There are bad movies. There are good movies. There are great movies. And then there are perfect movies. Meet Me in St. Louis is a perfect movie.
A beautiful post on Meet Me in St. Louis, from Greenbriar Picture Shows, one of the best film sites on the web.
I loved this bit, but please read the whole thing:
The Smiths are a happy singing family enriched by peculiar shadings thought up by artists who did not necessarily come of so functional a background themselves, here striving to portray idyllic home life they imagined others to have had.
Beautiful images and wonderful thoughts and anecdotes.
Lovely! My favorite Christmas song performance. I always saw a bit of myself in Tootie. I was kind of the odd, overly-emotional little sister and I think her relationship with Judy Garland’s Esther did exactly as the quote said – showed me the type of family relationships I thought others had.
Thanks for sharing this.
Jane – all of the relationships in that family in the movie … they’re just so realistic, aren’t they? The sibling thing, the sister thing – and that poor father, just trying to deal with being surrounded by women all the time (I love that father so much!!)
So many lines I love from this movie!
Does it bug you — as it does me — that virtually every cover version of this song ever played on the radio now uses the “happier” lyric, following “Someday soon we all will be together / If the fates allow” with “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough”? I strongly prefer the bittersweet nature of the original “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow”. No matter how wonderful the performance, the happier lyric negates the song, for me.
That “muddle through” line is truly melancholy and yes, is truer to the spirit of the song.