Meet Me In St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)

I’ve seen the film about thirty or forty times -- the public library’s worn VHS copy, a 35 millimeter print that I was too young to remember, a new VHS copy, this DVD, a worn and faded 16mm print that broke and caught fire -- somehow the worst presentations have been the most worthwhile. A bad print has gaps that need to be filled in, colors that need to be replaced by memory, clipped bits of dialogue and music that need to be patched. MEET ME IN SAINT LOUIS brings as much pleasure when culled from memory as when projected, lingering with the senses until it fades out naturally. The Smiths melt out of sepia toned stills in a scrapbook, and are gently tucked away frame by frame. Events unfold in a dreamlike manner, so brilliant in texture that they can’t possibly be real. Nobody could ever look as good as Judy Garland does in MEET ME IN SAINT LOUIS (including, of course, the off screen Judy Garland), no place in the world has so many colors, no images so rich in detail. Everything is artificial, sculpted by ideals and fond memories that obscure tragedy, and so it can’t help but be comforting. It isn’t a film that aims to imitate life but create it, every sound and image is overflowing with life, and to remember it in bits and pieces is to remember why the movies are so important in the first place.