Sixty years ago, the musical 'The Pirate' was a flop. Now, in the 21st century, it can be said to have taken on a new life as a cult...
...flop.
It's a harsh but tempting aphorism. On the face of it the film has everything going for it -- Technicolor MGM production values, Cole Porter songs, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland as the stars, melodrama, athleticism, and homage to Douglas Fairbanks -- but somehow it fails to come together into a convincing whole. Everyone over-acts, especially the principals, and the unintended result of all this ham is that it's hard to find any of them very sympathetic.
The basic set-up of the plot is not without promise -- that of the fake who's more convincing than the real thing -- but while I don't know the original play, I'm not sure that rewriting as a star vehicle for Judy Garland's benefit did it any favours. This isn't one of her best roles, and her performance as the histrionic and self-deluding Manuela is shrill and lacking in appeal. Gene Kelly, looking rather more comfortable in his costumes than she does in hers, fills the shoes of the vain showman Serafin more adequately, with the charm and virility required by the part -- but after the opportunistic opening number it's hard to credit the sincerity of his character's affections.
There is no real dramatic tension, save for the scene in the square after the Viceroy arrives, when we finally begin to care about the characters' fate... but any suspicion of serious intent is then rapidly washed away by the shoe-horned-in 'Be a Clown' routine. A classic it may have become, but it really doesn't belong here, bearing all too clearly the signs of having been inserted at the last minute in an attempt to obtain at least one 'hit' in a sadly unmemorable score. The subsequent inevitable reprise of this number with Judy Garland in clown-face is more than a little tired: we've seen the urchin-act to better effect in 'Easter Parade' and will see it trotted out once more in 'A Star is Born'. It doesn't fit with the very feminine character as she has been presented to date. And the shadow of the noose, for the fake pirate or for the real one, has gone beyond the stage where it can plausibly be laughed off behind the scenes. The finale is just jarring.
The film clearly isn't intended to be taken as a serious melodrama; which is a pity, because I found those few moments towards the end perhaps the most effective. Unfortunately, however, it's not that funny either. There are a few chuckle-out-loud moments, but on the whole it suffers from the illusion that hammed-up acting is in itself sufficient to raise a laugh: as Serafin himself observes to his rival, ''Try understatement -- it's more effective.''
It's *very* stagy, from the ill-tailored pantomime dresses to the total lack of location filming -- the single stock shot of the real sea makes this even more obvious -- the cartoon Spanish (half the cast pronounce the heroine's name laboriously as 'Man-yoo-ella', the other half as 'Man-weila', and her village is the improbably-christened Calvados) and the cheap special effects that have Kelly in one shot walking the tightrope with his teetering feet clearly failing to touch the wire, and dancing around a very fake donkey. None of this would *matter* if only the film's story would take fire... but, alas, by and large it doesn't. Kelly's dance sequences are effective, if largely divorced from the plot; Garland's songs less so, ranging from the forgettable to the embarrassing ('Mack the Black' and 'the CaRIBbean Sea' -- really!)
Something might have been made of this property -- though not as a Judy Garland vehicle -- but Minnelli's 'The Pirate' isn't it. A historical curiosity in the careers of all those involved.
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