Color at the center: Minnelli's Technicolor style in 'Meet Me in St. Louis.' - Style in Cinema - filmmaker Vincente Minnelli

Style, Fall, 1998 by Scott Higgins

Though different commentators specified and extended Kalmus's ideas, those four principles set the pattern for most discussions of the proper and tasteful use of color into the 1950s. Proof of the principles' longevity can be found in the 1957 manual Elements of Color in Professional Motion Pictures published by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers as an aid to production personnel in the early era of Eastmancolor. Not surprisingly, the manual's suggestions for color design follow closely those propagated by Technicolor decades earlier. In fact, the book goes so far as to suggest that productions employ "color coordinators" to take the place of the now absent Technicolor consultants (44; see also Clyne 653-56). Natalie Kalmus's legacy was a set of long-standing aesthetic criteria for the correct use of color in motion pictures. It established that color was to be channeled toward the subtle expression of drama through careful harmony and coordination. Thus it was within these boundaries that filmmakers, Minnelli included, were expected to work.

But it would be misleading to characterize the Technicolor aesthetic as an inflexible style. Rather, the guidelines could accommodate a range of options. Although most films before 1939 exhibit a restrained style, marked by restricted palettes dominated by browns and neutrals, by the early 1940s commentators recognized several distinct modes of color design, all operating within the codes of taste and harmony recommended by Kalmus and other color advisors.(4) An excellent indicator of aesthetic trends in Hollywood cinematography can be found in American Cinematographer's "Photography of the Month" reviews. With regard to Technicolor, the reviewer drew distinctions between films that "use color for strikingly dramatic effect," those that "subdue color for realistic illusion," and those that seek "to paint with a lavish brush for pictorial effect and dramatic illusion" (22.10:502). These "schools" of color design were broadly associated with genres. A modern drama like MGM's bio-pic Blossoms in the Dust (1941) was praised for "some of the most restrained use of color yet seen," while Paramount's exotic romance Aloma of the South Seas(1941) received commendation for "scene after scene" of "eye-arresting pictorial quality" (22.7:326; 22.10:502).

Yet the critics of American Cinematographer expected films of all genres and color styles to conform to the basic principles of harmony and unobtrusive coordination with the story. The bold palette of Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941), was praised for serving the narrative without "any obvious attempt at chromatic symbolism," while Billy the Kid (1941) was criticized for "a feeling that the dominant chromatic value of a scene is jarringly out of key with its emotional content" (22.6: 272, 273). Similarly, the reviewer praised a fantasy, The Jungle Book (1942), for offering a "lavish" palette that is so "skillfully planned and photographed" that "it never becomes garish" (23.5:208). On the other hand, the critic berated the musical Louisiana Purchase (1941) for a "riot of color" that "forced itself into the foreground of the viewer's attention" because sets and costumes were poorly coordinated (23.1:19). Even in genres oriented toward spectacle, the codes of harmony and coordination held critical authority.