Short Take: Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Vincente Minnelli, is a charming movie musical, and one of the most visually exquisite films ever produced in Hollywood. The setting is St. Louis in 1903 and 1904, concluding with the World's Fair that spring. The film is a year in the life of an upper-middle-class family, seen mostly through the eyes of the second-oldest daughter (Judy Garland). There are two major story threads: the Garland character's interest in the boy next door (Tom Drake), and the family's trepidation over the plans to move to New York City after the father (Leon Ames) accepts a job transfer. As sentimental as the picture is, it is not sappy. Two sequences--the misadventures of the youngest daughter (Margaret O'Brien) on Halloween, and her Christmas Eve upset over the prospect of moving--have a greater emotional intensity than most Hollywood dramas. Vincente Minnelli's handling of the story's tonal complexities is strikingly assured, and his realization of the film's world is awe-inspiring. The rich color design and the lavish attention to period detail all but set the standard for other pictures. Judy Garland is a sweet presence, and she has some of her finest singing moments, with songs including "The Boy Next Door," "The Trolley Song," and most memorably, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The cast also features Mary Astor as the mother, Lucille Bremer as the eldest daughter, and Marjorie Main as the family maid. George J. Folsey is credited with the gorgeous cinematography, and the costumes are by Irene Sharaff. Cedric Gibbons, Lemuel Ayers, and Jack Martin Smith contributed the magnificent production design. The screenplay, credited to Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe (there were several uncredited hands), is based on a memoir by Sally Benson. Most of the songs are by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.

Short Take: Gaslight (1944)

The 1944 film Gaslight, directed by George Cukor, is a tense, atmospheric psychological thriller. In Victorian London, a woman (Ingrid Bergman) moves into an inherited townhouse with her new husband (Charles Boyer). The marriage is not a happy one. The husband slowly and systematically undertakes a campaign to drive the wife mad. He isolates her socially, humiliates her in front of others, and has her constantly doubting her memories and perceptions. But the plotting isn't clever. There's not much mystery to the husband's motives; an alert viewer should have them figured out before the picture is a third over. The two lead performances are what make the picture work. Boyer is sinister perfection as the diabolical husband, and Bergman is powerfully sympathetic as the increasingly neurotic and distraught wife. (She won her first Oscar for the role.) The picture's suspense comes from watching how the husband's mind games play out, and waiting for the wife to finally turn the tables on him. Cukor's direction keeps the pacing taut. He also does a fine job of integrating the lavish production values with the story: the overfurnished sets give a claustrophobic feel to the proceedings, and the foggy nighttime exteriors are strikingly moody. The picture is not quite Old Hollywood at its best, but it's very entertaining. The cast includes Joseph Cotten as the Scotland Yard detective who suspects things are deeply amiss with the couple, and a teenage Angela Lansbury as an insolent Cockney maid. Dame May Whitty plays the busybody neighbor who's always trying to make friends with the wife. Her frustrated efforts start to feel like a running gag, and there's an amusing payoff at the film's end. The script, which is loosely based on the play by Patrick Hamilton, is credited to John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston. Joseph Ruttenberg provided the handsome black-and-white cinematography. Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari, Edwin B. Willis, and Paul Huldschinsky won the film's second Oscar for their sets. The original play was the basis for a 1940 British picture directed by Thorold Dickinson, and starring Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard.

Short Take: The Curse of the Cat People

Producer Val Lewton's Cat People was an enormous box-office success upon its release in 1942. His 1944 The Curse of the Cat People is ostensibly a sequel, but it is quite far removed from the subject of its predecessor. While it references the earlier film, and the cast returns to play the same characters, it seems to have been conceived as a stand-alone project. The connections to the earlier film are all but nominal. There's certainly nothing about the passions of love turning women into homicidal panthers. It's instead a story about a lonely little girl (Ann Carter) with a wayward imagination. Her flights of fancy concern her parents (Kent Smith and Jane Randolph, both from the earlier film), and the father attempts to police her behavior. But he only succeeds in making the girl retreat further inward. The two new friends she makes only complicate things. The first is the ghost of the father's first wife (Simone Simon, also from the earlier film). The second is an elderly actress (Julia Deen) who shares a house with a resentful, live-in adult daughter (Elizabeth Russell). DeWitt Bodean's screenplay is poorly developed. The girl's friendships with the ghost and the actress only illustrate the pathos of the girl's circumstances. These relationships don't intersect until the contrived, melodramatic finale, and they don't add any depth to the material. The film does a capable job of hitting obvious sentimental notes, but that's the most that can be said for it. Lewton, directors Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, and the superb cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca otherwise treat the film as a platform for Gothic visuals, which are far more decorative than poetic. The cast also includes Eve March as the girl's kindergarten teacher, and Sir Lancelot as the parents' housekeeper.