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also returned to Minnellis persistent interest in dream experiences. , despite its mangled form on release, shows the same visual distinction and the same interest in imaginative exclusion ol outside reality, so that three films in ten years is hard to understand. It was his first film away from MGM and marked an unexplained drying up in his output. Regularly, his work plunged and rose again: The Sandpiper is a dreadful film Four Horsemen a hopeless one, saved locally by the color and by Ingrid Timlin Goodbye Charlie has fine moments but lacks coordination. The use of the goldfish in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, and the emphasis on interior shape and decor in The Cobweb, may be symptomatic of Minnelli’s most lasting achievements. In those films, as in Lust for Life, the personal story and the visual story lock together. It can be seen in The Cobweb, Some Came Running, Two Weeks in Another Town, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father-all underrated films, ostensibly lurid or soft subjects that he invested with such intense psychological detail that the narrative faults vanish. But The Bad and the Beautiful was a breakthrough: it opened up a potential for sudden insights in brilliantly regulated melodrama that was one of Minnelli’s most fascinating assets. Undercurrent was a contrived psychological movie, but often intriguing Madame Bovary never worked as a whole, or as the dream of a bourgeois wife. The Pirate, especially, looks like the work of a man more eager to decorate than design.Īs Minnelli’s musicals became less dramatically necessary-The Band Wagon, Biigadoon, Kismet-he made delightful comedies in which his rococo instinct in no way distracted one from the dry homespun of Spencer Tracy.

Stunning as these pictures are in moments, the open-air musicals of Donen seem more original.

The Pirate, and An American in Paris are willfully stylized and fantastic, inclining toward a new form that might consist only of dance, song, and color.

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Ziegfeld Follies is a series of sketches. Louis is a period piece, more intent on personality and nostalgia than musical routines-a sort of home the atricals musical in which “The Trolley Song” is beautifully integrated with the action. Cabin in the Sky is all-black, dwelling gloriously on Lena Horne and Ethel Waters. Working usually for Freed, he coincided with the MGM musical-but only coincided. Producer Arthur Freed had invited him to MGM, but Minnelli spent two years being generally helpful before he made the inevitable step into direction.

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The talent was immense, but imprecise, and Hollywood was at first uncertain how to use him. Minnelli came to films with a great reputation in the New York theatre as a designer: at Radio City Music Hall: with the Ziegfeld Follies, and on Very Warm for May, a Jerome Kern musical. (age 83) Chicago, Illinois, United States

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