Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

 

Meet Me in St. Louis follows a year in the life of the Smith family, beginning in the summer of 1903, several months before the opening of the St. Louis World’s Fair (technically, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition). While the Smiths do have a son, (Lon Jr., played by Henry H. Daniels Jr.), he is quickly dispatched to Princeton so that his sisters (well, three of them…well, really, mostly just two of them) can become the narrative focus. They all live a rather idyllic existence, and much of the film is taken up with simple everyday moments of their lives. The eldest sister, Rose (played by the luminous Lucille Bremer), keeps hoping that her beau will propose. The teenage Esther (Judy Garland in one of her best roles) tries to catch the attention of the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake). The youngest daughter, Tootie (Margaret O’Brien, quite effective for such a young performer), has a couple of adventures involving Halloween pranks. The tomboyish Agnes (Joan Carroll) doesn’t get much individual screen time, but juggling the plots of five children, not to mention parents and friends, would be challenging. Most of the main narrative is really quite charming in its depiction of everyday life for a middle-class family right after the turn of the last century, and the colorful cinematography provides a luminosity that’s seldom been replicated. It’s really only the announcement by Mr. Smith (the always reliable Leon Ames) that he is moving the entire family to New York after Christmas that pushes the narrative in a melancholier direction. The rest of the family comes around, of course, but they are initially saddened by how their lives are likely going to be overturned by the move. They won’t even be in town for the arrival of the World’s Fair in the spring! Of course, the dramatic tension and all of the personal crises prompted by the father’s announcement will be resolved; it is an MGM musical, after all. Meet Me in St. Louis is quite the showcase for the talents of Garland and O’Brien, in particular, and they are ably supported by the some of the best of the stable of supporting actors who were always well-cast in the numerous roles they were given to play. Here, among others, Mary Astor is the embodiment of motherly affection as Mrs. Smith, Henry Davenport makes the perfect grandfather, and Marjorie Main brings just the right amount of sassiness to the role of the family’s maid, Katie. And then there are the wonderful songs, some of which became a part of Garland’s repertoire for the rest of her career: “The Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Overall, Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the best embodiments of the kinds of stellar musicals created during the studio era by some of the most talented filmmakers at the height of their skills.

Oscar Win: Honorary Award for Best Juvenile Performer (Margaret O’Brien for Meet Me in St. Louis, The Canterville Ghost, and Music for Millions)

Oscar Nominations: Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Original Song (“The Trolley Song”)

Gaslight (1944)

They don't make films like Gaslight, nominated for Best Picture of 1944, anymore, and frankly, today's film-makers should just stop trying. You'll likely never be able to create a sense of tension as effectively as director George Cukor and his talented cast did with this film. I'd like to call this the best Alfred Hitchcock film that Hitchcock didn't make, but I have a feeling that would offend some of my friends who, like me, are huge fans of the master of suspense. What you have instead is a beautifully filmed, well-acted thriller set in Victorian England (with all of its requisite fog).

Ingrid Bergman plays Paula Alquist, a young woman who moves to Italy after the mysterious murder of her aunt, a famous opera singer. While in Italy, Paula tries her own hand at singing opera, but recognizing that she is not as talented as her aunt, she decides not to pursue a career in music. She herself is instead pursued by the accompanist who plays the piano at her singing lessons, Gregory Anton. I guess when you have Charles Boyer chasing after you, you don't tend to say no, and it's only a matter of time before the two of them are married at Lake Cuomo and planning her return to England.

Gregory wants to take Paula home to London to live in her aunt's house in Thornton Square; we don't understand until much later why he's so adamant about taking her back to a place where she has experienced such pain. The house at #9 has been sitting vacant for the ten years that have elapsed since her aunt's murder, and walking back into the home clearly makes Paula nervous. She masks her fears by trying to show Gregory some of the more intriguing mementos there, including a remarkable portrait of her aunt in the role of Empress Theodora and the contents of a curio cabinet filled with items she had collected, including a signed glove. Claiming that the items would upset her, Gregory moves a great deal of the furnishings to the attic and locks them away from Paula.

Before long, things begin to take an even stranger turn. Gregory is prone to irrational moments, such as when he grabs a letter from her hand before she can read it too carefully. He also keeps telling her that she's forgetful and is prone to losing things. So paranoid does he make her that Paula never wants to go out of the house. We start to realize that Gregory is deliberately trying to drive his wife mad, particularly after we see him hide his watch in her purse. She's had a series of incidents where objects appear in places where they are not supposed to be, and she's begun to question her sanity.

Joseph Cotton, who is regularly appearing on this blog thanks to his prolific career, plays a Scotland Yard inspector who's trying to locate some missing jewels that were given to Alice Alquist, Paula's aunt, by a European monarch. It's considered a dead case (so to speak) by everyone else, but he befriends Nancy, the new housemaid that Gregory has hired, in order to find out what she might know about the goings-on at Thornton Square. Nancy is played with delicious glee by a very young Angela Lansbury. She's a hoot to watch, particularly when she's blatantly flirting with the master of the house (who flirts right back). You begin to feel that Nancy might know a lot more than she's willing to let on.

The climax is really too intriguing to spoil. I'm sure you've probably seen the image of Bergman holding a knife over Boyer, who's tied to a chair. How he gets that way and what she does to him are just a bit too much fun for me to ruin for you. I know that had someone like Hitchcock made this film, it would have had a few more surprises than Cukor and the three screenwriters are able and/or interested in pulling off, but I do think the ending is completely satisfying.

All of the performers are top-notch. Bergman won the Oscar that year for Best Actress, and she's so good here at depicting Paula's mixed emotions. Boyer is her acting equal, though, managing to be charming at times and intensely cruel at others. He lost to Bing Crosby playing a priest in Going My Way, and frankly, I don't see how the Academy could even compare the two roles given the range that Boyer manages to convey. I have already mentioned Lansbury and Cotton, but I'd like to add the great Dame May Whitty as a nosy neighbor to the list of solid performances here. Whitty provides many of the comic moments of the film, and it's a pleasure to watch her in the few scenes she gets. She and the rest of the cast make Gaslight a film worth seeing and enjoying.

Since You Went Away (1944)

Since You Went Away, which was nominated for Best Picture of 1944, is a war movie that is set on the homefront. It's about what happens to the people who are left behind during wartime, the family members who have to learn to cope without always knowing where their loved ones are. This is an epic film in many ways, covering several years during World War II and several generations of one family. Since You Went Away was pretty unusual for its time, a film that showed that everyone, whether fighting directly in battle or not, must face sacrifices during wartime, and as such, it is a worthy addition to the list of Oscar-nominated films from the era.

The film begins as Anne Hilton (Claudette Colbert) returns from seeing her husband Tim leave for the war. She and her two daughters, Jane (Jennifer Jones) and Bridget (Shirley Temple), began to adjust to life without him by taking in a boarder and cutting corners wherever possible, including finding other employment for their maid Fidelia (Hattie McDaniel). Anne spends some time with a friend of the family who is in the Navy, Tony (Joseph Cotton), and Jane, after initially thinking that she loves Tony, meets and falls in love with a young soldier, Bill (Robert Walker), who is trying to prove to his grandfather that he is worthy of the family name. The grandfather, Colonel Smollett (Monty Woolley), is quite conveniently the boarder in the Hilton home.

You'll see from those names in parenthesis above that this film has an all-star cast, and they are all excellent here. Colbert is a warm presence, a woman who tries to keep her family together despite the enormity of the sadness she feels when her husband is gone. Jones is very charming as a beautiful young girl who has to grow into a woman during the course of the film. She faces a series of devastating events for someone so young, and Jones is particularly good at depicting the quickness with which young women can change emotions. Walker is very funny as the overly polite young man who wants so desperately to get approval from his only remaining family member. His scenes at the train station with Jones are some of the best of the film. I know that the scene involving the train's departure has been parodied numerous times over the years, but it still feels fresh here, thanks to Jones and Walker.

There are some interesting cameos here. Guy Madison, surely one of the most handsome men ever to be in the movies, plays a sailor on his last night in town who befriends Jones and Walker's characters. The legendary Alla Nazimova, the silent screen star whose life was as flamboyant as her film roles, has a bit part as a European refugee who works beside Anne at a factory. And, even though it isn't a cameo, I have to mention my beloved Agnes Moorehead, who plays a wealthy divorcee who wears out her welcome very quickly with the Hilton family.

Since You Went Away may seem overly sentimental nowadays, and certainly no one would make a film like this today without some sense of irony or sarcasm. Yet I think it earns its emotions honestly. So many mothers and children and other family members in real life endured what the Hiltons endure in this movie. When Anne says she wants to do more to support the war effort, you understand the source of her desires clearly. She is like so many women during World War II, who although still in the United States, felt a strong connection to their husbands fighting in far-flung parts of the world. So many young women like Jane fell in love with soldiers during a time of great emotional upheaval, and their love was real and honest. What this film manages to capture is the "other half" of a time period that has been so thoroughly discussed in terms of the battles and lives of soldiers. It's a tender, sweet film that very rarely rings false.