Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) (Patreon)

Okay, now I'm starting to get it. Minnelli's direction here actually strikes me as a distant cousin to Hawks and Capra, in that he deftly manages a large, variegating ensemble, navigating between the margins and the center. The center, of course, is Judy Garland, who is a very generous performer here, well aware of her starring role but committed enough to her character's family orientation to share the spotlight with folks like Lucille Bremer, Harry Davenport, and especially Margaret O'Brien, whose Tootie doesn't so much steal scenes as periodically drop in from a different, darker film.

As a 1944 film about Missouri in 1903, Meet Me in St. Louis now reads as a kind of twice-removed nostalgia, and what's most interesting about it is that this conservative streak is so frequently disrupted by the strange, interstitial business that makes the movie buzz. The building excitement for the World's Fair is, in part, about hometown pride, the fact that St. Louis will be put on the map in some profound way. But by the end, the Smith family has "domesticated" the fair itself, regarding it as a local phenomenon that they have a claim to in a way no one else can. This mirrors the dad's decision to turn down the New York job, or for that matter the way Rose (Bremer) and Esther (Garland) stop trying to sound sophisticated by dropping bits of French into their everyday speech. The fact that everyone finally settles on "Saint LOOis," rather than "Saint LOOee," as the basic pronunciation is like a final affirmation of middle-America as the axis mundi.

Within this double-whammy of wartime patriotism and yuletide togetherness, St. Louis advocates for a certain brand of pragmatic whimsy. At first, it looks like Rose is going to be denigrated as a spinster, all of 18 years old and no marriage prospects. It's not that she's married off that cancels this sexist impression. It's that she winds up with Warren (Robert Sully), who is a bit of a weirdo. Even the drab John Truitt (Tom Drake), Esther's boy-next-door crush and eventual fiance, is a bit off, incapable of picking up on obvious cues or getting up the gumption to express his feelings for Esther until he's physically attacked. This is a film about weak, ineffectual men (with the exception of Grandpa) who deeply appreciate being moved around the gameboard by smart, motivated women.

I read brief reviews by Mike D'Angelo and Theo Panayides after watching St. Louis, and they are correct. This is barely a narrative film, and it not only moves in fits and starts. It has entire segments, like the Halloween sequence, or the first party at the Smiths' place, that serve no function whatsoever. I mean, they do serve a very basic function, in that they convey the deep connection that the family feels with their community, and tacitly explain why they must not leave. But these particular situations could have been replaced with a dozen others. 

I suppose Minnelli and company are telling the viewer things that the characters already know but have not yet had to articulate to themselves. The anticipation of the World's Fair as an unimaginable event suggests that the Smiths, et al., are waiting to see St. Louis come into its own, their love of the local being externally validated. But all of these moments leading up to the Fair show us that there's no real need to Make St. Louis Great Again. Home is home, and apparently it seldom disappoints.

I should also note that this is the first real exposure I've had to Garland as a performer, aside from The Wizard of Oz, obviously. The sad quaver of her voice -- the way she often sounds like a wave of emotion will throw her just a half-step off-key, but she always pulls it back -- was clearly always remarkable and revelatory. She wasn't a star for nothing. But to hear it in 2021, when every two-bit diva is Auto-Tuned within an inch of her life? It's a sound-beacon of raw authenticity.