for ice cream with the family, telling all:
Esther enters the room, swooning over her first kiss from John. Her mother tells her: "Your ice cream is melting." Agnes recites a cute poem about Esther's budding romance:
All are happily eating ice cream when Papa arrives home with a present of sweets for his wife, and the news that he will be sent to New York on business. The family doesn't at first understand the implication. Grandpa promises to protect everyone in his absence:
Mr. Smith makes it clear that he will be sent permanently. He has received a promotion and will be head of a new office there. The family is shocked by the news. The entire family will have to move to New York City right after Christmas. 'Tootie' contemplates what the uprooting means:
The family is stunned, entirely disrupted and upset the news of the move, especially Rose and Esther, whose romances with beaux, friendships, and educational plans are threatened. And Esther is also depressed and aghast because they have to go away before the St. Louis fair. 'Tootie' and Agnes will lose their playmates, Katie will lose her job, and Mrs. Smith's home will be uprooted. [The threatening move also hints at the loss of an uncomplicated way of life or the end of an era of innocence in American life.] Mr. Smith defends his firm decision to move in a few months:
Mr. Smith still has the appetite to eat a slice of Katie's special Halloween cake - he is the only one in the family who can eat during this traumatic time. Rose is appalled by the thought of living in a New York apartment rather than a house: "Rich people have houses. People like us live in flats, hundreds of flats in one building." And 'Tootie' tells everyone with a wavering voice: "I'd rather be poor if we could only stay here. I'd rather go with the orphalins at the orphalins home." After everyone has excused themselves from the table, only Mr. and Mrs. Smith are left. Having incured the wrath of the entire family, he looks over at his wife, and reproves her for ingratitude: "Aren't you afraid to stay here alone with a criminal? That's what I'm being treated like." In the parlor, Mrs. Smith sympathetically stands by her husband and accepts his decision. In a touching and moving scene expressing their family unity, inseparability and loyalty, she determinedly goes to the parlor piano and starts playing "You and I." He sings to Mrs. Smith's accompaniment, first struggling with the high register until she lowers and transposes it: "I'll put it down in your key." The rest of the family - gracefully accepting their father's decision - slowly gathers together again, drifting downstairs and into the dining room to pick up a plate with a slice of cake. Everyone listens calmly and pensively to the music - rallying together, unifying and peacefully assembling. When 'Tootie' tries to grab a piece of cake from Esther's plate, she blocks the attempt - but then lovingly feeds her younger sister with a piece from her fork; Grandpa prepares a cribbage game at the table; the others gather in the parlor to eat their pieces of Halloween cake. For the last chorus of the song, Anna accompanies her husband in beautiful, two-part harmony:
== Plot Synopsis (continued)
The Third Vignette opens with yet another greeting card picture of the Smith house, now fading into a winter scene of snow. It is a nostalgic, Currier-and-Ives image of a horse-drawn sleigh, the sound of sleigh bells, and youngsters sledding down the lawns of Kensington Avenue in the winter sunshine. Behind the Smith house, the children are building a family of snow people. The older children, Lon, Esther, and Rose discuss their preparations for the big Christmas Ball that evening (their "last Christmas dance in St. Louis"), and argue over their lack of dates. They insult an "Eastern snob," Lucille Ballard, caricatured as one of the uglier snow people, who is escorting Rose's beau Warren. Rose is left without a date and doesn't wish to be ignominiously escorted by her brother - that would make her "the laughing stock of St. Louis." But eventually, Lon is coerced into taking his sister to the dance. Upstairs in their bedroom, Rose tightens Esther's corset strings and helps her struggle into the corset until she can barely breathe - she feels like "the ossified woman in the sideshow." Esther doesn't feel she can wear the asphyxiating corset, but Rose convinces her to steal herself for the night of conquest:
John arrives at the door with "some bad news" for Esther - he arrived too late at the tailor shop to pick up his tuxedo, and it was locked up. He is unable to escort her to the dance. Esther is heartbroken: "This is ghastly!" Esther is left dateless and breaks into tears, explaining that she will stay home to pack for their move from St. Louis. She runs to cry on her bed, sobbing to Rose: "I wish I were dead, that's all," until Grandpa gallantly offers to escort her, instead of having brother Lon take the two of them. The elegant ball scene is introduced by a spectacular tracking-through-a-window shot. Everyone soon pairs off with his/her desired partner, Lon with Lucille Ballard (June Lockhart), and Rose with Warren Sheffield. When Esther's sabotage of Lucille Ballard's dance card is no longer necessary, Esther is left stranded with a dance-card list of motley losers. After many waltzes, Esther is finally rescued by her Grandpa: "You're the first human being I've danced with all evening." She is nostalgic, sad and painfully reminded by the musical selection of the dance band - "Home, Sweet Home" - of her family's impending departure. She buries her head in his shoulder:
As they waltz around and behind a massive, decorated Christmas tree, Esther emerges from the other side, not in her Grandpa's arms, but in the arms of John Truett - albeit late, but properly dressed. The next scene finds the couple under an icy-blue moonlit, snowy scene in front of a leafless tree, where John proposes marriage - but the mood is melancholy because Esther's parting to New York seems inevitable:
But Esther is hesitant, sad and confused, and her feelings fluctuate madly:
Her family's imminent plans to move, their future college plans and their youth cast a long shadow over their love. Esther tells him tentatively that her family's move to New York may not disrupt them: "Even if I did go to New York, we could still work something out somehow, couldn't we?" As church bells sound, she wishes him a "Merry Christmas," hugs him, and then runs from him to leave him alone in the dark. Esther returns home and goes upstairs, finding 'Tootie' waiting up late Christmas Eve night and sitting by her wintry windowsill - her sister is worried and wondering about the prospect of moving from their beloved home:
Esther reassures her and places her warming wrap around her shivering sister: "Oh, you can't fool him. He can find anybody he wants to find." Obviously upset, 'Tootie' sadly declares: "I'm taking all my dolls, the dead ones too. I'm taking everything." When Esther reminds her that she must leave behind her snow people she has built in their yard, there is a haunting view of their backyard lawn full of Christmas snowmen, seen from her bedroom window. In one of the most memorable scenes of the film, Esther consoles her distraught sister 'Tootie' - compassionately and sweetly singing the wistful song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" while at the window. Her solemn voice is accompanied by the tinkling of 'Tootie's' antique monkey music box. Lovingly and tenderly photographed, Esther touchingly sings of hope:
Sobbing, 'Tootie' is most affected and traumatized by the thought of moving and abandoning her snow people - a group that represents her once-happy family. To show her emotional upset and misery after the song is finished, she runs in her nightgown from the house - and hysterically and maniacally decapitates the Christmas snowmen. She bludgeons and destroys them because they cannot go to New York with the family: "Nobody's gonna have them. Not everybody's going to New York. I'd rather kill them if we can't take them with us." Esther vainly attempts to comfort her utterly despairing sister by kneeling and embracing her. 'Tootie' drowns out her words with her ceaseless crying:
From an upstairs bedroom window where golden light shines down on the snow, Mr. Smith - all alone and unnoticed - witnesses the wreckage on the lawn - and within his distraught daughter. Agonizing and stunned by what he has seen, Mr. Smith moves downstairs, noticing the staircase's grandfather clock covered with protective newspapers for the move, and bare spots on the wall where colorful family pictures used to hang. Seeing the house in disarray, he realizes the travail of relocating to New York. He also views Esther leading 'Tootie' up to bed. In his accustomed way, he sits in his usual armchair in the parlor, puts a cigar in his mouth and lights it with a golden-glowing match. While the musical soundtrack plays the opening bars of the title song, he holds the match until it burns his fingers - and pricks his conscience. With a start, he extinguishes the match and calls out "Anna, Anna," and then summons the family together downstairs. After reconsidering, his first words to his family - assembled in a group - are:
Anna responds: "We haven't rotted yet, Lonnie." Mr. Smith has decided to compromise with his family and stay in St. Louis after all, refusing his company's promotion regardless of the work prospects and other consequences. The moment of revelation, shock, and jubilation peaks when Warren Sheffield rings the bell, enters, and quickly blurts out his marriage proposal to Rose:
Before a delighted Rose can say anything other than "Merry Christmas," Warren vanishes. Typically ignorant of his daughters' romances, Mr. Smith doesn't know who the young man is - he tells Rose: "I'd like to meet that boy sometime." Esther thanks her father for "the nicest Christmas present anybody could ask for." With the sounds of the familiar Christmas carol "Noel" playing on the soundtrack, Mr. Smith comforts and embraces his relieved wife in the foreground, while the children excitedly open presents in the background. (They will all be able to attend the opening of the World's Fair in the city, and the romances and love-lives of the older girls will flourish.) Spring, 1904 The briefest of the vignettes, the Fourth Vignette opens with a view of the Smith house, now surrounded by signs of blossoming spring. The greeting card view fades in on 5135 Kensington Avenue, where all the Smith girls are sparklingly dressed in their best white finery outside the house. The older girls join their suitors in a horse-drawn carriage that will take them to the inaugural opening of the St. Louis "Louisiana Purchase" Exposition. The other members of the family board a second carriage. At the fairgrounds, Esther, who is accompanied by fiancee John at her side, exclaims:
The Smith family with their fiancees watch in awe as the famous electric lights of the Palace of Electricity illuminate (one by one) the concourse. Family members marvel at the fair:
For the final fadeout, Esther proudly delivers the last line of the film - St. Louis is the magical center of the world's attention:
== | |
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) is a delightful, classic, nostalgic, poignant, and romanticized musical film - and one of the greatest musicals ever made. It tells the story of a turn-of-the-century family in suburban, midwestern St. Louis of 1903, who live in a stylish Edwardian home at 5135 Kensington Avenue. The city, and the well-to-do Smith family (with four beautiful daughters), is on the verge of hosting (and celebrating) the arrival of the spectacular 1904 World's Fair. However, the family's head of the house is beckoned to New York due to a job promotion - an uprooting move that threatens to indelibly change the lives of the family members forever. Filmed during WWII, the decision to remain in St. Louis in the film's conclusion affirmed that nothing will be altered for the American family.
Winter, 1903
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment