Manuela (Judy Garland) is about to be married off by her aunt (Gladys Cooper) to the rich, older, dull mayor, Don Pedro Vargas (Walter Slezak) when she meets a traveling actor, Serafin (Gene Kelly). Discovering that she secretly fantasizes about the pirate Macoco, Serafin masquerades as the villain, taking over the town and postponing her wedding until she can fall for him. Needless to say, posing as the most wanted man in the Caribbean has its complications.
A lush, Technicolor fantasy, always three steps removed from reality, The Pirate is one of Kelley’s best musicals, though it wasn’t appreciated when it was released, with audiences and critics clamoring for blander song-filled entertainment. Time has been good to it.
Many musicals of the time haven’t stood up as well because their plots are nearly non-existent: just there to hang the songs upon. Think of An American in Paris. But The Pirate, based on a stage play, has a solid romantic-comedy story. Pull the music, and you still have a movie. There are plenty of laughs (often subtly worded innuendo since sexuality didn’t go over big with the Breen office; this cleverness didn’t allow the film to have a married heroine as in the play—the censors wanted to reassure America that married women don’t have fantasies.)
Director Vincente Minnelli never managed to create anything close to a real-world feel for his films, nor get his actors to appear as actual people. This is grating in many of his productions, but it makes The Pirate a perfect vehicle for his gaudy sensibilities. The extravagant sets are a pleasure to look at, and as fake as a 3 cent piece. The costumes range from elegant to flamboyant. This isn’t reality folks; it’s a lot more fun. It’s a Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, if Fairbanks had danced instead of waived a sword.
The music is by Cole Porter, and while not his best work, even weak Porter is better than the best compositions of ninety percent of other song-smiths. The standout is Be a Clown, (plagiarized four years later to create Make ‘Em Laugh for Singing in the Rain), performed first with extremely athletic choreography by Kelly and The Nicholas Brothers, and then as a comic duet by Kelly and Garland. Mack the Black and Nina sound best during their instrumental sections—the lyrics seem to have been written as an exercise in awkward rhyming—but since those sections are so good, it’s not a problem.
The Pirate is a well crafted, quick, witty musical. It doesn’t rank with the likes of Singing in the Rain. Garland was starting to show signs of the addiction which would eventually kill her, and none of the dances are spectacular. So, it’s a second tier musical, but a star in its division.
My other reviews Gene Kelly films: Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Words and Music (1948), On the Town (1949), Summer Stock (1950), An American in Paris (1951), Brigadoon (1954), It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Les Girls (1957), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).