A FAMILY AFFAIR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 324, 7 September 1945, Page 18

A FAMILY AFFAIR

| MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

| (M-G-M)

WAS rather disconcerted at first to discover that all the younger people I discussed this film with were of the opinion that it was boring

("Couldn’t see anything in it," "It had no story," and so on), whereas I found it a most agreeable entertainment. Then

I hit on d@ possible explanation, and at the risk of being thought about twice as old as I am must pass it on: none of the above-mentioned younger people was what you might call a family man or woman. Perhaps you need to be one to appreciate this film properly.. For undoubtedly the most appealing feature of Meet Me in St. Louis is its strong sense of happy family life in an era that attached much more importance to family life than ours does. Admittedly there is not much story in the usual cinema sense: just a record of trivial, everyday events in a household of seven Americans named Smith (mother, father, four daughters, and a son) in the’ city of St. Louis during the year 1902-3. Yet Director Vincente Minelli and his colleagues have approached this period and this subject with such sentimental affection, coupled with such technical skill, that they arouse nostalgic memories of a way of living that was much more spacious and gracious and gentle than the present -particularly for people like the Smiths, whose domestic problems do not include that of money. My own memories do not go back nearly as far as this, let me hasten to say, byt it is still possible to feel the nostalgia without having experienced the original. To see this film is like looking at the family photograph album and recalling things your parents told you about life at the turn of. the century. * * * WO of the girls in the Smith family are Judy Garland and the brilliant little Margaret O’Brien. The latter, as usual, walks off with the acting honours: as the youngest Smith she is an adorable little ghoul who periodically insists that her dolls have contracted fatal ailments so that she may have the pleasure of burying them in her backyard cemetery, She also tells the most whopping fibs with angelic candour. The Hallowe’en sequence in which she carries through a preposterous practical joke is notable not only for her acting, but also for the feeling of childish terror and pathos with which the director has imbued it. Judy Garland’s presence in the cast indicates that there is some singing, but you could be deaf and still enjoy’ the film quite a lot, for what really matters is the warmth, naturalness, and gaiety of the atmosphere, the beautiful Technicolourings of the settings, and that sense of family unity which I make no apology for emphasising. I do not mean to decry the music; it is simply that it is so much less important and obtrusive than in the routine musical film. It is, in-fact, given its rightful prominence, and on nearly every occasion arises spontaneously from the action-as, for example, when the two sisters sing while dressing for a party. The Trolley Song is likely to make the biggest hit, but the tune I liked best was the gay little title waltz, probably because it is the catchy and simple kind of tune which, when sung in the bathroom, even I can make sound something like the original. * * * STILL, it is what happens in between the musical items that counts. Nothing of course does happen,. as I have (continued on next page) .-

(continued from previous page) suggested, that is of any real consequence. There are dances and trolleyrides for the young people, flirtations and telephone calls, arguments about the right amount of salt to put into tomato soup, celebrations at Hallowe’en and Christmas, and what looks like becoming a minor family tragedy when father announces that he has accepted a job which will mean that the family must move from St. Louis to New York. The dialogue is ideally suited to the occasion; not wise-cracking, but with a quiet sense of domestic fun, and ‘flavoured with family jokes and those inconsequential conversations that go on in every household, and especially in those where there are young children. My only criticism is that the film is too long: well handled though it is, the narrative does not contain quite enough substance to be stretched to a two-hour length. Still, it is not too long by much.