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147 chapter six Legacy of The Pirate More than sixty-five years after its release, The Pirate has garnered a great deal of attention from fans, critics, and film scholars who have rediscovered its treasures. Or, in some cases, they have held it up to a critical light, much as the critics of 1948 had done. As a result, The Pirate has a mixed legacy that tends to mirror the mostly enthusiastic , yet somewhat ambivalent, reception accorded the film when it was released. Nevertheless, The Pirate is universally considered a major film in the careers of Gene Kelly, Vincente Minnelli, and Judy Garland. The most favorable evaluation accords it something akin to masterpiece status, while even those who criticize the motion picture acknowledge its brilliant aspects. The Players Look Back Kelly and Minnelli continued to turn out superb movies and collaborated again on two films—An American in Paris (1951) and Brigadoon (1954). Both men witnessed the initial reception for The Pirate and lived long enough to see the growing respect for their first collaborative project. Both mentioned their view of the film in interviews given late in their lives. “After the previews,” Kelly said in 1973, “Vincente and I honestly believed we were being so dazzlingly brilliant and clever that everybody would fall at our feet and swoon clear away in delight and ecstasy—as they kissed each of our toes in appreciation for this wondrous new musical we’d given them. Well, we were wrong. About five and a half people seemed to get the gist of what we set out to do. And in retrospect, you couldn’t really blame them. We just didn’t pull it off. Not completely. Whatever I did looked like fake Barrymore and fake Fairbanks.” Kelly thought The Pirate played well in New York and other urban areas, but it failed to connect with small-town audiences.1 148 • Chapter Six Kelly blamed the trick of trying to imitate Barrymore and Fairbanks as the chief cause of the movie’s “failure.” Most people did not seem to understand, Kelly thought, that the imitation was sincere , flattering, and tongue-in-cheek; instead, they seemed to think it was forgery. During a radio interview at Columbia University in 1958, Kelly blamed himself: “Often I didn’t have enough skill or experience to bring the tongue-in-cheek aspects off.” Kelly was referring not only to The Pirate but another film he did immediately afterward, The Three Musketeers (1948). He recalled that his performance looked perfect in rehearsals, but failed to take hold on the screen. It was “the result of the damned elusive camera I’d been trying so hard to tame.” For a long time Kelly regretted that he had attempted the clever joke he and Minnelli had cooked up for the part of Serafin. But in fact he took too much blame upon himself. Smalltown audiences of the 1940s lacked the sophistication to grasp the tongue-in-cheek aspects and were guided by local critics who saw Kelly merely as a “second-class Barrymore.” Kelly realized this in the 1980s when new audiences of college students readily got the joke and were enchanted by the film.2 Kelly loved other aspects of The Pirate a great deal. He thought Garland “was superb” in the film, and Minnelli’s work with color and décor was “as fine as anything that has ever been done.” In fact, other than the audience’s missing the satirical aspect, Kelly thought The Pirate was a nearly perfect product in the long list of films churned out by the Freed Unit at M-G-M. Minnelli, in his memoirs and in interviews throughout his life, acknowledged Kelly’s contributions to the film with awe and gratitude.3 Recall that Kelly not only had to act, dance, and sing in the movie, which he did with consummate skill, but that he contributed significantly to preproduction and postproduction, very much as a co-director would. In fact, the extent of collaboration between these two talented men is the best argument against calling Minnelli or anyone else the auteur of this film. In recollecting or reporting the names of musical numbers in The Pirate, however, much confusion developed over the years among the players as well as among historians. The correct name of the magnificent extended dance sequence by Kelly, representing Manuela ’s fantasy, was the “Pirate Ballet.” But Kelly and others tended in later years to call it the...

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