Meet Me in St Louis

There are so many great films out there, so many great directors. Meet Me in St Louis is definitely one of those films and its director Vincente Minnelli one of those directors. Smooth, complex camera movements and expressive colouring, exquisite tenderness and emotional frenzy, are the most obvious hallmarks of his films, but there's more. There's such passion, such depth of feeling, it's sometimes close to unbearable. But, as I said, there's also tenderness. Here's a beautiful scene with Judy Garland seducing the man she's after.

Andrew Britton has written about it, Geoffrey MacNab has written about it and it's on Stanley Fish's list of the "10 best American films". Yet I'm not sure everybody gets it, and its greatness. But it is there for the taking, in all it's warmth and surrealism.

(That Stanley Fish calls his list "The 10 best American films" is obviously just a way of inviting heated counterarguments. I will never understand how such a list can arouse such passion, anger and sometimes vitriol. Calling it "My 10 favourite American films" would of course have been more appropriate, but he would still have gotten angry comments and e-mails from people questioning his choices.)