"Minnelli’s films, especially his melodramas, have been the focus of attention for film theorists for a variety of reasons. For some, the rhetoric of Minnelli’s musicals exemplifies the stylistic and narrative strategies of the genre; while for others the filmic devices of both Minnelli’s musicals and his melodramas demonstrate repressed ideological conflicts and tensions that erupt at moments of high drama through music and mise-en-scène. From this perspective, the films may be read through recourse to the psychoanalytic concept of conversion hysteria, which accounts for the excessive and stylized quality of Minnelli’s work. For still others, Minnelli stands as a good example of the distinction between the auteur, whose work possesses and is governed by a consistency of artistic vision, and the stylist or metteur en scène, the category that Andrew Sarris claims Minnelli typifies." - John Mercer, Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film