The Pirate (1948), 8- Color

A girl is engaged to the local richman, but meanwhile she has dreams about the legendary pirate Macoco. A traveling singer falls in love with her and to impress her he poses as the pirate.
1h 42min | Adventure, Comedy, Musical | 14 May 1948 (Montréal) | Color
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Stars: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak, Grace Cooper, Reginald Owen, The Nicholas Brothers.
Robert Alton ... dance director
Gene Kelly ... dance director

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040694/

Watched online; horrible low dpi, blurry. Will have dvd again someday.

In the Tap! Appendix for Gene Kelly, Nicholas Brothers. But they really did not tap.

Previously rated 7, and I understand the low rating. This is played so tongue-in-cheek that it became off-putting. Especially annoying: some of the overly cute lyrics. Ex: 2 pronunciations of Caribbean repeated over and over and over again in Mack the Black ("on the CaribbEan or CarIbbean sea"), rhyming Niña with "seen ya" repeatedly.

But the dancing is so wonderful, and there's plenty of it. Not so much the number of numbers, but their duration and staging and phenomenal athleticism of GK (b. 1912).

Songs performed, all written by Cole Porter:

• Niña, Sung/danced by Gene Kelly and chorus
• Mack the Black, Sung by Judy Garland 
• Mack the Black, Danced by Gene Kelly 
• You Can Do No Wrong, Performed by Judy Garland 
• Be a Clown, Sung by Gene Kelly, Danced by Gene Kelly and The Nicholas Brothers 
• Be a Clown, Also performed by Gene Kelly and Judy Garland 
• Love of My Life, Performed by Judy Garland 
• Pirate Ballet, danced by GK

If you watch carefully enough, you see one of the players signal when they're going to ramp up the satire. That makes the escalation more tolerable.

Oddly, I don't love JG's songs. Roger Edens is here as composer, but I see no credit for vocal arranger. Am I missing the hand of Kay Thompson? Perhaps because only 1 was a ballad, and I don't remember it?

So watch for the up-shift cues, and revel in the dancing and spectacle, especially GK in pirate short-shorts. It's been bothering me that women dancers regularly expose their legs, but not men. Thanks GK for turning those tables for a few minutes.

MGM, dir. Minnelli; 8-