Thursday 19 December 2013
Vincente Minnelli | USA, 1944 | 108 mins | Cert. U
This month we screen an old Hollywood classic: Meet Me in St Louis. Doors will open at 7pm and we will have free food and drink as well as the main feature.
Meet Me In St Louis tells the story of the ‘all-American’ Smith family (Lon, Anna and their five children Rose, Esther, Lon Jr., Agnes and ‘Tootie’, not to mention Grandpa and the crotchety-but-lovable housekeeper Katie) and a season in their life in St Louis, Missouri as they wait for the 1904 World Fair to come to town.
One of the first musicals ever to use the songs as a narrative device rather than just as decoration, Meet Me In St Louis also contains one of Judy Garland’s most honest and compelling performances. And in the figure of the bizarre 5-year old little Tootie (unforgettably played by an Oscar-winning Margaret O’Brien), director Minnelli manages to infuse a genuinely dark and ghoulish undercurrent into this sweet family picture, reminding us, as did the multi-layered Wizard of Oz just five years earlier, that sugary sweetness can never really tell the whole story.