Fourteen of Vincente Minnelli’s 33 feature films were musicals, including two Best Picture winners and a bunch that are a lot better than those.

An American in Paris (1951) was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, and won all but two. Best Director nominee Minnelli was one of the misses. And 1958’s Gigi swept its nine nominations, taking the top prize and earning Minnelli his only directing Oscar.

While those are his best-known and most awarded musicals, I rank them relatively low on my personal list. In both cases, the films are beautifully designed and staged but the scripts are lacking.

Minnelli’s musicals include the all-Black Cabin in the Sky (his debut feature), ambitious misses Kismet and Brigadoon, and late-career efforts On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and A Matter of Time.

He directed Judy Garland in three musicals (Meet Me in St. Louis, The Pirate, and the anthology film Ziegfeld Follies). Fred Astaire featured in Ziegfeld as well as Yolanda and the Thief and The Band Wagon. Gene Kelly showed up all over the place.

In addition to traditional musicals, a couple of comedy musicals sit at opposite sides of Minnelli’s career, with I Dood It in 1943 and Bells are Ringing in 1960.

My favorite of these, as I noted yesterday, is Meet Me in St. Louis. But that’s a wistful family drama as much as it’s a musical. In terms of good old-fashioned, check all the boxes, Arthur Freed MGM musical entertainments, my top pick is 1953’s The Band Wagon.

In the film, Fred Astaire plays a thinly veiled version of himself, a big screen song-and-dance man whose star has lost its shine. He signs up for a stage show opposite a hot newcomer (Cyd Charisse) who is reluctant to work with the old fossil.

“I used to see all your pictures when I was a little girl,” she tells him. “And I’m still a fan, I recently went to see a revival of them at the museum.”

Eventually they hit it off, but things are complicated when the play’s director insists on turning the show into a ponderous retelling of the Faust legend. Eventually the stars rescue the play by reworking it into a musical extravaganza.

Today’s clip comes from the finished musical. It’s one of Minnelli’s signature “dream ballets,” an extended side story told in music and dance. Sometimes these can be a bit much — the 17-minute climax of An American in Paris, though visually impressive, stops the film dead in its tracks — but this one is right on the money.

And God bless Cyd Charisse, one of the most gorgeous women to ever grace a movie screen. Her sensual appearance in the red dress at the end of this scene prompted the Legion of Decency to declare the film “morally objectionable in part for all.” Can’t say I blame them.