Meet Me in St. Louis

“Meet me at the fair!" is not just a line in the title song of Minnelli's frenzy of color, song, and dance: The entire Smith family can’t wait for the World's Fair to start. A whole year passes before it opens, Halloween and Christmas are celebrated, there are parties with dancing, at which Esther (radiant: Judy Garland), the 17-year-old daughter of the house, falls in love with a boy from the neighborhood. All the youthful dreams risk being shattered when a move to New York looms. The object of longing, the World's Fair, only materializes at the very end of the film, in the spring of 1904. It makes its way into the homely world of St. Louis as a harbinger of modernity - with gas lanterns giving way to an electric light spectacle. The first motorized vehicles move through the crowds. What remains is Minnelli's nostalgic view of an idealized America. (mg)