From 1942 to 1976 Vincente Minnelli directed 38 films, ranging
from musicals such as “An American in Paris” to
comedies such as “Father of the Bride” to dramas such
as “The Clock.” Over the years, Minnelli’s films
have won more than a dozen Oscars, including two for best picture,
and in 1958 he won best director for the movie
“Gigi.”
Starting today and continuing for the next two weeks, the UCLA
Film and Television Archive will be exhibiting “M is for
Minnelli: The Melodramas.” A parallel series featuring
Minnelli’s musicals will be shown at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art. The overall series will kick off with a screening at
the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences tonight with an
appearance by Kirk Douglas.
“A lot of his films have a sort of emotional violence, and
his melodramas deal with the profound issues of loneliness,
relationships, violence and sex,” said David Pendleton, a
programmer at UCLA’s Film and Television Archive.
Minnelli’s first dramatic film, 1945’s “The
Clock,” is a story about a young couple who find love in the
hustle of New York City during World War II. The importance
Minnelli places on set production is evident through the films
dramatic use of New York City’s Penn Station and Riverside
Park as a backdrop to the movie’s character and plot
development.
“It’s hard to say exactly how he does it, but
Minnelli is able to convey an emotional poignancy and depth of
feeling with the sets of his films,” Pendleton said.
Strangely enough, Minnelli’s talent for set production was
not developed on stage or in film, but rather while designing
department store-front windows in Chicago during the Great
Depression. His abilities there, however, eventually led him to
Broadway, where he made a name for himself as a wizard of set
design.
“Minnelli took his talent for spatial design from making
department-store windows to creating theater sets,” said
Pendleton, “And when he finally came to Hollywood as a
director he used these skills to create rich palettes for his
films.”
In 1935 he directed his first Broadway show, “At Home
Abroad,” and after a few years directing on Broadway,
Minnelli made the transition to Hollywood. In 1940 he landed a
contract at MGM where he remained for 26 years.
“In the ’40s and ’50s Minnelli was one of the
most sought after directors at MGM receiving many of their most
high level projects,” Pendleton said. “Color only
seemed to enhance his strengths as filmmaker, and it wasn’t
until the mid-’60s that his popularity started to
wane.”
One of Minnelli’s most celebrated color films, “Some
Came Running,” released in 1958 starring Dean Martin, Frank
Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine (for which she received an Oscar
nomination), is still widely renowned for its artistic use of
color.
“Many of the innovative film techniques Minnelli used,
such as his psychological use of color in the carnival scene in
“˜Some Came Running’ are still being used in films
now,” said Ellen Harrington, special events coordinator
for the Academy of Motion Pictures. “The impact Minnelli had
on the film industry is what we would call today “˜cutting
edge.'”
Minnelli’s success also led to his great popularity within
the Hollywood community. After making several greatly successful
films with movie star Judy Garland in the early ’40s,
including the musical “Meet Me in St. Louis,” Minnelli
and Garland became one of Hollywood’s hottest couples.
“His place in Hollywood history of course includes his
marriage to Judy Garland, and his fathering of Liza
Minnelli,” Harrington said.
Harrington and Pendleton, however, both emphasized
Minnelli’s role as an innovative director over his personal
life, stressing the importance of his development of color and of
the widescreen format.
“His films have this unique mixture of a painterly visual
sense with a theatrical sense of the space in front of the camera,
which is often breathtaking on the wide screen and really suffers
when being shown on television,” Pendleton said.
For more info, go to www.cinema.ucla.edu or call (310)
206-FILM.