What Technicolor could have done with this!

I agree, although the "nightmare" sequence might not have been as effective. It would have been nice to see Elizabeth's violet eyes.

More a case for this film is: What Vincente Minnelli could have done with Technicolor not the other way around.

Minnelli was an absolute master at Technicolor filming as his body of color work attests to. What I have found extremely interesting about Minnelli is that his Black and White work can eaisly be seen as Technicolor. Your mind just kind of reads the images that way. You can almost sense Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes, the silver and glass wedding gifts shine and sparkle, the flowers practically pop off the screen even though they are black and white, etc.,etc.

While John Ford's Monument Valley Black and White westerns have this same effect and quality, I think that is more because we as an audience know what Monument Valley looks like in color from some of Ford's other films and wish for the same in the Black and White work.

For almost all Minnelli's Black and White work, the viewer experiences,feels, and remembers the images in color. Unique indeed!

I'm not sure that I agree. Technicolor would have made this a brighter, more vibrant movie--but I don't think that would really fit with the tone of much of the material. That is to say, I don't think this is a cheerful, vibrant movie. Almost all of the humor is uncomfortable (because it's based on the main character's foibles and humiliations), and the tone seemed elegiac.

The movie belongs to Spencer Tracy's Stanley Banks, and for him the story of his daughter's wedding this isn't a Technicolor fantasy; it's huge expenses and a seemingly endless series of painful episodes leading up to what he suspects will be the erosion of his relationship with his daughter. He can't express his discomfort or reject any of the (rather silly) social rituals involved, however, because that would be an abdication of his duties as a father and a man of his social stature. Nevertheless, we, the audience, hear his misgivings and see how his concerns weigh on him, and this gives the film a sort of sadness.

Even a lot of the film's overt humor seems problematic to me. Stanley Banks's behavior seems largely governed by alcoholism and class anxiety. And even when those personal failings don't lead him to petty or foolish behavior, circumstances conspire to frustrate his intentions. Indeed, almost all the humor in the film derives from Stanley making a fool of himself or being shunted aside and ignored by the other characters. The jokes tend to be at his expense, and it doesn't seem that he's aware of the humor at his expense in the story he's telling. So we're being asked to laugh at Stanley over and over.

But he's also the main character (it's really the story of his role in, and reaction to, his daughter's wedding) and the narrator of the film, which puts us in an even tougher position. We like him (he's a decent father and husband, he's trying to do what he genuinely believes is best, he takes most of the problems he encounters in stride, etc.), and the film forces us to identify with his point of view to a large extent (he's telling the story we're viewing). Nevertheless, unlike Stanley, we're privy to a way of seeing things that isn't completely locked into his worldview. We're aware of his personal failings and a large gap in the center of his worldview (viz. he doesn't realize that he's a somewhat ludicrous person). And straddling these two perspectives made a lot of my laughter catch in my throat: It's hard to laugh at the humiliations and failings of someone you like when the indignities just keep piling up and they don't seem aware of the humor in the situation.