Ok, so, here’s the SDMB musical group entry for The Pirate.
I am not sure where to start, so I’ll start here. I really liked this film. It’s strange and not really very well executed. From the bit that I have read about it, it was plagued with problems and was a gigantic flop when it first game out, but how can you not love a movie that seems to be actively trying to be a live action musical version of a Looney Tune? I don’t know if anyone else felt that way when they were watching, but everything about it from the vingette structure to the mugging for the camera, to the crazy over the top vase shattering scene, to the final reprise of “Be A Clown” seems to be designed to hit all the same notes as your average Golden Age Bugs Bunny Cartoon. Interestingly, when it wasn’t reminding me of the Looney Tunes, it was reminding me of Shakespeare. Comedey’s like Two Gentelmen of Verona, or a Comedy of Error have a very similar quasi madcap nearly screwball feel to them. And I appreciate trying to update that into the musical form. At the time this came out the American musical was undergoing some changes in terms of what it was capable of, and this movie feels like it was a growing pain. It doesn’t work, but it tries really hard to do something new. And that, coupled with a couple of really terrific dance sequences and the Nicholas Brother (who were astounding), let me forgive the film a lot of its faults.
I took notes while watching The Pirate (yes, I am that much of a nerd), and the sum of my notes tell me that this is not a good movie. It is surprisingly tone deaf, with some scenes falling totally flat in their attempt at pathos, others going too far over the top in their attempt at comedy, very few scenes hit home properly. The acting quality is all over the place and the story has structure and pacing problems up the wazzoo. There were some horrible cliché’s (example: the whole town chanting “No, not Manuella, take anyone but Manuella!” :rolleyes: ) but I think, having seen the whole thing, that these were supposed to be bad. I get the feeling that nearly all of the bad in the film was intentional and I kind of admire that. It’s a miss in a lot of ways but still, I am walking away from it as having enjoyed it.
Let’s take a look at the notes and see what else I noticed, maybe we can talk about some of it.
Did anyone else dig on the artwork in the opening? It looked like it was Bill Pete to me, but I might have misidentified it.
Oh, Technicolor! Did anyone ever make better use of it than Minnelli? The film looks amazing and the color saturation is stunning. I understand why we don’t do three strip anymore, but god there is really nothing that looks quite so good.
Also, apparently (according to IMDB) Judy Garland missed 99 out of something like 135 days of shooting. I can’t imagine that this helped the cohesion of anything and she really did seem to be phoning it in for well over half the film. But when she was on (during Mac the Black for example) she really was fantastic.
Ok, sorry for the disjointed OP, maybe we can get a little bit of talk going on and things will gel a bit more.