夏日天堂

That “barn movie” of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Charles Walters’ SUMMER STOCK marks Garland’s last completed film for MGM, studio head L.B. Mayer terminated her contracted in September 1950 on the ground of the star’s personal problems and erratic behavior (she was battling against drug addiction and weight fluctuation), and that must be the case, the off-camera stories are more intriguing than the one they are painstakingly making in front of the camera.

Garland visibly does’t look her age of 28 during the filming, our dear Dorothy from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) has grown incredibly matronly and it can only induce our immeasurable compassion to see her try to manage a radiant smile or lip-sync with her whole force to feign a wholesomeness of her character Jane Falbury, a farmer girl whose seemingly rural beatitude is interrupted by the unheralded advent of a theater troupe lead by Joe Ross (Kelly), she finds her feet is tickled to dance and ends up taking the leading role of the troupe’s new show “Fall in Love”, after her spoiled urban sister Abigail (DeHaven) takes a powder and jilts her lover boy Joe.

By and large a middle-of-the-road studio musical slavishly banks on Garland’s powerful voice and Kelly’s supernal celebrity, and SUMMER STOCK, at the very least, confects Garland’s iconic tune GET HAPPY, composed by Harold Arlen and lyrics written by Ted Koehler, in which she, for a fleeting amount of time, is back on top form, clad in black and nails the movement to a T, our heart is thrilled and swelled with that ol’ good feeling, of safety, satisfaction and amazement that only those silly oldies can elicit.

Kelly, who is particularly mellow with Garland (it is their third and final collaboration), has a memorable solo dance with a page of newspaper and a squeaky floor board set to the showtune “You Wonderful You”, that is whimsically entrancing, and that aside, his partnering with a faintly irritating Phil Silvers doesn’t recreate the same delightful effect as in Charle Vidor’s COVER GIRL (1944).

Among the peripheral players, a fusty Eddie Bracken knows how to make a fuss about the ultimate revolt of a daddy’s boy, whereas Gloria DeHaven never has a chance to redeem Abigail’s irresponsibility out of the script’s designation, as far as vintage Hollywood musical goes, SUMMER STOCK is a tad maddeningly mediocre.

referential entries: Walters’ HIGH SOCIETY (1956, 7.5/10); Charles Vidor’s COVER GIRL (1944, 7.3/10); Vincente Minnelli’s AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951, 6.2/10).