Many Dartmouth students are tragically unaware that our beloved Winter Carnival has been made the subject of a movie. Granted, the film is decades old, unrealistic and only marginally watchable, but the point still stands.
"Winter Carnival" (1939) was filmed on location at Dartmouth College and was to be written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, of "The Great Gatsby" fame. Fitzgerald was ultimately left uncredited, however. He decided to research Winter Carnival by going to Dartmouth during the celebration, promptly jetting from Hollywood to Hanover.Instead of writing the screenplay like a good little literary giant, Fitzgerald got monstrously drunk for the entire weekend, and never got any substantial work done. Whatever portion of the script that was salvaged from Fitzgerald's drunken escapades was edited, rewritten and diluted into a manageable film.
The funny thing about "Winter Carnival" is that it mirrors Fitzgerald's increasingly inebriated weekend as the film moves forward. It starts off with some crisp, clear dialogue that is clever and -- surprisingly -- intentionally funny. By the end, however, the viewer can palpably feel that the original writer just wrote something along the lines of "Uhhh... I don't know and the guy goes over there and... I don't know, okay, I just don't know." The screenwriters that took over clearly had to borrow heavily from the standard movie-writing handbook to fill in these large incoherent gaps. What they ultimately brought us is not especially different from the romantic comedy archetype that became so dominant in the 1980s.
The film is supposed to be a heartwarming didactic yarn about a glamorous ex-married-into-royalty celebrity who was once the Winter Carnival Queen. She comes back to Dartmouth over Carnival weekend to discover the true meaning of family life and, along the way, to teach her sister about the dangers of globe-trotting and the celebrity lifestyle. There are numerous pointless subplots thrown in, the only purpose of which is to allow for an occasional lame joke. But, to its credit, the film does actually use these characters in conjunction with actual footage of the College. It's nice to see Baker tower and the snow-covered Green straight out of the 1930s. Unfortunately, although the beginning of the film is filled with these familiar settings, we get less and less of them toward the end.
The Dartmouth Winter Carnival portrayed in the film seems completely unrealistic at first glance, until you realize that skiing must actually be a metaphor for drinking. I'm basing this solely on the fact that so much of the "Winter Carnival" movie is centered around skiing, while most current Dartmouth students use their special weekends differently.
However, if there is even a modicum of reality in the film thenWinter Carnival has changed quite a bit over the years. Apparently it was common back then to strut around in three piece suits or tuxedos all the time -- even to ski in them. I suppose it is understandable, considering that frat parties were characterized by European royalty and expensive drinks in actual glassware.
Such formality was perhaps to be expected in that period at an Ivy League school, but there were some genuinely bizarre scenes in the film that aspired to some sort of quirky humor, but ended up strange and annoying instead.
For example, there is a scene in which the ex-duchess and the male protagonist (a self-made man, a Dartmouth alum and a professor all rolled into one) end up house-sitting for their friends only to destroy a couple of plates, wake the baby, cut up linens and pillowcases to make a makeshift diaper and not so much as apologize to the owners for the damage.
Such scenes become more common and more frustratingly unfunny as the film progresses. It's only the promise of more footage of Dartmouth that keeps one's attention. In fact, the film is utterly unwatchable if you're not affiliated with Dartmouth, but halfway entertaining if you are. As it is, it makes for a good rental choice on the final morning of Winter Carnival, but only because you're nursing your hangover and don't want to have to pay too much attention.
