Donen and Minnelli: An Exchange of Energies

Abstract

In the chapter “From recollection to dreams” of Cinema 2, Deleuze sets up two related approaches to the possibilities of dance in the Hollywood musicals of Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli giving birth to and outlining a dream image. In Donen, we find a world of “flat views” out of which dance emerges. With Minnelli, on the other hand, the flat view is replaced by a “plurality of worlds” confronting and absorbing one another and in which we find a “breaking in and exploring” space through dance. However, this essay will argue that such breaking in and exploring occurs no less in Donen than Minnelli, even if the implications of these are of a different order. In Minnelli, the exploration almost invariably moves inward, both literally (burrowing into, if not exhausting a space) and metaphorically (dance and movement tied to the often anguished emotional states of the human subjects) whereas in Donen the exploration is predominantly spatial, a world that is always “on the town” even as this exploration is tied to both an exhilaration and an exhaustion of the senses.