Meet Me in St. Louis

The 1944 American Christmas Musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, has often been considered one of the earlier Christmas-based movies that adopted a more mean-spirited and more unpleasant atmosphere for something associated with the holidays. While the concept of holiday-based films harbouring a cynical edge by throwing in crude, aggressive, gory, or even just depressing material is more common in today’s society due to how many films are created and how much the season is open to interpretive films as long as they still hold a solid earnest meaning at the centre, it wouldn’t have been very common back in the 40s so even the slightest hint of meanness is going to stand out. While films like It’s a Wonderful Life, and I’ll Be Seeing You proved that it could be done, this film was one of the front-runners. Within the backdrop of St. Louis, Missouri before the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair, the movie follows the everyday comfortable upper-middle class lives of the Smith Family; including father and mother, Alonzo and Anna (played by Leon Ames and Mary Astor), and their one son and four daughters. The two eldest daughters, Rose, and Esther (played by Lucille Bremer and Judy Garland) look for attention from the men in their life and pine for a proposal, whilst the youngest daughters, Agnes, and Tootie (played by Joan Carroll and Margaret O’Brien) enjoy pulling pranks and causing chaos among the streets. Their picturesque existence seems to be put at risk when Alonzo proclaims that he intends to move his family away to New York for his work, putting their future plans at risk. Spending their last Christmas in town before moving away, the family come to grips with what they’ll be leaving behind, including Esther’s new boyfriend, John Truett (played by Tom Drake), and how they will manage without St Louis. This movie was an incredible success for MGM, being the second highest grossing movie of 1944, was the most successful musical of the 1940s, and is still remembered years later for its apparent mean-spirited edge. While the movie overall works nicely, does that dark angle still hold up?

This movie is based on a series of short stories originally published in the New York magazine called ‘’The Kensington Stories’’ and later into a novel with the same title as the film. They were written by Sally Benson, a short story and screenwriter who was known for her humorous take on modern youth, which clearly is laced within this story as the way the people talk and interact with each other definitely comes across with a hint of a rose-tinted lens that makes everything feel a little overly chirpy and airy, but still has enough of an edge to make it feel real enough. The way that this story is paced, presented, and even acted gives off the vibe of what live-action Disney would replicate in some of their more famous films like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs & Broomsticks, capturing a manner of speech and attitude that is corny in nature, but holds enough of a wit and cynical element that balances thing out enough, making the cheerful moments less overbearing and legitimately engaging, and the more dramatic moments being noticeably out of tone, but not to the point of feeling like they come out of nowhere. The movie definitely feels like it comes from a limited source material as it moreso feels like a slice of life story that mainly focuses on casual happenings for this family rather than featuring anything life-threatening. The movie makes this work mostly by featuring enough kinetic energy, passionate performers and enough of an understanding of childhood to make some of the instances feel charming and memorable, but on the other hand, the film’s conflict of moving away really should’ve played a bigger role in the movie. Calling back to the dark angle for this film, the prospect of moving away from this seemingly perfect area would’ve made for a great stepping off point to go from overly joyful to overly miserable, and transformed the movie into having more of a cynical edge that would’ve benefited the movie rather than detracted from it. Instead, the movie focuses so little on it that it actually doesn’t play that big a part and feels like a wasted element to only cause a slight inconvenience rather than anything that problematic. The movie is ironically not cynical enough to utilize this concept effectively and makes the film more slightly mean as opposed to actively dark and depressing.

The cast is effective at capturing the attitude and demeanor of a typical American family at the turn of the 20^th century while carrying that Hollywood nature where they still feel a little overly polished, but not in a bad way. While the tone doesn’t necessarily work for being a dark holiday film, it is structured enough that the manner in which the family interacts is allowed to be a little mean while also a little overly happy at the same time and it doesn’t feel out of place, and the actors do well at playing these roles in a way that could come across as too on-the-nose, but its never distracting and it always feels genuine. Due to how big the family is, there was bond to be a few that don’t leave much of an impression, and roles like the son, the father, and the second youngest daughter don’t leave much of an impression. They’re acted fine, but other than that, they don’t add much and only seem to exist to further the plot forward with important moments. Some of the side characters like Marjorie Main as Katie the Maid, Harry Davenport as the grandfather and Tom Drake as John Truett work well in their generic parts and use their screen time nicely. Lucille Bremer does a fine job as the eldest daughter despite not having much to work with, but at least provides some good chemistry between her other sisters, and Margaret O’Brien as Tootie could very easily be too overplayed and become annoying with her cutesy demeanor, but they give her just enough dialogue that comes across as pretty demented and weird for a child, so she works just enough. Judy Garland does really shine in this film, and even though this was the film where a lot of the behind-the-scenes drama occurred due to personal dislikes with the script, her lack of confidence as the leading lady and multiple personal and mental issue that caused trouble on set, it still resulted in a very personable performance that comes across that right amount of mature and full of flair. It is a little bizarre how she keeps getting put in roles where she is meant to be much younger than she is, and her singing voice is way too mature for someone who’s supposed to be a teenager, but she pulls it off good enough (definitely much more convincing as this age than Dorothy) and feels very natural here in terms of her acting and her singing. She’s very charming, very energized in her song numbers and while some moments of her singing can feel a little too focused on and more like an excuse to show off Garland’s talent (the man who directed this did go on to marry her), it isn’t too much of an issue.

This film as a musical was one of MGM’s most successful musicals of the decade and was helped out by the amount of musical talent behind the screen when making this movie. The director, Vicente Minnelli, worked on classic musicals of the era like An American in Paris, Brigadoon, Kismet, and Gigi, American lyricist Arthur Freed convinced MGM to buy the rights to the story, even the head designer for set design, Lemuel Ayers, had a prolific Broadway career in multiple technical areas. Its ironic then that this movie doesn’t really function that well as a musical. This isn’t to say that the musical numbers are done badly or don’t work on a technical level because that isn’t true; they are sung well, the music is nice, the choreography is decent in some of the numbers, and it helps bring a nice preppy nature to the movie which adds to the jolly atmosphere of the town and the family that is taken down slightly come the final act, but the movie doesn’t really benefit from being a musical as most of the numbers don’t feel like proper musical numbers, rather just feeling like people casually singing songs of the time between each other until it random features a proper Hollywood number that feels out of place. Some of the songs that nowadays seem traditional actually came from this film (its weird to think ‘’Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’’ came from this movie), but thankfully most of the numbers do sound nice and clearly show the effort that was put into them. While they aren’t all memorable, the ones that are do stand out (the trolley song is pretty fun). The production design by Dave Friedman, the set decoration by Edwin B. Willis, the costume done by five-time Oscar winner Irene Sharaff and even the Technicolor itself is very pleasant to look at. Lemuel Ayers and art director E. Preston Ames really bring a lot of old-fashion flair but still colorful and intricately designed environments that feel lived in while also being detailed and distinct in layout.

Its hard to say that Meet Me in St. Louis is really a dark Christmas movie. While it does carry a somber tone and has a hint of meaner edge to it, it doesn’t hold a candle to others that walk that more depressing line in the far future or even those further in that decade, but regardless of that, it still results in a well-made, memorable, and energized movie. The story does show some of its weaknesses as a shorter format as the story feels a little too water-down and it’s no doubt that a more cynical approach would’ve helped this movie out, but the impressive visuals, the pointless but fun song numbers, and the engaging performances makes it one that is worth the time to sit down and check out around Christmas time or any time of the year in general. It may not be the dark and oppressive movie that people expect it to be (it’s weird but slightly funny how people want this Christmas movie to be much harsher than it actually is), it is still a pleasant holiday film that is worthy of your time.