Letterboxd
I'm currently in St. Louis and so thought it would be fun to watch this. The musical numbers were good, and I was surprised that both "Clang Clang Clang goes the Trolley" (The Trolley Song) and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (of the same name) were from this film. Which I thought was fun.
Weirdest parts:
- whatever the hell those kids were doing for Halloween.
- The complete disregard for life and limb in allowing a child to pursue a very dangerous prank; I was a little weirded out that they didn't even attempt to correct that behavior.
- Tootie... Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we should get her checked out?
Also, Grandpa seemed to be the only fully functional/formed adult in the entire family, so props to him.
I think I most wanted to see this film to try to place the optimism and pride that people had in Saint Louis at the beginning of the 19th century. Saint Louis at the time had almost twice the number of people as it does today. Saint Louis was central and growing city at the time. It is interesting to see that even in the fictionalized wonder of this film. I imagine the population collapse of modern Saint Louis would quite surprise someone from 1903.