I love this movie so much

How sad is this?

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Some hokum about a Caribbean pirate's nest. Gene Kelly pretends to be Judy Garland's dream man, the notorious pirate Macoco. He rescues her from a planned marriage to the walrus-like Walter Slezak, she discovers that Kelly isn't a pirate at all but the dancer in a troupe of traveling players. It all ends happily.This kind of musical is kinetic and over the top, as suits a story about egotistic, hammy actors. The dialog can be pretty funny too. Garland has just been shrieking at some visitors to leave. They don't listen. Kelly, holding a whip, saunters up to them and quietly mutters, "Get out," and they leave at once. "You should try underplaying sometime," he tells her.It's not one of Cole Porter's most inspired scores, despite the blare and thunder given it by the music department. One song, "Niña," searches desperately for lyrics that rhyme. "Love of My Life" is pleasant enough, sung by Judy Garland, but the only memorable tune is "Make 'Em Laugh" -- I mean "Be a Clown." It's hyperkinetic vaudeville and exhilarating.As I say, it's all overacted, but that's in keeping with the story. Kelly has never been more acrobatic, swinging from ropes, dancing with a cutlass, turning calisthenics into a ballet for the common man. Even when he's not dancing, Kelly's postures, knees bent, fingers fluttering, suggested a coiled spring about to be released.The screenplay is a little weak and, alas, much of the success of a musical depends on the libretto. Everybody seems to have had a hand in bringing S. N. Behrman's play to the screen except Comden and Green. Betty Comden and Adolf Green were experts at putting together the story behind the songs in films like "On The Town" and "Singin' In The Rain." But penetrating and occasionally challenging wit is replaced here by mixed identities and pratfalls.Kelly's acting is surprisingly good -- in a properly theatrical way -- and Judy Garland brings some life to otherwise clunkish scenes.

On a picturesque West Indies island, fair young Judy Garland (as Manuela) fantasizes about being swept off her feet by a manly pirate. As was customary for proper young ladies in the 1830s, Ms. Garland's guardian Aunt Gladys Cooper (as Inez) has arranged for her to marry wealthy old Walter Slezak (as Pedro Vargas). Garland appears to accept her fate as "practical" but longs for one last adventure by the romantic Caribbean Sea. Right on cue, she meets sexy young actor Gene Kelly (as Serafin). He falls head over heels for Garland, but she won't reciprocate. To win her affection, Mr. Kelly becomes Macoco, "The Pirate" man of Garland's fantasy...This is the musical version of a Fontanne-Lunt play (by S.N. Behrman) which seemed a variation of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew". Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it is flawed but entertaining. Perhaps surprisingly or perhaps not, Mr. Minnelli captures an unusually strong sexual energy in Garland and Kelly. This is subtle in their "meeting" scene and rather obvious when they kiss and Garland's hand clutches Kelly's muscular arm. Minnelli, who was married to Garland at the time, more often allows the camera to caress Kelly...Like a singing and dancing Douglas Fairbanks, the athletically attractive Kelly practically takes over the production. This is his film. Some background reading reveals Garland was often absent. Certainly, she should have been in the picture more. At times, Garland reaction shots seem edited in, to give her more of a presence. A double is also used (hiding her face in the fainting scene, of course). While it's disappointing to have Garland often unengaged, Kelly is in peak form. The showstopper occurs where it should, at the end, with the extended "Be a Clown" (written by Cole Porter). Kelly dances with the Nicholas Brothers and coaxes Garland back to work, for a rousing finale.****** The Pirate (1948-03-27) Vincente Minnelli ~ Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper

The Pirate (1948) is about the ebullient actor Serafin (Gene Kelly) who comes to a small Caribbean town and falls hard for the romantic Manuela (Judy Garland). She rejects him, saving her love only for the legendary pirate Macoco, whom she wishes would steal her away. So Serafin takes on the guise of the notorious pirate in order to win her heart. Though it flopped when released, The Pirate has become a cult classic often hailed as being ahead of its time. I've seen the film twice and still fail to see the appeal.Don't get me wrong: I love Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, and Cole Porter. Vincent Minelli is not among my favorite directors, but I usually admire his colorful style. It feels like someone got the most delicious ingredients for an ice cream sundae and ended up botching it big time, to the point where it's almost inedible. Porter's score is among his most unmemorable. Outside of "Be a Clown" (which is tucked away at the very end), I cannot hum a single one of them, a big flaw for a musical. The dancing is good though, and Gene Kelly is in fine form.Unfortunately, the dancing cannot save a lackluster production. Kelly and Garland are stuck playing characters who come off as annoying, especially Garland's Manuela, who spends most of her screen time shrilly screaming and whining all her lines. Kelly hams it up to the stratosphere, which ceases to be funny fast. The comedy plays much better in the more underplayed scenes, like when Manuela is going off to sacrifice her virtue to the attractive "Macoco" to save the town and another girl offers to take her place. Manuela tersely replies, "He asked for ME." The sets are so stagey they're distracting. While this theatricality works in the ballet dream sequence in the middle of the film or something like the Broadway Melody portion of Singin' in the Rain (1952), here it just comes across as cheap. The costumes are awful: garish parodies of 1830s fashion with ugly patterns. Poor Judy gets saddled with the most ridiculous outfits.I know I'll be voted down for this. Ah well, such is life. This seems to be a movie a lot of people enjoy and I would never want to take that away from them. I wish I could have enjoyed it too, but it's not hard to see why this flopped so hard back in '48.

In its classic era Hollywood was not a place where artistes could conceive and execute projects exactly to plan. Often a production would change hands, get scrapped, revived, or overhauled completely into a new genre according to changing needs and resources. That's not an admonition - it's simply the way they created quality entertainment. The Pirate was not the first straight-ahead comedy drama to receive a musical makeover halfway through production.MGM, in the middle of what would one day be known as its golden age of musicals, probably thought they were onto an easy winner because they had all the finest musical talent of the day at their disposal. They brought in Arthur Freed to produce, Vincente Minnelli to direct, with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly as stars. They even managed to coax Cole Porter into writing the score. It couldn't fail... could it? The trouble is, such hasty talent stuffing sometimes backfires. Let's begin with the two leads. Garland, had worked continuously since childhood and was by now only being kept going with the amphetamines she would eventually become hooked on. She was running out of steam and it shows in her rather uneven performance, veering from theatrical exaggeration to bizarre, doped-up eroticism. Kelly by contrast was at the top of his game, but he looks daft in that moustache, and his performance relies more on his second-rate acrobats than his first-rate dancing. Garland and Kelly are however fantastic in the comical ornament-smashing scene. This is easily the best moment in the picture, which just goes to show how underused their musical abilities are.Vincente Minnelli was by now established as a unique and highly effective director of musicals. He had a method of giving character and dynamics to every number, making the camera and the colours part of the choreography. A great example is the song Nina, which is shot entirely in two or three continuous takes. Minnelli leads us into the song tracking over to the "Nina" in the boldest colours, then alights on one "Nina" after another, delicately framing each in a painterly composition. He holds our interest throughout this long routine, with the camera in close to establish the premise of the number then moving out to show off Kelly's athletics, moving in again for the cigarette-kiss trick, before moving out again for the final group dance. It's just a shame that The Pirate has too few songs, and not nearly enough dance.Minnelli was also a competent director of non-musical action, particularly crowd scenes. His expert use of camera movement provides Kelly with a fantastic entrance. We dolly back through the crowds, focus on a crate with the acting company's details on it, then pull back and up to reveal Kelly being hoisted aloft. Shortly after this comes a bit of a misfire though. Minnelli, for very good reasons, often liked to keep actors in mid-shot rather than closeup, drawing attention to them through use of framing and movement. As Kelly strolls through the crowd advertising his company, we are focused on him because he is very animated while his audience are unnaturally still. It gives what should be a lively moment a sense of emptiness, and I can't help thinking of the real world audience getting bored wondering when the first musical number will strike up.As for Cole Porter's music, it's far from his best. The plot is, as Kelly later pointed out, a huge inside joke that it took audiences twenty years to get, although if it was at the expense of Douglas Fairbanks, wasn't it also being made twenty years too late? The MGM studio-bound look is particularly stifling for such an exotic, adventuresome setting. All in all, The Pirate has plenty of colouring, but not enough flavour, and is one of the most disappointing of MGM musicals.