Margaret O’Brien

  • The Unfinished Dance (1947)

    The Unfinished Dance (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) There are many intriguing elements in The Unfinished Dance that, by all rights, should make it a better film than it is. All of it revolves around ballet, and specifically a school where the young protagonist idolizes a dancer (played by Cyd Charisse, with her customary dancing excellence) and despises another, an obsession that soon leads to her causing an accident with life-changing consequences. Executed with all of the gloss of MGM musicals of the time but very little of the humour, it’s an excessively melodramatic film all the way to the weepy forgiveness that caps the film. I can see how the film is best suited to a specific public: Like The Red Shoes a year later, it’s a perfect film for young ballerinas and anyone else interested in the art form. But by being so exceptionally focused, The Unfinished Dance doesn’t quite manage to rally larger audiences, and the lack of humour doesn’t help either — although it would have been difficult to be otherwise considering the film’s central drama. Margaret O’Brien is quite good in the lead role, with Charisse providing dancing firepower when the film needs it and Karin Booth getting a rare prestige leading role as the other dancer, even though her lacks of dancing abilities are more apparent. While I don’t exactly dislike the result, The Unfinished Dance didn’t grab me as readily nor as profoundly as other musicals of the time — it’s a bit of a niche film, and I happen to be standing outside of it.

  • The Secret Garden (1949)

    The Secret Garden (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Much of The Secret Garden’s specific charm comes from twin accidents of history—having both Margaret O’Brien and Dean Stockwell being the right age to play the child characters essential to the story, for one; but also being at a stage of cinema’s technological development that you could still switch from normal black-and-white cinematography to a Technicolour segment and amaze audiences. This had only been possible for fifteen years at that point (and wasn’t that original, considering the use of a similar device in The Wizard of Oz), but more importantly, it would no longer be possible a few years later due to colour film becoming the standard for children’s movies. In any case—both the actors and the wow factor of a black-and-white film turning to colour remain essential elements in this gentle portal fantasy story, in troubled children discover a maybe-magical garden that eventually makes them better people. I wouldn’t want to discount the weight of the narrative here—adapted from a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it has full redemption arcs for the characters, and even the switch to colour would not have been as effective without laying the groundwork for the garden to be perceived as more wondrous than the baseline black-and-white reality. The script also gives the material for the child actors to excel—the shouting match between the two is their showcase opportunity. All of this makes The Secret Garden an interesting film still. I can’t guess how it plays to the current generation, but it does remain a watchable part of cinema history.