Meet Me in St. Louis

(Vincente Minnelli, 1944).
One of Minnelli’s most enduringly popular musicals, the best of Judy Garland’s entire career, aglow with nostalgia, this charming but unsentimental period family album kicked off a new kind of lyric cinema, with the numbers completely woven smoothly into the story in a way they never had before. A tuneful gem, it exerted an influence on the development of the movie musical well into the next decade.

Sat., July 4, 10:15 a.m., 2009