Sometimes, though, I wonder if we aren’t overly committed to the idea that art has to be “thought-provoking” in order to be any good. Vincente Minnelli’s wonderful Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), recently reminded me that art can be equally successful when it endorses values instead of questioning them, and celebrates its topic instead of holding it up for cross-examination.

Meet Me in St. Louis tells the story of a year in the life of the Truett family in turn-of-the-century St. Louis. Judy Garland stars as middle sister Esther, who’s in love with the boy next door; Lucille Bremer is dreamy older sister Rose; and Margaret O’Brien (who won a special children’s Oscar for her role) is charmingly naughty tomboy Tootie. Rounding out the household are the quintessential Victorian mom and pop; quirky Grandpa Prophater; college-bound brother Alonso; sister Agnes, Tootie’s partner in crime; and loyal maid Katie. The plot is simple but effective: the first two acts revolve around the older sisters’ attempts to find love and the younger ones’ getting into mischief, while, in the third, Father accepts a promotion that will require the family to move to New York City, and leave behind the small-town life that is all they know.

It’s an unabashed celebration of the simple and innocent pleasures of life: of first kisses and homemade walnut cake; of little girls’ adoration of their big sisters; of Halloween and Christmas; of going to the fair; of friends who play the trumpet and the violin, not very well, but good enough to dance to; of music and laughter and song. And the miracle is that it works. It never tries openly to tug at your heartstrings, but lets you believe in the characters instead, so that everything you feel for them is unforced. The songs evolve naturally out of the action, with characters sitting down at the piano to express their gaiety or pain, or singing, as if to themselves, while staring wistfully out the window. Even the film’s most famous song, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” is well-matched to character and situation, and in Garland’s hands it becomes a soliloquy, as Esther sings it to comfort Tootie and herself after hearing that the family will be leaving St. Louis forever. In the context of the film, well-worn lines like “Next year soon we all will be together / If the fates allow / Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow,” take on a bittersweet, resonant quality, and a tired old Christmas carol sounds fresh once more.

This kind of material can easily lend itself to saccharine sweetness or a dopey-eyed nostalgia. Meet Me in St. Louis never descends to such depths because it does acknowledge, however obliquely, the aching possibilities of loss and harm and change lurking just below the surface of even a happy family’s life. These are evident from the very first scene when Agnes, clearly on the verge of puberty, comes swaggering through the house in her underclothes, dripping wet from a swim in the lake, and half-singing, half-bawling “Meet Me in St. Louis” without any trace of self-consciousness. Very, very soon she won’t be allowed to behave like that any more; she’ll graduate into the adolescent world of flounces, balls, and beaux that Esther and Rose occupy, and something vital will have been lost.

Likewise, the impending move to New York City threatens to erode everything that is most loveable about this family. In New York the smaller girls won’t be able to ride around town on the iceman’s cart, or play Halloween pranks on the neighbors without fear of reprisal, and the older girls risk becoming influenced by a “sophisticated” society that will turn up its nose at their small-town primness. Though, in the end, Father decides the family will stay in St. Louis, if he had been less kind or more ambitious, the film might have ended in a much more disheartening fashion.

These hints towards loss and change may underscore the film, but, in the main, its texture is colorful and cheery. It may be nostalgic, it may be romanticized, but the odd and special thing about it is it’s also true. Life isn’t all grit and tension. Sometimes it’s peaceful, sometimes it’s joyous, and Meet Me In St. Louis is a testament to that fact.