Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli / U.S., 1957):

All of Vincente Minnelli's comic training from I Dood It to Father of the Bride pays off in the breakup scene's graceful collision of ravioli plate and gray pants, the slow-burn stretched for the widescreen. The central he said/she said contrast is between the sportswriter's untidy pad and the fashionista's palatial nest, spaces amply filled by Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall's snazzy modulations from the Tracy-Hepburn school. A California meeting and an Arizona elopement, then marital bliss put to the New York test, "two separate worlds about five miles apart." The pinkish atelier dissolves to the raucous boxing ring, an even closer arrangement has a mere scrim separating the poker session presided over by the choleric newspaper editor (Sam Levene) and the gathering of swells around the flaming Broadway auteur (Jack Cole). Good-natured rivalry from the vamp (Dolores Gray) and the smoothie (Tom Helmore), cartooned machismo from the punchy palooka (Mickey Shaughnessy) and the grinning torpedo (Chuck Connors). "He's trying to get into a Damon Runyon story, who knows?" Friends and lovers, "a pretty neurotic bunch" all in all, a sophisticated tour complete with a reflexive glimpse of studio work (Gray belts "There'll Be Some Changes Made" while a yellow-jacketed director calculates the angles and adjusts the lighting). Amplified sounds and pale magenta skies lend a Tashlin air to Peck's hangover, Scorsese takes note of a gag or two (jump-cuts for a torn tell-tale snapshot coming together in the heroine's mind). "You ever been to a fashion show? It's a sort of pagan ritual..." (cf. Altman's Prêt-à-Porter). The protagonist wryly acknowledges "the series of wardrobe changes," though the closer Minnelli stand-in is Cole's irrepressible maestro, the queer-eyed family man who knows that a good cinematic rumble is a matter of choreography. With Jesse White, Edward Platt, and Alvy Moore.

--- Fernando F. Croce

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