Vincente Minnelli

Homosexuality was a taboo subject in 1956 Hollywood. So it was a challenge for screenwriter Robert Anderson to adapt his hit Broadway play about a sensitive prepschooler called “sister boy” by his peers, and the lovely housemaster’s wife who realizes she must offer more than tea and sympathy to help the boy prove his manhood. The frankness may be muted but the power remains in this stellar film. Under Vincente Minnelli’s direction, Deborah Kerr and John Kerr reprise their Broadway roles as older woman and younger man in poignant performances that reveal the compassion and the torment of being human. Their stage costar Leif Erickson joins them in counterpoint as the emotionally clenched housemaster.Read More »

A troubled young woman who visits a psychotherapist to help her quit smoking undergoes hypnosis and finds herself reliving a tragic Victorian romance from a past life.Read More »

Three loosely connected love stories. The first story: Paula is a talented dancer who cannot truly live unless she dances. But has a heart condition, which means she cannot live if she does. The second story: Tommy despises his French tutor, and hates being a child. He wants to be an adult so he can do what he wants. He gets his wish, being transformed into a handsome young man for one evening, and learns about whole new side of his French tutor. Third story: Pierre Narval is trapeze artist who gave it up when his partner died doing a dangerous stunt at his bidding. He rescues Nina, a beautiful young woman, after she throws herself into the Seine, and convinces her to become his new aerial partner. Her husband had been killed by the Nazis during the war, and she blames herself. They fall in love, which is tested when Nina must perform the stunt which killed Pierre’s former partner.Read More »

Eddie wants his dad to find a new wife but disapproves of the women he dates. He thinks their neighbor would make a much better match.Read More »

Vincente Minnelli’s second musical for MGM, released seven months after his feature debut Cabin in the Sky. The stars of the film are popular radio and film comedian Red Skelton and dance legend Eleanor Powell, but as in the earlier film, many notable jazz musicians are featured as well, this time performing as themselves: Lena Horne returns in a smaller role and is joined by Hazel Scott, Helen O’Connell, Bob Eberly, and Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra.Read More »

Vincente Minnelli’s debut film, featuring a host of black talent of the time (Eddie Anderson, Lena Horne, Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and others). Marred slightly by the cut of the “Ain’t It the Truth” number (originally performed by Lena Horne in a bubble bath and reprised by Louis Armstrong later in the film), but the spirited performances of “Taking a Chance on Love” and “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” more than make up for this.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
William Gibson’s novel The Cobweb was brought to the screen by MGM with an impressive, hand-picked cast. Richard Widmark plays the head of a posh psychiatric clinic. Widmark’s wife Gloria Grahame jockeys for the honor of selecting new drapes for the hospital’s library. One wouldn’t think that such a trivial decision would spark so much melodrama; but thanks to those drapes, we are allowed to probe the disturbed psyches of martinet business affairs director Lillian Gish, philandering doctor Charles Boyer, lonely activities director Lauren Bacall, and suicidal patient John Kerr. Oscar Levant, who spent most of his life in and out of “little white rooms”, is ideally cast as a neurotic musician, while Fay Wray has a superb cameo as Boyer’s long-suffering wife. Cobweb served as the screen debuts for both John Kerr and Susan Strasberg. by Hal EricksonRead More »

from 55th New York Film Festival program
A bit of an anomaly within Minnelli’s often more colorful and ebullient oeuvre, this black-and-white, paranoiac romantic thriller finds the master harnessing his consummate stylishness to spin a haunting, noirish tale. Timid Ann (Katharine Hepburn) marries the highly eligible Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), whose wealth and good looks conceal an underlying and profound cruelty. Ann grows increasingly obsessed with learning the truth about what happened to Alan’s brother, Michael (Robert Mitchum), who has been missing for some time… This gripping movie casts Hepburn, Taylor, and Mitchum all against type.Read More »

Quote:
Vincente Minnelli’s final film, A Matter of Time (1976), is both a love letter to the prodigious talents of his daughter Liza, and a fond farewell to the Golden Age of Hollywood–the era during which he did his best work, long gone by 1976. The film is based on the Maurice Druon novel, La volupté d’être (Film of Memory, 1954), which in turn was loosely based on the life of early 20th century art patroness and muse Marchesa Luisa Casati. The Contessa Sanziani (Ingrid Bergman) is a Belle Epoque courtesan who, like the real-life Casati, has fallen on hard times and is living in a shabby Roman hotel. Half-mad and enveloped in memories, the Contessa recounts her past triumphs to an impressionable hotel maid, Nina (Liza Minnelli), who imagines herself playing out the Contessa’s fabled life. As the Contessa fades, Nina blossoms….Read More »