A Painter in Hollywood: Vincente Minnelli's "An American in Paris"

Between 1957 and 1962 the critics of Cahiers du cinbma discovered Vincente Minnelli as an auteur. According to the critics of Cahiers, the auteur's signature can be detected in how traits peculiar to single director manage to reappear across different genres subject to the formulae of the industry.' More prudently than the French critics, the Italian Roberto Campari and the American Stephen Harvey propose that Minnelli's authorial signature is the product of dialectic between his collaborators in the studio system and his directorial personality. This combination of efforts produces signature characterized by a lush and daring use of color, the seamless fusion of music and camera movement, and decorative scheme that mates the cast with inanimate objects in voluptuous counterpoint.2 While Minnelli's style can be seen as an epitome of M-G-M's, it is also unique. According to Harvey, it is difficult to distinguish between Minnelli as an artist only apparently at home in Hollywood, and Minnelli as one of the most imaginative interpreters of the industry's approach. Even in the late fifties, when steady commitment to one studio had become unusual, Minnelli remained faithful, salaried M-G-M employee. During this period, Minnelli directed several of his most important musicals and melodramas: Gigi (1958), Some Came Running (1959), and Home from the Hill (1960). Harvey concludes that it would be too simplistic to assume that Minnelli's attachment to the highly professional working methods of M-G-M guaranteed perfect fit with his own style: If the idiosyncratic beauty of Minnelli's style transcended M-G-M's trademark gloss, the fundamental pessimism of his viewpoint just as surely sabotaged their upbeat ethic.3 Minnelli's signature carries over from the melodramas to the musicals, so that one genre functions as the foil of the other. Hence Minnelli's pessimism is latent even under the happy surface of An American in Paris, fairy-tale musical he directed the year of his difficult divorce from Judy Garland.4 Vincente Minnelli tackled the theme of painting as creativity, whether he was directing melodrama about Vincent Van Gogh going mad or musical about mediocre painter in love with French girl. In short, Minnelli is torn between celebratory view of art in An American in Paris (1951) and one that sees art as terrifying disease in Lust for Life (1956).