READ THIS FIRST: This is a 12-inch Diameter Laserdisc, which is NOT the same as DVD and cannot be played on a DVD player!

Laserdisc Title: "MEET ME IN ST LOUIS (1944)"
Edition: Fullscreen Edition (Single Disc)
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli
Starring: Judy Garland, Leon Ames, Mary Astor, Margaret O'Brien, Joan Carroll, Tom Drake, Lucille Bremer, Robert Sully, Henry H. Daniels
Special Features:---New Technicolor Restoration Special Gatefold Edition with Extended Liner Notes! Also contains the theatrical trailer---
Production / Year: 1944 Loew's Incorporated Renewed 1971 MGM
Running Time: 119 Minutes / Color by Technicolor
Audio Format: Digital Sound, CX Encoded
Video Format: NTSC, CLV (Extended Play)
Miscellaneous Features: Not Rated, Closed Captioned
Distributed By: MGM Home Video Inc.
Catalog / Spine Number: ML101827

Cosmetic Condition:
Disc (s): Excellent - Hardly noticeable to very minor hairline surface swirls, if any
Jacket: Excellent - Normal shelf wear, few creases, slightly worn-out corners or edges but no obvious signs of spines splitting

Synopsis:
One of the finest American musicals, this 1944 film by Vincente Minnelli is an intentionally self-contained story set in 1903, in which a happy St. Louis family is shaken to their roots by the prospect of moving to New York, where the father has a better job pending. Judy Garland heads the cast in what amounts to a splendid, end-of-an-era story that nicely rhymes with the onset of the 20th century. The film is extraordinarily alive, the characters strong, and the musical numbers are so splendidly part of the storytelling that you don't feel the film has stopped for an interlude. The three great Judy Garland masterpieces - 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Meet me in St. Louis' and 'A Star is Born' - are so precious because they deal with the idea of 'Home', one far more important than anything as trivial as love and death. In these films, the tension, the poignancy, the angst arises from two impossible desires - to escape home, to assert one's own identity, to achieve space and privacy; and the terror of losing home, security, one's 'place'. 'Louis' dramatises this with an amazing intensity, and should rightly be called a tragicomedy. The film is concerned with female space, rarely leaving the home; a space defined by an often absent Father who nevertheless determines actions with the power of a God (or Santa Claus): in group compositions, he is usually to be found on a higher level to the women, looking down on them. From the outset, this domestic space is recognised as a prison: one of the first images we see are the 'bars' of the staircase; Esther's first dress (in a film where costumes are vital emotional signifiers) is striped like a convict's uniform; the recurring visual motif is of female characters, especially Esther, framed, in doorways, mirrors, and especially windows, looking out on a life they cannot join. This emphasis on female confinesment, on life restricted to interior spaces, anticpates the great melodramas of the 1950s, of which director Minnelli himself was to become a master. 'Louis' is credited as a milestone in musical history because it is the first film to integrate the songs into the emotional lives of the characters, rather than simply as show-stopping extravaganzas (what about 'Show Boat', though?). In music, characters can express what must be withheld in real life (heightened in this film by the colour, choreography, lighting, and Minnelli's 'commentary' in his compositions, such as the statue overlooking the piano as Esther and Rose sing).

THIS IS A 12" LASERDISC AND WILL NOT PLAY IN A DVD PLAYER

Thanks for checking my other products!
eCRATER ID Verified!