Vincente Minnelli's Best Picture Oscar Winners

Allow me to preface this post by stating that 1. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) is my vote for the greatest film of the 1940s. 2. Minnelli is in the Pantheon of the greatest classical Hollywood directors. 3. The musical is my favorite Hollywood genre. Thus, I feel confident to proclaim both An American in Paris (1951) and Gigi (1958) as minor Minnelli at best. In this I have some august support. James Naremore, in his 1993 book The Films of Vincente Minnelli, confesses that both leave him "relatively cold. Despite a great many incidental virtues, the first of these films is a somewhat leaden spectacular , and the second strikes me as a patently sexist fantasy about 'little girls''" (5). And in The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris does not italicize Gigi in his Minnelli entry which means the film does not "represent [one of] the highlights of a director's career" (17). 

A key to the problem with An American in Paris occurs in the Beaux Arts Ball scene, a Sternbergian spectacle raging around the (temporary) deformation of the heterosexual couple of Lise (Leslie Caron) and Jerry (Gene Kelly). In her BFI monograph on the film, Sue Harris appears crestfallen about the Ball because it "unsettles the generic stability for which [the film] seemed destined" (85). But that just means the film has reached its hysterical moment where music and mise-en-scène become heightened to reveal what the realist representation and the story cannot. Here, the film finally becomes as queer as it wants to be with Minnelli's exquisite decoration rising to the surface, threatening to engulf the rote heterosexuality in an orgy of flailing bodies and queer couplings. Notice the man leading his shirtless, betutued boyfriend through the crowd.

The problem is that the Ball doesn't occur until almost 90 minutes into the film. Before then, An American in Paris trudges along its destined path with far too much generic stability. To be blunt, I only need the Beaux Arts scene and the justly famous dream ballet. But I could settle for the rest if Hank's (Georges Guétary in his only Hollywood film, unsurprisingly) "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and Adam's (Oscar Levant, always terrific) dream symphony "Concerto in F" and maybe Jerry's cutesy "I Got Rhythm" were excised, all pointless and/or saccharine moments that make my teeth hurt. But that's the blessing and the curse of the musical. Even (especially!) at its best, the genre traffics in an indifference to wholeness. That Minnelli pulled off two great scenes is blessing enough. In short, I'll take the 17-minute dream ballet over the other nominees for Best Picture that year in their entireties save for A Streetcar Named Desire. 

I'd lob Naremore's leaden complaint more against Gigi at least in its first half. Minnelli's camera feels weighted down in that 1950s Oscar way. All the better to show off the absolutely gorgeous décor, I know. But it makes for a rather elephantine watch until Gigi (Little Edie Bouvier fave Leslie Caron) starts to self-actualize, at which point, to borrow Joe McElhaney's words from The Death of Classical Cinema, Minnelli gives "a sense that his characters are actively engaging with the decor of their homes and work spaces rather than simply being determined by it" (152). The increasingly analytical editing and elegant tracking shots drain some of the stifling prestige out of the project and overall, Gigi generates more dramatic kineticism than An American in Paris, with more highs too, especially the simple, exquisite "I Remember It Well" sung by Maurice Chevalier and the great Hermione Gingold. But both films peter out at the end. Gaston's (Louis Jourdan) nighttime return to the place where he sang the title song signals his commitment to Gigi as his wife rather than his courtesan. But the scene feels sloppy and rushed as if Minnelli was itchy to wrap things up, a sensible impulse as the film approaches the two-hour mark but hardly worth the running time. 

So the director of Cabin in the Sky and The Clock and Yolanda and the Thief and The Pirate and The Bad and the Beautiful and The Long, Long Trailer and The Cobweb and Tea and Sympathy and Some Came Running and Home from the Hill and Two Weeks in Another Town and A Matter of Time came up short now and then. Big deal.

An American in Paris: B

Gigi: a carefully hedged A-minus