Why I love Meet Me in St Louis

Consider the dresses that look like they’ve been snatched off toilet roll holders and thrown over the heads of Judy Garland and Lucille Bremer. Consider the way Esther’s (Judy’s) hair is coiffed into that delectable soft roll over her sweet brown eyes. Consider The Trolley Song! Or what about the turning out of the gas lights... or the performance of Under The Bamboo Tree...

Vincente Minelli’s 1944 classic is post-war perfection. Everything about it is pretty, and sweet, and soothing. Never mind the plot, which is a bit silly. There are four seasons, a crush on the boy next door, a dreaded move from most beloved middle class St Louis to dark and dastardly New York, a Halloween bit where Tootie behaves abominably, an elegant ball, some unbelievably impressive snowmen and a happy ending at the World’s Fair.

Like so many musical greats, the success of Meet Me in St Louis hinges around a single song. Judy Garland (because she’s no longer Esther in this transcendent moment), framed by a snowy window, Tootie in her night-dress consoled in her arms, singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. It’s a sad, wistful, idealised moment, and one that would first have been watched at the end of the war. When Garland sings about how we’ll “have to muddle through somehow” we understand that she’s not really talking about the move to the big city.

And now, think of her just a few years earlier, this time in pigtails and puppy fat, sitting on a haystack and dreaming about the future. The year was, of course, 1939. The film, The Wizard of Oz. But this time Judy Garland was singing about hope, that elusive “somewhere over the rainbow”. In between those two unforgettable images was a world war. On either side of it, an icon, singing a song.

• Meet Me In St Louis is re-released today