Vincente Minnelli

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Vincente Minnelli (born February 28, 1903 as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago , Illinois , † July 25, 1986 in Beverly Hills , California ) was an American director. He shot numerous MGM classics of the 1940s and 1950s. He was best known for award-winning productions of film musicals such as Meet Me in St. Louis , An American in Paris and Gigi .

Life

Vincente Minnelli was the son of an Italian-American musical conductor and thus came into contact with musical productions at an early age. His mother was a French actress. The family ran a touring stage, where Vincente was already on stage at the age of three. At the age of 16 he left school without a degree and went back to his hometown. After jobs as a display designer and photographer, he began a professional career as a set and costume designer for Broadway shows in the 1920s . In 1933 Minnelli became the artistic director of Radio City Music Hall in New York . Here he staged successful revues until 1940 and was then hired by Arthur Freed for MGM in Hollywood . He initially worked on several Mickey Rooney / Judy Garland films directed by Busby Berkeley . In 1943 he was allowed to direct his first own film: A Little House in Heaven , a musical with an exclusively African-American cast that was a surprise success.

His third film from 1944, Meet Me in St. Louis , with Judy Garland in the lead role, established him as an important Hollywood director. Meet Me in St. Louis was one of the biggest box office hits of the year and received critical acclaim. The collaboration with Judy Garland culminated in their wedding in 1945. A year later their daughter Liza Minnelli was born. Until the divorce in 1951, he directed other films by his wife. In 1952 he received an Oscar nomination for directing the musical An American in Paris . While the production with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron received the award for the best film of the year, Minnelli had to admit defeat to the American George Stevens ( A Place in the Sun ). Six years later he entrusted Caron with the title role in the musical adaptation of Gigi , for which he finally received the Oscar. Another successful musical film under his direction was up! with Fred Astaire from 1953.

Minnelli also directed many notable works in other genres: he directed the successful comedy Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor in 1950 , which was followed by a sequel called A Gift from Heaven (1951) the following year . He also made the comedy Why did I say yes in 1957 ? starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall . Another hit was the drama City of Illusions about the life of an unscrupulous film producer, played by Kirk Douglas . Although the film was critical of Hollywood, it won five Academy Awards. Another success was the biography Vincent van Gogh - A Life in Passion , in which Kirk Douglas in the title role of the painter probably achieved one of the best achievements of his career. In 1956, Minnelli directed the drama Different from the Others , which was careful with the issue of homosexuality because of the Hays Code . Biographers speculated about Minnelli's homosexuality from his lifetime until today. As early as 1949 he had shot the film drama Madame Bovary and Her Lovers with Jennifer Jones , which at the time was also a scandalous subject of adultery. From the 1960s onwards, Minnelli's success as a director decreased and he also turned a few flops. With the drama Nina , in which his daughter Liza was seen at the side of Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer , Minnelli ended his successful film career in the mid-1970s.

After his divorce from Judy Garland in 1951, he married three more times, two of which were divorced. The 1980 marriage to Margaretta Lee Anderson lasted until his death. Minnelli died in 1986 of pneumonia after a long illness , after he had also recently suffered from Alzheimer's . He was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California . A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (6676 Hollywood Boulevard) commemorates the director .

style

Vincente Minnelli often used the words "beauty" and "magic" in relation to his films. "Minnelli believes more in beauty than in art," wrote film critic Andrew Sarris . The most important thing for the visualist was the greatest possible elegance of the mise en scène , whereby the audience should be amazed at the film images. His Technicolor films are strikingly colorful and almost all of his films are lavishly furnished in costumes and sets. F. Keogh Gleason , who designed many film sets for Minnelli, pointed out that most of the Minnelli film characters seem to live in luxury even if the characters in the script were laid out in the middle class. The style was often more important to him than a realistic representation. In particular, his many musical films often have little plot, but in this case the film songs underline the motivations and feelings of the characters.

Fairy tales, dreams and myths are a central theme in many of his films. Some of his films are characterized by deliberate artificiality and are set in show business, so that they allow the viewer to look behind the scenes, so to speak. Serge Daney wrote that Minnelli's idea was that “a good wizard does not break the illusion, but instead multiplies it to infinity. Twice minus equals plus. Two untruths result in one truth ”.

Filmography

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vincente Minnelli at Senses of Cinema
  2. ↑ Vincente Minnelli at Senses of Cinema
personal data
SURNAME Minnelli, Vincente
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Minnelli, Lester Anthony (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American director
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois, United States
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1986
Place of death Beverly Hills , California, United States