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Color at the center: Minnelli's Technicolor style in 'Meet Me in St. Louis.' - Style in Cinema - filmmaker Vincente Minnelli
Style, Fall, 1998 by Scott Higgins
These technological idiosyncrasies are key to Minnelli's staging of the action. Because the foreground is subdued, any changes in color at the rear of the image have particular force. The first figure to appear on the stairs is Rose in her greenish-gold (between yolk yellow and chartreuse) dress. She halts on the first landing, stepping into a pool of light and introducing a high-value dash of new color into the background. Both lighting and movement cue the viewer to notice her entrance, but color helps seize attention and immediately identifies her. The dress generates a significant contrast with the red and rust background accents while coordinating with an arrangement of yellow roses placed on a table at midground right.(11)
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When Agnes and Tootie enter, they pass Rose and continue down the stairs. Agnes wears a peach pink gown, and Tootie a flat pearlblush pink robe. Together they introduce another color accent that harmonizes with the gold and red hues already present [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 9 OMITTED]. Although color contrast punctuates the characters' entrances, the design presently steers clear of extreme juxtapositions. The pinks and reds are part of the same family of hues, their difference primarily a matter of tint and value. Meanwhile, the green component of Rose's dress forms a more definite contrast with these reds, but this contrast is tempered by yellow tones that move the color closer to the warm accents of her surroundings. By generating variation without high contrast, Minnelli's design serves the goals of tactful harmony while directing attention.
The problem of highlighting figures as they enter the frame is made especially conspicuous by Esther's appearance. The arrival of the film's star and protagonist conventionally demands some method of granting her prominence. By adhering to a single, static take, Minnelli has ruled out several standard options for generating emphasis. The customary solution would be to use editing, cutting in to Esther as she descends the stairs. But, Minnelli seems devoted to maintaining the composition's unity. Keeping the parents in the foreground as the family gathers around them helps boost the scene's emotional significance, perhaps underlining the connection between the lyric and the action. It seems important that the parents should share the frame with their children as they sing: "You and I, together forever. [...] Through the years of dark and fair weather, you and I."
A second option would be to rack focus, shifting the plane of sharpness from the parents to the children in the background. In fact Minnelli and Folsey do utilize a rack to serve a similar situation later in the film. There, when Lon wanders the house on Christmas eve, he pauses in the front hall and glances back at the stairs as Esther escorts a sobbing Tootie to her room. When Lon turns toward the staircase, focus gently shifts to the background plane, and then returns to the fore as he continues his trek through the house. In this case, the character's glance justifies the change of focus, covering the manipulation of the image with an on-screen action. But, in the "You and I" number, the parents remain unaware of their gathering family, and without a motivating glance a rack might well seem too obvious a manipulation of the image.
