Poll

What's your favorite film by Vincente Minnelli?

Cabin in the Sky
0 (0%)
Meet Me in St. Louis
6 (17.6%)
The Clock
0 (0%)
Undercurrent
0 (0%)
The Pirate
0 (0%)
Madame Bovary
0 (0%)
Father of the Bride
1 (2.9%)
Father's Little Dividend
0 (0%)
An American in Paris
5 (14.7%)
The Bad and the Beautiful
8 (23.5%)
The Band Wagon
5 (14.7%)
The Long, Long Trailer
0 (0%)
Brigadoon
0 (0%)
The Cobweb
0 (0%)
Kismet
0 (0%)
Lust for Life
0 (0%)
Tea and Sympathy
3 (8.8%)
Designing Woman
0 (0%)
Gigi
0 (0%)
The Reluctant Debutante
0 (0%)
Some Came Running
2 (5.9%)
Home from the Hill
0 (0%)
Bells Are Ringing
0 (0%)
The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
0 (0%)
Two Weeks in Another Town
0 (0%)
The Courtship of Eddie's Father
0 (0%)
The Sandpiper
0 (0%)
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
0 (0%)
haven't seen any
4 (11.8%)
don't like any
0 (0%)
other
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 33

Author Topic: Minnelli, Vincente  (Read 12030 times)

oldkid

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Re: Director's Best: Vincente Minnelli
« Reply #50 on: April 26, 2015, 01:16:37 AM »
An American in Paris 4/5
Meet Me in St. Louis 3/5
Gigi 2/5
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1SO

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #51 on: July 03, 2015, 01:23:11 AM »
Some Came Running (1958)
* *
There were times when I thought, "No way I am ever going to watch this again." Minnelli is playing in Douglas Sirk's sandbox, and while he gives it his own style, the script is so unfocused that I'm just getting hit with the talking points instead of luxuriating in the characters. Frank Sinatra is detached most of the time and Dean Martin's character would be pretty easy to splice out. With nothing driving things forward, it mostly just sits there running out the clock.

However, the film's climax is CINECAST!ing amazing. Possibly the best demonstration of pure cinematic power I've seen all year. (Fury Road has been bumped to 2nd Place.) Again, the reason for this scene comes from deep left field, but when it's staged and executed this brilliantly, I don't care. I see a lot of Scorsese in the overblown imagery and moments of pure strange. It reminds me of the climax of Taxi Driver and the entire overblown tone of his Cape Fear. Elmer Bernstein's score, which had been in my face the whole time, finally finds a scene to compliment what he's been doing. Here's your proof that a film can be deadly dull but still worth watching all the way to the end.

oneaprilday

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #52 on: July 04, 2015, 12:27:35 PM »
Great:
1. The Band Wagon
2. Meet Me in St. Louis
3. An American in Paris
4. The Pirate

Good:
5. Father of the Bride
6. Brigadoon

Corndog

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #53 on: March 30, 2016, 08:26:46 AM »
1. Meet Me in St. Louis (3.5)
2. Gigi (2.5)
3. Brigadoon (2.5)
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pixote

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #54 on: July 05, 2018, 12:55:57 AM »


Quote from: Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide
Lust for Life (1956) 122m. ★★★★ D: Vincente Minnelli. Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, James Donald, Pamela Brown, Everett Sloane, Niall MacGinnis, Noel Purcell, Henry Daniell, Jill Bennett, Lionel Jeffries, Eric Pohlmann. Brilliant adaptation of Irving Stone's biography of painter Van Gogh, vividly portraying his anguished life. Quinn won well-deserved Oscar for performance as painter-friend Gauguin, in this exquisite color production. Script by Norman Corwin. Produced by John Houseman. Fine music score by Miklos Rozsa. CinemaScope.

Lust for Life  (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)

Lust for Life conforms to all my preconceptions of a 1950s biopic directed by Vincente Minnelli. The film overflows with strong art direction and nice, balanced compositions, all lit perfectly and with a pleasing color palette. From these painterly still-lifes emerges a still-born drama. Kirk Douglas' celebrated performance as Vincent van Gogh is fatal to the film. He's ridiculously miscast here, with his undisguised American accent clanging harshly in a production where every other European speaks with an English accent (which is odd in its own right). It's a scene-chewing performance right from the start, long before van Gogh's madness sets in. Douglas' shouting to the balcony meshes well with Minnelli's theatrical presentation, but it does little to convey van Gogh's artistic passion. Quinn's Oscar-winning performance (for his small role) is just average, but he at least brings a little vitality to the mostly tepid proceedings. It's actually James Donald (as Theo van Gogh) who comes off best.

This is a slog of a movie. Even the visuals become repetitive after a while, with Minnelli opting for the same camera setups (wide shots from below waist height) time and time again. We see van Gogh's artistic style develop through the film, but the cinematography doesn't match that growth. What seemed beautiful in act one grows staid by act three. And yet it's only in that final act when the narrative finds a bit of a pulse and Douglas' performance finally fits his character's state of mind.

Grade: C

pixote
« Last Edit: July 05, 2018, 12:59:34 AM by pixote »
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1SO

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #55 on: July 07, 2018, 12:10:49 AM »
We watched the same movie. This felt longer than the combined Anthony Mann epics I just watched.

pixote

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #56 on: July 07, 2018, 12:12:25 AM »
We watched the same movie. This felt longer than the combined Anthony Mann epics I just watched.

Ha, that's kind of funny because I almost compared the film to Sayonara, Exodus, and other films of that ilk in my review.

pixote
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1SO

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #57 on: July 07, 2018, 08:35:04 AM »
Updated Rankings

The Cobweb (1955)
★ ★
It’s nagging me that as much as I’m trying to give Minnelli credit for what he does well in terms of the look of the film and the complexity of some of the performances, he’s also the reason why the film doesn’t work. Meant as a dark-hearted critique of long-term relationships in emotional disconnect, Minnelli uses the psychiatric clinic setting as an excuse for unabashed soap opera, where people exclaim their feelings as if they’re having a breakdown. This goes for the patients, the staff and their spouses. (It’s only the poor children who suffer quietly.) The stellar cast includes Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish and Oscar Levant.


Lust for Life (1956)
★ ★
I often hear about cinematic re-evaluations of films that didn’t get their due upon initial release, but rarely the reverse. Once a film is considered great it’s a label that can never be taken away. That’s a real shame when a film like this comes along. Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn are two of my favorite actors, and both seem to be bringing big appetites to compete with the elaborate Art Direction. The film’s look is carefully planned in broad strokes, but Minnelli doesn't calibrate the details from scene to scene to match the progression of Van Gogh's talent. Everything about this film is miscalculated to the point where it comes off as sensationalized fantasy more than biography.


Tea and Sympathy (1956)
★ ★ ★ – Very Good
This is the Minnelli I love. The Art Direction is still lovingly detailed, but the real work went into the surgical screenplay. It’s a lot like Douglas Sirk, but the attack on suburban ‘norms’ is more direct and subversive. This seems like pretty shocking stuff for the 1950s, but seen at a time when toxic masculinity is finally having its feet put to the coals, it’s never been more vital. Minnelli’s visual sugar helps the medicine go down, and the handling of the cast is everything the other two films are not.

I’m not looking for new ways to bang the drum for Home From the Hill, but it’s the natural companion to this. Both films project an image of masculinity and have male characters who give it more importance than it deserves. While they share a thematic target, the two films have different plans of attack. Home is about masculinity being less Neanderthal with each generation. Tea introduces gay panic but grows into something more complex, where labels can no longer simplify a person’s sexuality.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2018, 09:03:49 PM by 1SO »

1SO

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #58 on: July 07, 2018, 08:46:12 AM »

As a general note, one of Minnelli's great weaknesses is directing a character having a breakdown. He has the actor go so berserk it's like they've lost control of their face and limbs. It produces the worst shot in The Bad and the Beautiful (Lana Turner in the car), the worst moment in Two Weeks in Another Town (Kirk Douglas and Ava Gardner in another car drive breakdown), it's what Kirk Douglas builds to in Lust For Life and it's a brief moment towards the climax of Tea and Sympathy where the performance gets out of control before settling back down to earth.

pixote

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Re: Minnelli, Vincente
« Reply #59 on: July 07, 2018, 10:21:57 AM »
I’m surprised that rating for Tea and Sympathy doesn’t translate to a dark green ranking. Any thoughts on sdedalus’ essay?

pixote
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