Vincente Minnelli’s first collaboration with future wife Judy Garland was the 1903-set MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, the second film in Filmspotting’s six-film Minnelli Marathon. Coming a year after his 1943 debut “Cabin the Sky,” the movie charts a year in the life of the Smith family, happily settled in the title city and eagerly anticipating the 1904 World’s Fair. Despite its reputation as one of the great MGM musicals, Adam and Josh admit to some disappointment at the film’s lack of stakes and its nostalgic embrace of the nuclear family as a platonic ideal. They admit to being charmed by Garland, though, along with a number of scenes that allow Minnelli to show off his technical brilliance.

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