Genre: Family/Music/Romance Director: Vincente Minnelli
Producer: Arthur Freed
Writer(s): Irving Brecher (screenplay) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (screenplay); Sally Benson (book)
Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Leon Ames, Tom Drake, Marjorie Main, Harry Davenport, June Lockhart, Harry H. Daniels Jr., Joan Carroll, Hugh Marlowe, Robert Sully, Chill Willis
Music: Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin, Nacio Herb Brown, Arthur Freed, George E. Stoll
Cinematography: George J. Folsey
Editing: Albert Akst
Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: January 1945
Running Time: 115 min
Is there any genre more joyous than the musical? Just think emotions so strong that they can only be expressed in the medium of song and dance. Director Vincente Minnelli understood this, and with Meet Me in St. Louis he cemented his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most creative auteurs and the master of the American musical. When film critic Andrew Sarris wrote his famous work The American Cinema he placed Minnelli in the far side of the auteur paradise for “believing more in beauty than in art,” but what he failed to recognize is that beauty is the core of Minnelli’s art. If Meet Me in St. Louis wasn’t so beautiful almost all of the time, would the film still be loved today?
For the musical, Meet Me in St. Louis was a film that changed the genre, no longer did people break out into random song and dance numbers, but the music was integrated into the story. While I normally like my musicals with some nice dance routines, there’s a certain flow to this film that other musicals lack. Take Top Hat for example, the dance scenes between Fred and Ginger are spectacular, but they’re placed in at an uneven pace, and in between what we have is nothing more than a typical rom-com. Even Singin’ in the Rain, which tells a wonderful tale, suffers from an uneven pacing in its musical numbers. To a certain extent the same problem exists in Meet Me in St. Louis, most of the musical numbers are front-loaded into the beginning of the film, but because everything flows so well, and the story is so well-written it really doesn’t matter.
The heart of the film’s story is the characters, a typical middle-class family living in St. Louis at the turn of the century. They’re all well-rounded and well-acted. In The Wizard of Oz I found Judy Garland to be irritating, but here she’s playing a character that is more grown-up, and her performance feels more natural. She expresses so much with her face that Esther comes to life in a way many actresses would not be able to pull off. When she sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to her sister Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) there exists this achingly heart-wringing melancholy in her eyes, and her voice is like that of an angel. However then there’s the famous trolley car sequence as Esther looks around for the boy next door, at first everyone around her is singing as she’s squeezed in by them, and her face expresses anxiety, but then she breaks out into a song of her own, and the joy, real joy is there. It helps that Esther is a three-dimensional character instead of just an object to push along the story with. She’s very human, and her trials and tribulations are human as well.
The rest of the characters are fascinating as well. I mentioned the six year old sister Tootie, but she is perhaps the most fascinating character in the film, not to mention she’s played perfectly by O’Brien, but she supplies an undercurrent of darkness to the film. Tootie has a morbid obsession with death, and this is put on full display during the famous Halloween sequence when Tootie “kills” her neighbor with flour so that she can help build a massive bonfire. The older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) is out looking for love as well, but she’s far more cynical than Esther, obsessed with finding a mature man, which forms a humorous subplot that carries on throughout the film. There’s also Katie (Marjorie Main) the maid, and the two parents (Mary Astor and Leon Ames) who are trying to keep their love alive and Grandpa (Harry Davenport), and many others. Somehow we are all kept interested in these characters and like everything else in the film Minnelli balances out his cast well, squeezing excellent performances from all of them.
The film is one of the best directed films out there. Minnelli often designed his own sets and costumes, and here he uses bright, bold colors, and gives the film a dreamy look. His use of color is especially noteworthy, and he uses different shades and hues for each season. The camerawork is excellent, take during the trolley song as his camera travels all over the trolley, picking up little details while never loosing sight of Esther or during the ball sequence as the audience is carried from one dancer to another. The film looks and feels beautiful, and the songs are outstanding and catchy as I’ve mentioned before. This here is beauty on film.
Meet Me in St. Louis remains one of the best Hollywood musicals ever lensed, it’s a film where all of the diverse elements come together perfectly, and we are always left in awe. It’s the type of movie that Hollywood simply does not make anymore.
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