Customer Reviews

Minnelli on Minnelli [VHS]

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How could Liza Minnelli give her name to such a poor coverage of her father's career? I suppose someone that had never seen his films, would come out of this with an idea that Minnelli had an eye for set design, colour and light, but what can you say to an editor that presents some of the man's greatest scenes in abbreviated forms? How about - you're fired! Whilst I admit to not being a lover of the garish MGM musicals like An American in Paris and Gigi, I do concede that the Dancing in The Dark number from The Band Wagon is one of the most beautiful dance sequences ever filmed, but you wouldn't know it from this. Ditto the waltz sequence from Madame Bovary, and Lana Turner's car hysteria in The Bad and The Beautiful. And we only get one bit from Lust for Life, arguably his best work. This "documentary" barely qualifies as such. There is no narration, the films featured are unidentified, and the scenes from particular titles are shown in random and out of sequence order. On occasion I have objected to the nature of certain commentaries, but when you are faced with complete silence and something that resembles an extended trailer, you miss even bad narration and any form of organisation. In between the footage we get sparce comments from Liza, and otherwise stills. Based on this information you would assume that Judy Garland is still married to Minnelli since there are pics galore of her holding baby Liza, but no mention of the divorce. Perhaps it was because adult Liza was associated with this project that any perceived negative material was not included (which seems funny considering how many times Liza herself has married and divorced). Since I am yet to see The Clock I was grateful for the footage shown, no matter how incoherent. Much was made of the way Minnelli carefully displayed his then wife, but where is Madame Crematon from Ziegfield Follies? Where are the 2 numbers from Till the Clouds Roll By? About the best we get is the end of The Boy Next Door from Meet Me in St Louis, and the middle from Mack the Black from The Pirate, though we get most of Be a Clown with Judy looking ill at ease. And where is any footage from On a Clear Day?? You know that when such a documentary leaves you frustrated that it hasn't done its job.

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