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Vincente Minnelli 

 

TSPDT Rating

Director
1903 - 1986 
Born February 28, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Key Production Country: USA 
Key Genres: Drama, Musical, Musical Romance, Romance, Comedy, Family Drama, Melodrama, Musical Fantasy, Psychological Drama, Musical Comedy
Key Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Arthur Freed (Producer/Composer), Preston Ames (Production Designer), Adrienne Fazan (Editor), Pandro S. Berman (Producer), Ferris Webster (Editor), Judy Garland (Leading Player), Gene Kelly (Leading Player), John Houseman (Producer), Albert Hackett (Screenwriter)
Highly Recommended: The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Some Came Running (1958), Home from the Hill (1960), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
Recommended: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Clock (1945), Undercurrent (1946), The Pirate (1948), Father of the Bride (1950), An American in Paris (1951), The Cobweb (1955), Tea and Sympathy (1956), Lust for Life (1956), Gigi (1958)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Queer Modernism: The Cinematic Aesthetics of Vincente Minnelli ] [ Derek Malcolm's Century of Films: The Band Wagon ] [ Henry Sheehan Interview ] [ Chicago Reader Article ]
Books: [ The Films of Vincente Minnelli ] [ I Remember it Well ] [ Directed by Vincente Minnelli ]
DVD's: [ Amazon ]
1,000 Greatest Films: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Some Came Running (1958), Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)
250 Quintessential Noir Films: Undercurrent (1946)
 
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)The Band Wagon (1953)Some Came Running (1958)Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
 
     
  "Minnelli's career presents great problems as soon as one looks beyond that initial fondness. Do the fragments come together? Do those melodious camera movements, the most inventive conception of background action, and such ceaseless use of color, costume, and sets make him a major director? Or is he a stylist, unconcerned with subject matter, for years content to film whatever material MGM assigned him. Certainly, the loyalty to one studio seems to have been borne without the agonies that beset, say, Nicholas Ray." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "We must certainly categorize Minnelli as something more than a decorative artist, for the stylistic devices of his films are informed with a remarkably resilient intelligence. Even if we are finally to conclude that, throughout his work, there is a dominance of style over theme, it ultimately serves only to confirm his contribution to the refinement of those techniques by which Hollywood translates meanings into style and presents both as entertainment." - Ed Lowry (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)  
     
  "If he has a fatal flaw as an artist, it his his naïve belief that style can invariably transcend substance and that our way of looking at the world is more important than the world itself. Critic-film-makers like Godard and Truffaut pay lip service to these doctrines, but they don't really believe them. Only Minnelli believes implicitly in the power of his camera to transform trash into art, and corn into caviar. Minnelli believes more in beauty than art." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)  
     
  "A brilliant director of musicals who brought a unity of song and drama to the screen in the 1940s, Minnelli is also adept at garish, frequently penetrating dramas. He has one of the best moving cameras in Hollywood." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "Having started as a designer I have a lot to do with settings and costumes, because I think they relate to the story and character, explain it." - Vincente Minnelli  
     
 
 

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Last updated: 28/01/2010 10:35 AM.  Contact Us: bill@theyshootpictures.com.
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"A film is a petrified fountain of thought." - Jean Cocteau   "If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed." - Stanley Kubrick