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Vincente Minnelli |
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Director |
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1903 - 1986 |
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Born February 28,
Chicago, Illinois, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Musical,
Drama, Musical Romance, Romance, Comedy, Musical Fantasy, Musical
Comedy, Family Drama, Melodrama, Psychological Drama, Domestic Comedy |
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Key
Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production
Designer), Arthur Freed (Producer/Composer), Adrienne Fazan
(Editor), Preston Ames (Production Designer), Pandro S. Berman (Producer),
Milton Krasner (Cinematographer), Ferris Webster (Editor), George W.
Davis (Production Designer), Urie McCleary (Production Designer), Judy Garland (Leading Player) |
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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) |
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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) |
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Worth a Look: Cabin in the Sky (1943), Father's Little Dividend
(1951), The Story of Three Loves (1953) [co-directed by Gottfried
Reinhardt], Brigadoon (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1960), The 4 Horsemen
of the Apocalypse (1962), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963) |
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Approach with Caution: Yolanda and the Thief (1945), Ziegfeld
Follies (1946), Madame Bovary (1949), The Long, Long Trailer (1954),
Kismet (1955), Designing Woman (1957), The Sandpiper (1965) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; #
Listed in TSPDT's
250 Quintessential Noir Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
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 ] [
Wikipedia ]
[
GLBTQ Biography
] [
Classic Film and Television Home Page ]
[
Moving Image Source Article (2011) ] [
Sight & Sound Article (2012)
] |
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Books:
[
A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli ] [
Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer ] [
Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment ] [
The
Films of Vincente Minnelli ] [
The Death of Classical Cinema: Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli ] [
I
Remember it Well ] [
Directed
by Vincente Minnelli ] |
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"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)
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"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) |
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"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) |
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"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) |
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"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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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include
I Dood It (1943),
The Reluctant Debutante (1958), Goodbye Charlie (1964), On a Clear Day
You Can See Forever (1970), and A Matter of Time (1976). |
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"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 |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
The Far Side of Paradise |
| ●
100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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●
501
Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest
Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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●
Lloyd
Bacon |
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●
George
Cukor |
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Jacques
Demy |
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Stanley
Donen |
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Stanley
Donen & Gene Kelly |
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Walter
Lang |
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Joshua
Logan |
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Joseph
L. Mankiewicz |
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●
Richard
Quine |
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●
George
Sidney |
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●
Douglas
Sirk |
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●
Charles
Walters |
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