Vincente Minnelli looked through the camera lens with a painter's eye. Although the director is usually associated with the musical as John Ford is with Westerns and Hitchcock with suspense films, Minnelli actually worked in many genres, constantly seeking to expose the truth behind facades.

In the 1940s and '50s Minnelli brought the MGM musical to new heights of cinematic sophistication with opulent sets, first-rate talent and eye-popping Technicolor cinematography. He was the only director to team Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly (for one number in Ziegfeld Follies, 1946). He guided up-and-coming stars like Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Leslie Caron and Barbra Streisand through unforgettable performances and he made the films that defined the great golden era of the 1950s in Hollywood.

Minnelli began his career as a theatrical costume designer in Chicago and New York. After he had directed several Broadway musicals, MGM recruited Minnelli and assigned him to the Arthur Freed unit. This production group was soon to become known for their incredibly high standards of excellence in every facet of production and why not? They were working with the best talents in the business, a stable of award-winning composers, dancers, directors and singers.

Freed's first assignment for Minnelli was an African American musical called Cabin in the Sky (1943). It had been a hit on Broadway, but MGM recruited only one member of the original cast to star in the screen version: Ethel Waters. Eddie Anderson and Lena Horne joined Waters on the sound stage for the story of "Little Joe," an Everyman who's tempted by God and the Devil. Will he stay true to his loving wife Petunia (Waters) or fall for the seductive enticements of Sweet Georgia Brown (Lena Horne)? There was trouble on the set from the very beginning. Waters felt threatened by Horne - and the fact that Minnelli had recently begun dating Horne only made the Broadway star more temperamental.

As Minnelli's first film, Cabin in the Sky is far rougher than the rich style that became his screen signature. In the 1930s, Warner Bros. entertained Depression-era audiences with "backstage musicals," such as Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade (both 1933). These films followed a formula; the outside world, filled with poverty, was juxtaposed with the lavish realm of fantasy on stage. Minnelli's musicals abandoned the backstage formula for a new kind of musical, leaving behind economic and political realities to plunge fully into a world of fantasy.

In Cabin in the Sky, Little Joe is tormented by dreams of angels and demons. In Yolanda and the Thief (1945), Fred Astaire plays a con artist who convinces Lucille Bremer that he is her guardian angel - a great cover for his scheme to loot her wealthy South American mansion. Judy Garland plays another South American sweetheart whose dream world is shattered by a harsher reality in The Pirate (1948). Garland plays Manuela, whose arranged marriage to Don Pedro Vargas (Walter Slezak) is imminent. She dreams of true love, of being whisked away by an enchanting buccaneer, Macoco - Mack the Black. A traveling troubadour (Gene Kelly) hears her longing and masquerades as the pirate. Fantasy and reality are completely blurred when the aged Don Vargas turns out to be the legendary bandit himself!

Off his film sets, Minnelli was living a Hollywood fantasy of his own. After dating Lena Horne during the production of Cabin in the Sky, the director fell in love with the star of Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) - Judy Garland. They married in 1945 and had a child of their own the very next year - Liza Minnelli.

Meet Me in St. Louis, with its lush Technicolor cinematography and unforgettable musical numbers, was the beginning of Minnelli's peak years at MGM. Judy's renditions of "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" became instant classics. Minnelli followed this with The Clock (1945), a charming romance about a soldier (Robert Walker) on a two-day leave in New York City who meets and falls in love with an office worker (Judy Garland). By the 1950s, Minnelli's reputation as a great visual stylist and innovator was confirmed with An American in Paris (1951). With Gene Kelly in the lead and doe-eyed Leslie Caron as the object of his affection, An American in Paris won over audiences and became the first musical to win a Best Picture Academy Award since the dawn of sound and The Broadway Melody (1929). The Band Wagon (1953) was another career highpoint, with Minnelli directing Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse and Oscar Levant in a backstage musical that featured a classic score by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz and the famous 'Girl Hunt' ballet, a parody of Mickey Spillane's pulp fictions.

Exotic settings gave a dream-like feel to Minnelli's fantasy-based musicals. Brigadoon (1954) brought Gene Kelly to a mythical Scottish village. Kismet (1955) transported viewers to ancient Baghdad. Gigi (1958) brought Minnelli and his crew back to the city of Paris. Once again Leslie Caron starred as a young ingenue, this time being groomed as a great courtesan. Shortly after Gigi took home ten Academy Awards, the U.S. government broke up the major studios' monopoly of production exhibition and distribution and put an end to the studio system that Minnelli had helped shape.

From the haute Parisian culture, Minnelli ventured out into the cinematic countryside of France. In Lust for Life (1956), the director brought the tormented life of Vincent Van Gogh to the screen. Kirk Douglas impersonated the artist with uncanny realism and Minnelli's Technicolor landscapes perfectly captured the fields of sunflowers and starry nights that Van Gogh memorialized.

In addition to Lust for Life, Minnelli directed several other dramas which were just as artfully composed and designed as his MGM musicals. In Madame Bovary (1949), Jennifer Jones plays the ill-fated heroine of Gustave Flaubert's moralistic fable and the film is justly celebrated for its period detail and an unforgettable ball sequence. In The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Kirk Douglas plays a manipulative, ruthless movie producer based on a composite of several real-life Hollywood characters. Made a year after An American in Paris, there was no lush landscape here, no love interest - not even color cinematography. The Bad and the Beautiful is a scathing look at the movie industry viewed through a black-and-white lens. A decade later Minnelli and Douglas teamed again for another caustic look at the Dream Factory in Two Weeks in Another Town (1962). This time Douglas plays a Hollywood star at the end of his career who is offered a part by a once-famous director (Edward G. Robinson). In contrast to his opulent musicals where he created magical moments amid artificial environments, Minnelli was also a master at exposing the deceit and deception behind the scenes in his moody melodramas.

Minnelli's career represents the zenith of the Dream Factory. His films illustrated what the studio system was able to achieve: a synthesis of great stories, great stars, sets and cinematography. More than standard genre offerings, Minnelli's films constantly crossed back and forth between fantasy and reality and reflected the director's painterly eye. After the movie realism of the 1960s and '70s, looking back on the films of Vincente Minnelli is a reminder that great art could be achieved within MGM's studio system.

by Jeremy Geltzer