They are idealized manifestations of the Americans in Paris and their world. As a result of this romantic fascination, the characters of An American in Paris are apparent archetypes. Woody Allen took this obsession to the next level in his private realization of the fantasy in Midnight in Paris (2011). It is a very modern film laden with multiple meanings and possible interpretations escaping an explicit, black-and-white reading to the colorful, implicit world of dreams in a fashion reminiscent of Minnelli’s celluloid characters.Īs its title suggests, An American in Paris deals with one of the recurring topics in American culture: American artists living in Paris. The public loves the stories about Henry Miller, F. While the film might represent a self-indulgent piece of escapism or simply a well-crafted genre film to some, it is truly the most profound work Minnelli ever created. This does not necessarily have to equal a reduction to an escape from reality since dreams can be both soothing and painful, puerile and poignant which is the case in most of Minnelli’s films, I would argue, but above all in his musical masterpiece and potential magnum opus An American in Paris (1951). It is, however, precisely dreams - and not only in the psychological sense - which make Minnelli’s cinema, the Minnelli universe, what it is.
Although film as an art form can be seen as nothing but the poetic string of dreams, this quality of Minnelli’s cinema has also been the main target of the criticism aimed at him. The ultimate tribute to Minnelli is that few directors in the history of Hollywood have made so many consistently enjoyable, diverse films.Vincente Minnelli is the master of dreams. Louis," the berserk carnival in "Some Came Running" (1958) and the mythic boar hunt in "Home From the Hill" (1960). Even when his films are set in small-town America, they tend to burst into remarkable dream-like passages, such as the Halloween sequence in "Meet Me in St. By the same token, his films generally take place in studio-manufactured settings, where the boundaries between fantasy and everyday life are blurred. His central female characters live in fantasy worlds, finding happiness only when they exchange dreams for artifice his leading men usually play writers, painters, or performers, and if they are not artistic types by profession they tend to be dandies or sensitive youths. A sensitive director of actors, he elicited some of the best performances from such diverse players as Judy Garland (his wife from 1945-51 and mother of his daughter, Liza Minnelli), Spencer Tracy and Kirk Douglas.The imagination or one of its surrogates, such as show business or dreaming, was Minnelli's favorite subject. A master of changing patterns and complex movements, he filled his pictures with swooping crane shots, swirling patterns of fabric and light, with a skillful orchestration of background detail. He loved flamboyant color, costume, and decor, but he never allowed those elements to freeze into static compositions. He was not, however, a painterly filmmaker. He particularly admired the surrealists and was among the first Hollywood directors to appropriate their motifs. Minnelli kept files on different styles of painting, and he liked to run through them for inspiration. Minnelli remained at MGM for two decades, specializing in musicals, domestic comedies, and melodramas. Under Freed's sponsorship, he directed his first film, the underrated all-black musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943). After a brief, abortive stay as a producer at Paramount in the late thirties, he was brought permanently to Hollywood in 1940 by producer Arthur Freed, who was assembling his own unit at MGM.
As a young man he became a costume and set designer for the Balaban and Katz theater chain in Chicago and in 1931 he moved to New York, where he worked for Radio City Music Hall, eventually graduating in 1935 to directing Broadway musicals. Minnelli was born into a theatrical family his parents and his uncle operated a tent show that toured the Midwest.
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