Kind of a slow day for new releases today (I assume Mike Judge's Idiocracy is well worth seeing, but since Fox never gave it a decent release, it's an unknown entity to me, and masochists and camp addicts can revel in a wonderfully stupid nudist camp double feature from maladroit auteur Dorish Wishman, Nude On The Moon and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist), so it seems like a good day to pine for one of the movies I'd most like to own on DVD, Vincente Minnelli's peerless The Pirate.
Notorious among devotees of MGM musicals for the bad luck involved in its production, The Pirate might actually have benefitted from the odd circumstances of its creation. MGM bought the rights to a straight farce, went through about a zillion drafts before deciding to turn the whole thing into a musical, and luckily turned the whole thing over to producer Arthur freed and director Minnelli.
This must have seemed like heaven to Minnelli, a chance to create a Carribean purely of the imagination, an opportunity to let his amazing visual sense run wild. But first he had two obstacles to deal with: The studio's choice to write the score was Cole Porter, and the female lead would be his wife, Judy Garland.
Porter was in a down period at that time, and his final contribution to the film consists of only four songs, an awfully small number for a musical. The general opinion over the years has been that the songs aren't up to Porter's usual standards, but Mack The Black (in which Porter, a closeted gay, includes a line about "flaming trails of masculinty") and Be A Clown are terrific, and all the songs fit the movie.
A much bigger problem was Garland, who was just entering her drama queen diva stage. She was dropping pills and boozing like nobody's business, frequently didn't bother showing up for work, and oh, not incidentally, her marriage to Minnelli was starting to unravel. (At one point, she accused her decidedly hetero co-star, Gene Kelly, of having an affair with Minnelli!) The movie had to be shot around her a lot, and even when she was there, she wasn't always there.
Surprisingly, both of these things ultimately work in the movie's favor. Without the obligation to cram a bunch of song numbers in, Minnelli works slowly and creates a dreamy, languid atmosphere. And Garland's neurotic performance contributes a great deal to these early scenes, as her longing for a more exciting, more dramatic life, played out against a riot of Technicolor stylings, becomes genuinely touching. Later, she snaps to life when she plays opposite Kelly, and the film turns into a door-slamming farce, which both actors carry off beautifully. Add in Kelly's splendid choreography, so perfectly aided by Minnelli's expertly judged camera and cutting, and you have a shining example of all that was good about studio filmmaking in the forties.
But you won't find it on DVD. Much of Minnelli's most interesting work (Yolanda And the Thief, Some Came Running) remains unavailable and little known to the general public. Yet special edition discs exist of everything Michael Bay has ever done. Go figure.
