Category: musical
“Right here where we live” | Meet Me in St Louis (1944)
A Missouri family go about their day-to-day lives in the 12 months leading up to the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. That is the one-sentence summary of Vincente Minnelli’s musical film Meet Me in St Louis. On a superficial level it seems too low-key to become crowd-pleasing blockbuster, yet upon its release in November 1944 ...
“I shouldn’t have come” | It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)
Sometimes you can’t go home again. In 1952 movie-goers around the world fell in love with Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s vibrant, toe-tapping musical Singin’ in the Rain. They embraced it with such enthusiasm that it remains one of the all-time great Hollywood productions today. Three years later Kelly and Donen reunited with Singin’ ...
“Well of course we talk, don’t everybody?” | Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
An audio version of this essay is available for download here. ‘There are no auteurs in musical pictures,’ said actor/director Gene Kelly. ‘It’s impossible. You have to have music and arrangements, a choreographer, a director and so forth.’[i] It would seem that good musicals require good partnerships to succeed, and if that is true then ...
