As I mentioned earlier, I looked at two of the three Minnelli films I
recently wrote on in the "Chicago Reader" on video before writing, to
refresh my memory. They are films I'd seen many times before on film,
and the video viewings, while somewhat useful, gave me almost no pleasure.

A few days ago I went to the actual screening of one of them, "The
Pirate," in a very good 35mm print. I thought it was incredibly great,
and was moved to tears near the end. Calling it one of the three
greatest Minnellis, as I had in my review, had given me pause (and I
would now add, based on reseeing it, "Two Weeks in Another Town" -- and
"Four Horsemen" still awaits my viewing in a decent print), but this
viewing certainly confirmed that. It also served to confirm how much
what I love about the film is destroyed by video.

(Caveats: I'm not saying that no one should watch films on video; just
to be aware of what you're doing. Color films translate less well than
black and white films, as a rule. But some color films will translate
better than others. And it wouldn't surprise me if a higher percentage
of films of the last few decades, when directors and cinematographers
knew many would be seeing them on video, reproduced better on video than
the color films of classical Hollywood. And others may be able to get
much more of the kinds of things I care about from video viewings than I
can. But I was struck by a note on a personal Web site that records
disappointment on recently viewing "Bonjour Tristesse" on DVD.
Letterboxed 'Scope with the wrong colors will *not* give you the full
power of Preminger's camera movements, to put it mildly.)

"The Pirate" opens with the pages of a picture book being turned, as
Manuela (Judy Garland) narrates her fantasy life. This is a pretty
standard device. I had forgotten its real impact when I saw the video,
and it didn't make much of an impression. Seeing the film on film
revealed the opening in all its original power, because it serves as a
great metaphor for the visual style of the film as a whole: a series of
fantasy views, a series of theatrical backdrops that present themselves
*as* fantasy (I know the difference between fantasy and reality, Manuela
tells her aunty).

The colors and spaces of the film simply aren't "there" on video; even
though the images are "visible" they just don't have the same impact. My
idea about the book is something one could "get" from the video (though
I failed to) without feeling its power.

Near the end there's a break in the action (avoiding spoilers here) as
Serafin (Kelly) suddenly speaks to the audience in a shallow studio-like
space. Not only is this an acknowledgement of the film's main theme, the
triumph of fantasy/entertainment as a metaphor for human imagination and
possibility, but its self-consciousness renders that triumph all the
more moving. Again, this just doesn't have the same power on video --
especially since we're used to people speaking at us from TV.

The triumph of imagination/fantasy/theater theme only becomes great when
one sees the power of the film's colors. Vividly sensuous but also fake,
intense but unreal, the instability of the compositions and colors has
all the film's passion and knowledge bound together.

For some inexplicable reason, I was incredibly moved (spoilers) by the
transition from Serafin's speech to the final "Be a Clown," placing
Manuela alongside Kelly. I was moved enough that I thought of the ending
of an even greater film, Ugetsu. There (spoilers) the husband as at the
wheel again, where his wife had wanted him to be, while in an incredible
final pan the son brings an offering to her grave against a background
of traditional rural Japan, as the ending answers the chaos of the
opening with its opposite. Here, too, the ending answers the storybook
opening, not exactly with its opposite but with its "correct" and
"possible" version: not dreams of a pirate whose reality will never
match the fantasy, but with fantasy comes alive. Manuela seems in her
"proper" place in the same way that father and son are at the end of
"Ugetsu."

- Fred