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Oct. 17 - Oct. 22, 2004 |
The Minnelli Legacy
Italian-American filmmaker remembered by Cinematheque
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2004-01-25
Although he was considered a Hollywood giant, Vincente Minnelli is mostly associated today among youth as Liza Minnelli's father rather than the great filmmaker whose work spans four decades.
As a tribute to this prolific Italian-American director, Cinematheque Ontario is presenting Vincent Minnelli: Technicolor Dreamer, a retrospective of the filmmaker's most influential and important films.
Born in Chicago in 1903 to a family of touring entertainers, Vincente began performing at the age of three with the Minnelli Brothers Dramatic Tent Show. At age eight, he quit and took up the life of a "normal" student where he excelled in drawing and painting. After quitting school at age 16, he joined Chicago's Balaban and Katia motion picture theatre chain where he designed the sets and costumes for their pre-feature programmes. This led to a job at the Paramount Theatre in New York City and in 1933 was hired as the art director for Radio City Music Hall.
After staging several successful Broadway musicals, MGM producer Arthur Freed invited Minnelli to join him in Hollywood where he was trained in film technique. His musical numbers quickly earned him the reputation for lavish visual style and sweeping scope. His first film, 1943's Cabin in the Sky (Feb. 3), is a black-and-white classic about a man (Eddie Anderson) tempted to betray his pious wife (Ethel Waters) with a singer (Lena Horne).
Particularly successful during this period were three musical films starring his first wife Judy Garland: The Clock (Feb. 4), about a love affair between an office girl and soldier (Robert Walker who died of an overdose a few years later); Meet Me in St. Louis (Feb. 21), about a family who must move to New York City; and The Pirate (March 3), about a Caribbean beauty who falls in love with a roaming singer (Gene Kelly) pretending to be a pirate.
Also from that period was Yolanda and the Thief (Jan. 31), which centres on an orphaned heiress (Lucille Bremer) who believes a gambler (Fred Astaire) is her guardian angel; Madame Bovary (Feb. 28), Flaubert's tale about a married woman (Jennifer Jones) who embarks on disastrous affairs; and the non-musical Father of the Bride (Feb. 13), starring Spencer Tracy as the nervous father preparing for his daughter's (Elizabeth Taylor) wedding.
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