Minnelli had directed the gaudy 1955 musical ''Kismet'' as though implementing ''marching orders for the Macy parade.'' Liked Sweeping CanvasesĪs a director, Mr. The critic Andrew Sarris once wrote bluntly, ''Minnelli believes more in beauty than in art.'' Mr. Minnelli also came in for some critical jabs and buffetings, especially late in his career. ''His best was the best there ever was.''īut Mr. Minnelli was ''the greatest director of motion picture musicals the screen has ever known.'' The playwright and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (who died on June 14), wrote in 1974 after several collaborations with him that Mr. Crowther wrote, ''the reds of a Paris cafe, the greens of a Provencal village or the golden yellows of a field of ripening grain - these give us a sensory knowledge of the surroundings that weigh upon van Gogh.''Īppraisals of Mr. ''The cold grayness of a mining district,'' Mr. Minnelli had ''wisely relied on color and the richness and character it gives to images.'' Reviewing ''Lust for Life,'' a screen biography of the painter Vincent van Gogh that starred Kirk Douglas, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that Mr. Color and CharacterĪnd his use of color won perennial praise. He had a superb sense of proportion and balance, his admirers said, in addition to his ability to create an aura of sophistication and a tone of nostalgia without going overboard. Minnelli quickly became an acknowledged master of the form. #Was vincent minelli gay movie#It was his good fortune to be in the right place at the right time: the 1940's and 1950's were the heyday of the color movie musical. Inevitably, he was summoned to Hollywood, and in 1940 he began his 26 years with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. He began as a director with three successful Broadway shows, ''At Home Abroad'' (1935), ''The Show Is On'' (1936) and ''Hooray for What!'' (1937). Minnelli did work hard, painting signs as a schoolboy, designing show-window displays, then gaining recognition as a designer of theatrical scenery and costumes. He died of hard work.' ''Įlegant and suave, but high-strung, Mr. And if they're not, then let them inscribe on my tombstone what they could about any craftsman who loves his job: 'Here lies Vincente Minnelli. I'm still not sure if movies are an art form. Minnelli wrote in the autobiography, ''I Remember It Well,'' ''I work to please myself. Minnelli's three dozen movies also included successful serious films, such as ''The Bad and the Beautiful'' (1952) and ''Lust for Life'' (1956), and comedies that did not rely on music, such as ''Father of the Bride'' (1950). Love of wife, love of family, love of work.''īesides musicals, Mr. Minnelli asked proudly in his 1974 autobiography, ''can lay claim to being loved by the most extraordinary talents of not one, but two generations? And who loved, not always wisely, in return? But love is what life is all about. Minnelli's large dark eyes and Miss Garland's stage talents and won an Academy Award herself, for her performance in ''Cabaret'' (1972). The latter two starred the tempestuous singer-actress Judy Garland, to whom he was married from 1945 to 1951. The director's other notable film musicals included ''The Band Wagon'' (1953), ''Meet Me in St. Minnelli's 1951 movie ''An American in Paris'' also received. Among the other Oscars for ''Gigi'' was the one for best film of the year, which Mr. The prize was one of nine Oscars for the picture, the most any movie had won until then. Minnelli won an Academy Award for directing ''Gigi'' in 1958. The director had been hospitalized several times within the last year for emphysema and pneumonia, according to Ron Wise of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Vincente Minnelli, whose deft intermingling of song, dance and plot made him one of the greatest directors of Hollywood musicals, died in his sleep at his home in Los Angeles last night.
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