The 1948 MGM musical The Pirate finally arrives on DVD today. Here are a few thoughts about this most unusual and wonderful film:
1) Judy Garland portrays Manuela, a sheltered child of privelege in a Caribbean island of the mind. She longs for a life of adventure, yearning to be whisked away by the fearsome pirate Mack The Black, but is instead set to wed the island's staid, respectable governor. When a troup of travelling actors, led by the self-impressed Serafin (Gene Kelly), blow into town, Manuela somehow convinces herself Serafin in Mack in the flesh, and he is only to willing to feed her fantasies. Wacky complications ensue.
2) That's the plot, but that's not the movie. Director Vincente Minnelli bathes all this in a hothouse exoticism, a patently unreal, entirely cinematic dreamscape, a shimmering, artful artifice. The first half of The Pirate has a feverish intensity that links it to such cinematic hallucinations as Peter Ibbetson and Black Narcissus, and even when it turns into door-slamming farce, Minnelli remains in firm control, his staging elegant, his use of the camera masterful. Every color in the sets, every strand of every costume, even the varying hues of the extra's skins (the background players are integrated, very unusual for a film of its era)--all of this seems to be part of the director's grand design.
3) He's greatly helped, it should be noted, by his leads. Gene Kelly, of course, always had more than a touch of self-regard, so he inhabits Serafin as if born to the part. He was such a great dancer--his big ballet number is astonishing (aided by Minnelli's furious reds and blacks) and his solo to Nina will make you want to applaud--it's easy to forget what a great comedic performer he could be, and here his Barrymore-esque blowhard is absolutely inspired.
As for Garland, this is easily her best performance, utterly vulnerable in the film's first half, her sense of longing almost unbearably intense. After she sees through Serefin's ruse, she is snapped back to reality, and she proves herself a masterful farceuse, flinging plates and insults with equal aplomb.
4) But is this the performance she meant to give, or the movie Minnelli intended to make? Garland was famously spiralling out of control during the shooting, causing endless delays, forcing Minnelli to do endless retakes. Was this a movie made in the editing room? Is Garland's intense performance in the early scenes a result of her massive insecurities? Would she have given these line readings, had these dazed, faraway eyes if she had not been heavily medicated and suffering from major depression? Did Minnelli use his own wife's mental deterioration to make his movie better?
5) As great as The Pirate is, it's dogged by the shadow movies it might have been. There's the light, elegant confection it was clearly meant to be, that it intermittently still is. If Garland had been capable of giving 100%, she no doubt would have brought a lighter touch to the early proceedings. This movie would still be blessed with Kelly's acrobatics and Minnelli's gorgeous atmospherics, but it would miss the whiff of darkness it retains.
On the other hand, what if Minnelli had deliberately gone darker? One of Garland's songs, Voodoo, was cut, according to some sources because her performance was simply too intense. What if it had been kept? What if Minnelli had left more evidence of Garland's deterioration throughout the body of the film? What if he'd made it clear that for poor, haunted Manuela, there can never be a happy ending?
6) This is one of my favorites, and I'm glad it's finally available, but I won't be happy until Minnelli's Yolanda And The Thief is also on DVD. Of course, we cultists are never happy...
