Meet Me In St. Louis reminds me a lot of The Sound of Music, although it predates Sound by some twenty years. You have a well-off, large family, the Smith’s, with plenty of well-behaved and spirited children. The father figure is the leader, stern yet not without a conscience, his two oldest daughters are starting to take serious interest in boys, and the younger ones are innocent and charming.
The first two thirds of the movie focus a lot on the oldest daughters, Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland), and their love interests. Rose is awaiting a marriage proposal, while Esther is taking a liking to the new neighbor, John Truett (Tom Drake). The Smith family is moving right along, loving life, but that way of life is suddenly threatened with Alonzo Smith, the father (played by Leon Ames) announces he is uprooting them to New York, where he will make more money, and will be able to better provide for his family.
This is met with somber attitudes from the rest of his family though, who simply love St. Louis and believe that the St. Louis Fair set to open in the following year (1904) will make St. Louis an even better place to live. Not surprisingly, things get worse before they get all better, and just as Christmas morning arrives.
Meet Me In St. Louis is a just about the textbook definition of a good old fashion family film, where a tight-knit family faces some kind of adversity that ultimately makes their bonds stronger. You just about have to be in the mood for it though, because although it’s not as long as The Sound of Music, it’s just as uber-positive. That’s not to say this positive, family-friendly content is bad, though. It just makes it difficult to watch very often at all, something that is only reserved for sparse viewing. It’s really not unlike how I only pull out Christmas Vacation around this time of year, to get my annual view in.
Those thoughts aside, from a production and execution standpoint, Meet Me In St. Louis is indeed impressive, and although I have now just seen it once, I can understand how many would consider it a classic. Several award-winning actors put on great performances and the camera work and script are nicely done. I liked that the musical elements were more or less seamless with the movie itself and not over-done or made too much of as well.
The film received the digi-book treatment on Blu-ray, meaning it has an attached booklet (about forty pages, in color) on the ‘front’ of the packaging, making the overall package about twice as thick as a normal Blu-ray. The booklet is nice, it includes a lot of vintage images and tidbits about the movie, as well as song lyrics. On the opposite side of the packaging, or case, you get an audio CD which has four tracks from the movie. It’s too bad that the entire soundtrack wasn’t included, though.
I’ll get to the rest of the extra features shortly, but first, a word on the presentation. You never quite know what you’re going to get with the image and sound quality for a film this old, but the first positive sign was that Warner thought enough about this release to make it a digi-book. Fortunately, assumptions prove correct and the image and sound quality received some TLC. The image quality is very nice, not the best HD-ified vintage film I have seen, but it’s quite good. There are a lot of interesting objects and home decor in the Smith house, and I thought those set details were brought to life quite well on Blu-ray. The aspect ratio is in 4×3, 1:37:1, I should mention, but I never found myself distracted or bothered by that. If anything though, the video lacks a certain punch, or vibrance. Multiple spoken language tracks are included, as well as subtitles, with the English track in DTS-HD 5.0.
In addition to the booklet and audio sampler mentioned earlier, the other extras are:
-Audio Commentary with John Fricke (biographer of Judy Garland), Margaret O’Brien, Composer Hugh Martin, Screenwriter Irving Brecher, and Barbara Freed-Saltzman.
-Trailer
-Lux Radio Theater Broadcast (Audio Only)
-Music Only Track
-Boys and Girls Like Me and You – This audio feature is of a song that was removed from the final cut of the film.
-Introduction by Liza Minnelli (5m, SD) – Liza introduces the movie, with short clips and still images to compliment her dialogue.
-Meet Me in St. Louis: The Making of an American Classic (30m47s, SD) – An interesting look at the film from the perspective of a 1994 TCM production.
-Hollywood: The Dream Factory (50m31s, SD) – This vintage documentary profiles Hollywood in general, with some loose ties to Meet Me In St. Louis.
-Becoming Attractions: Judy Garland (46m10s, SD) – Another TCM produced show, this one focusing on Judy Garland.
-TV Pilot (26m35s, SD) – The pilot episode of a TV show based on the film.
-Bubbles (7m54s, SD) – A very old short (1933 if I recall correctly) and some of the very earliest footage of Judy Garland.
-Skip To My Lou (3m11s, SD) – An even shorter short, also vintage.
Overall, this is not a bad set of extra features, rounding out a solid Blu-ray release from Warner. To the summary…