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Gene Kelly goes Singin' in the Rain |
Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly (Don Lockwood), Debbie Reynolds (Kathy
Selden), Donald O’Connor (Cosmo Brown), Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont), Millard
Mitchell (RF Simpson), Cyd Charisse (Woman in the green dress), Douglas Fawley
(Roscoe Dexter), Rita Moreno (Zelda Zanders)
Is there a more loved musical than Singin’ in the Rain? Is there a more famous musical from Hollywood’s
golden age? That second point is particularly interesting, as this was possibly
the last of the big Hollywood song-and-dance films – most of the rest that
followed were film versions of Broadway hits. Singin’ in the Rain also has that “late discovery” quality:
inexplicably not nominated for Best Picture (or hardly any other Oscars), it
was for many years considered a second tier musical behind works like An American in Paris. Now it stands tall
over the lot of them.
Singin’ is a film assembled
from a collection of songs MGM held the rights to. The songs were given to Kelly,
Donen and the screenwriters with the instruction to “come up with a movie”.
What they came up with was this delightful film-about-films. Don Lockwood (Gene
Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are the biggest stars of the silent screen
in Hollywood, whose careers are in trouble overnight when sound is introduced.
He can’t really act and she has a voice like nails on a blackboard. But
Lockwood can sing and dance – so why not make their latest film a musical?
Especially since the talented Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who Lockwood has
fallen in love with, can sing and act and can dub Lina’s voice. What could go
wrong?
There are few more purely enjoyable films than SIngin’ in the Rain. Nearly every scene
has a moment designed to make you burst out in a smile, be it a cracking line
of dialogue, a piece of prodigious dancing skill or the simple warmth and joy
of the leading actors. Every second something delightful seems to happen. The
entire film is an explosion of gleeful joy in the sheer exuberance of singing
and dancing. Kelly’s choreography brilliantly uses everyday props and pieces of
furniture to give the numbers an exciting everyday charm. It gives the songs an
immediate “gotta dance” energy. How could you not like it?
Threading these songs around a structure of Hollywood taking
on sound for the first time was a brilliant idea. The recreation of the acting
styles and technology of Hollywood is brilliant. Lockwood is a hopelessly stagy
actor, hideously artificial in his gestures, while poor old Lina Lamont is
horrendously wooden with an awful voice, and a complete lack of any talent. Jean
Hagen as Lina Lamont is in many ways the butt – but she’s so demanding, bullying
and selfish we don’t mind that most of the jokes are on her.
The shift towards sound in Hollywood is actually interesting
as well as hilarious. Where do we place the mikes? How should the actors get
used to speaking into a mike? How do we cancel out the background sound? What
do we do with loud props? One of the highlights is the screening of this
film-within-a-film to an audience for the first time. All the terribleness
Lockwood and Lamont gets revealed. In a particularly genius moment, the sound
of the picture gets out sync with the picture, with the voices seeming to come
out of the young actors’ mouths to hilarious effect.
Alongside this we get some of the finest song-and-dance
routines in the history of the movies. Donald O’Connor is electric as Cosmo and
his dance routine for “Make ‘em Laugh” is an astounding early pace-setter in
the film: how does he do what he does here? O’Connor goes bouncing off walls,
swirling in circles on the floor, springing from place to place without a
single pause for breath. Most of this number (like many of the others) is done
in one take with electric pace. And that’s the film just warming up.
Debbie Reynolds famously described doing Singin’ as being (along with childbirth)
one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life. You can see that in Good Morning, another electric three-way
number with herself, Kelly and O’Connor – she is pounding the floor to keep up
with these two masters (and does a brilliant job). She was pushed to the
extremes by Kelly who considered her not strong enough of a dancer. Kelly even
dropped her from Broadway Ballet Medley,
a complex ballet-heavy sequence that I must confess I find a little dull. She’s
still excellent – charming, sprightly, light, glorious fun – but it did mean
Kelly re-worked the main number to showcase just himself.
Ah yes. Singin’ in the
Rain. This sequence of the film is probably wedged in everyone’s mind. Even
if they’ve never seen the film, people are familiar with Gene Kelly, soaked to
the skin, dancing through puddles and swinging around lampposts. Kelly is of
course marvellous in this sequence (hard to believe he was apparently suffering
from the flu at the time) and the number has complete charm to it – that
carefree vibrancy of realising you are falling in love. Especially as
Lockwood’s ego is finally being put to one side in order to celebrate feelings
he’s having for another person. But the whole scene is just sheer cinematic
magic. And for something so famous, you never get tired of it.
But then Kelly has pure star-quality here. Lockwood is a
charming, handsome and smooth film star – but the film is happy to puncture his
pomposity, or demonstrate in its opening sequence the self-aggrandising version
of his early career (“Always dignity!”) with the reality of faintly
embarrassing and dignity-free stage and stuntman work. Kelly is so charming you
don’t mind that the film gives him an easy ride, considering Lockwood is
actually quite selfish.
Singin’ in the Rain
is pretty close to perfect. Even though I find some of the ballet stuff a
little boring myself, it’s still filmed and shot with skill. It’s a pet
discussion between film experts to ask how much of the film was directed by
Kelly and how much of it was done by Donen. I guess it doesn’t really matter
except to cinephiles, as the film is just beautifully directed: light, frothy,
fun and with real technical expertise – the slow crane shot at the end of the
famous number is justly famous. The pace is spot on, and the film is hilarious.
Its understanding of filmmaking really pays off in the sequences that chronicle
early film making.
So why did this film not get recognised at the time? Well to
be honest, there were probably too many movies like this out at the time. It
was a lot easier to miss in the crush of mega-MGM movies. It followed on the
coat-tails of An American in Paris
which had worn a huge number of Oscars (and was pushed back into cinemas in
place of Singin’ in the Rain). Singin’ was still a big hit – but it
perhaps needed film-fans to embrace it because it so perfectly married a love
of Hollywood with the technicolour delight of 1950s musicals. Either way, Singin’ in the Rain is a delightful
masterpiece which is guaranteed to pop a smile on your face. No matter the
weather.
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