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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
As with the music, Minnelli weaves color into the production's basic texture. He uses some script elements, such as the name of eldest sister Rose (Lucille Bremer), retained from Benson's original story, to help to highlight the role of color in the world of each character. As she dresses for a party, for instance, Esther contemplates her auburn hair, speculating that if Rose were a brunette "nothing could have stopped us." Characters who acknowledge and discuss color help to foreground it, reminding the viewer that the film's environment could not be rendered in black and white. Color is also employed to reinforce the film's broad structure. Minnelli recalls that he planned colors to accentuate the seasons into which the film is divided:
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Summer saw the damp, wilted white of women's dresses and men's suits, the brilliant yellow of beer wagons [....] fall brings bright-colored leaves whisked from trees, the deep orange of pumpkin heads at the windows on Halloween, [...] Our winter sequence finds the same scene blanketed in snow [...] holiday colors are reflected in the silver bells of horse-drawn sleigh. (Fordin 114)
In actuality, seasonal accents do crop up in key episodes: yellow for summer, black and orange for fall, green and red during winter, and bright whites during spring. Some elements of decor change with the seasons, the Smith's draperies are bluish gray in summer, and deep red in fall and winter. But this is by no means a dominant principle of color design since each group of episodes offers a multitude of hues with special emphasis on blue, pink, red, and gold.
Like other directors of musicals, Minnelli makes color most active in the film's elaborate production numbers, "Skip to my Lou," and "The Trolley Song." Allowing Minnelli to marshal the film's most complex and assertive color schemes, these sequences feature intense mixtures of primaries and pastels. Though color is on display, the codes of harmony and emphasis remain in place. In the Trolley number, Minnelli manages to invert Kalmus's prescription that warm and bright shades should be carried by a scene's protagonist. Esther is clad in a black blouse, light blue gloves, and a low-value green and blue pleated taffeta skirt with a thin line of pink running through it. The outfit makes her the least colorful rider on a bright yellow trolley packed with extras in high-value pink, green, and blue [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. This decision allows Minnelli to cram the frame with aggressive colors while ensuring that contrast always serves to highlight Esther's position. But even at its most audacious, the color design seeks to provide harmony. The elements of color that Esther does carry on her gloves and dress are carefully chosen to blend with the accents that surround her. The principles that call for color to anchor attention and offer pleasing harmonies are constantly at work in Meet Me in St. Louis, not the least in the most stylized production numbers.
