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“Well if it isn’t Ethel Barrymore.” |
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| Co-director Stanley Donen |
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| Donen with Gene Kelly |
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| Donald O'Connor with Donen and Kelly |
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| Producer Arthur Freed |
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| Lela Simone |
SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN A USA (103 mi) 1952 d: Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
Gotta dance —Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly)
Perhaps the ultimate New Year’s Eve movie, a film about the making of film, incorporated within the mythology of Hollywood’s own history, built from tidbits of previous films, as it revels in the conventions of moviemaking, becoming a quintessentially American love letter to the industry itself, which is part of its enduring legacy and appeal. Listed at #10 in the latest once-a-decade 2022 BFI Sight and Sound Poll of greatest films of all time (Revealed: the results of the 2022 Sight and Sound ...), though in 1982 it was #4, while listed at #1 in the American Film Institute’s greatest American musicals of all time in 2006 (AFI's 100 YEARS OF MUSICALS), and #10 of America’s greatest movies in 1998, (AFI's 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES), upped to #5 ten years later in 2007 (AFI'S 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES — 10TH ANNIVERSARY ...), but there has been no update since, as these lists were initially released with plenty of television hoopla and fanfare, but skimmed budgets now preclude that sort of thing. Nonetheless, this is a beloved classic Hollywood musical with a long history of superlative accolades, only a modest hit when it was initially released, yet it’s one of the first films selected to the National Film Registry in 1989 and has consistently been viewed as one of the most highly regarded musicals of all time. Personally, I much prefer Judy Garland in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and most especially A Star Is Born (1954), but also her daughter Liza Minnelli in Bob Fosse’s CABARET (1972), his avant garde, semi-autobiographic All That Jazz (1979), Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story (1961), which also celebrates movement as emotion, the pure unadulterated joy at the end of Renoir’s FRENCH CAN CAN (1955), and any 60’s Jacques Demy musical, while for sheer virtuosity, long stretches of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s THE RED SHOES (1948) comes to mind, with its centerpiece ballet sequence that this film emulates, The Red Shoes (1948) - Ballet Sequence - YouTube (15:25), as does the unprecedented 17-minute dream sequence ballet from Vincente Minnelli’s AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), "An American In Paris" Ballet with George Gershwin's ... - Vimeo (23:05). But there’s no denying the popularity of this film, released a year after AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Gene Kelly receiving an Honorary Academy Award for his lifetime achievements and the driving force behind both pictures, so it was something of a letdown coming so soon afterwards and wasn’t even nominated for a Best Picture award or Best Song, as the public may not have been ready for the rejuvenation of the musical, feeding off of nostalgia while breaking out of the old formulas through song-and-dance routines that are extremely physical. Damien Chazelle’s recent film Babylon (2022) covers much of the same territory, also bringing the past into the present, exploring the transition between the silent era and the advent of talking pictures, including a side-by-side comparison of the entitled song in Charles Reisner’s THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929, Singin In the Rain 1929. Babylon comparación. - YouTube (1:14). When MGM producer Arthur Freed originally commissioned screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green to repackage a back catalogue of his own songs written in the 20’s and 30’s with his partner Nacio Herb Brown, writing five of America’s 10 best-selling songs in 1929, he had no idea that they would make an entire film set in the period. It’s worth mentioning that the writing duo initially turned down the project, as they only wanted to write scripts for movies featuring their own songs, but they were under contract to MGM, which offered them no rights of approval, though they did end up writing one song, the linguistic tongue-twister Moses Supposes, Singin' in the Rain - Moses supposes HD - YouTube (4:23), while also vastly improving the song Be a Clown from Vincente Minnelli’s THE PIRATE (1948), Clip HD | The Pirate | Warner Archive - YouTube (3:06), and turning it into Make ‘Em Laugh, a Donald O’Connor showstopper, 1080p HD "Make 'Em Laugh" ~ Singin' in the Rain (1952) YouTube (4:07). In Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Malcolm McDowell, with a cane and bowler hat, satirically pulverizes a husband before sadistically raping his wife to the lighthearted song and dance of Singin’ in the Rain, A Clockwork Orange, by Stanley Kubrick (1971) - Singin in the ... YouTube (3:47) where the joy and excitement they get inflicting insurmountable pain and cruelty takes the song into cringeworthy territory. The last of the great MGM musicals (The Complete List of MGM Musicals) were bowing out as films like Fred Zinneman’s FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953), Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle (1955) began redefining how Hollywood looked at America and how America looked at itself.
There’s an interesting aspect behind Gene Kelly and his frequent co-director and choreographer, Stanley Donen, both taking turns marrying the same woman, dancer Jeanne Coyne, but they first worked together when Donen was a 16-year old background dancer in the Broadway production of Pal Joey starring Kelly in 1940, bringing him to Hollywood as an assistant choreographer on ANCHORS AWAY (1945) before both co-directing ON THE TOWN (1949), which Kelly considered his best work, a breakthrough film paving the way for Kelly’s dream role in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951), while Donen directed Fred Astaire in ROYAL WEDDING (1951), proving he could direct a successful film without Kelly. When they were brought together again directing a second film, it is arguably the height of each man’s career, as it not only transformed the Hollywood musical, but Kelly is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet commercially acceptable to film audiences. Despite the iconic status of this musical, nearly all the Songs have previously been featured in numerous other Hollywood films, which is arguably the film’s weakest component, as they simply don’t hold up to the original material of George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, or many of those in countless other musicals. While it can be silly and a bit cheesy at times, it was Pauline Kael in 1958 that helped revitalize the film’s reputation, describing it as “just about the best Hollywood musical of all time,” frequently shown on television in the 1960’s when its popularity soared, with musical numbers driving the story comprising more than half the film, experiencing another resurgence after the release of MGM’s compilation film THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT (1974), hosted by the studio’s legendary performers, with two later installments, ultimately elevating it into the pantheon of greatest films. An often hilarious satire on the films of the Roaring Twenties, and something of a riff on John Gilbert (whose career was ruined when his underwhelming voice in talkies did not match his debonair good looks, while the flowery dialogue he was asked to recite did him no favors either), Kelly stars as the swashbuckling star of countless silent screen pictures, making a live appearance at Hollywood’s Chinese Theater, surrounded by screaming fans for the premiere of the latest romantic epic The Royal Rascal, also starring his popular screen star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen, understudy to actress Judy Holliday in the stage version of Born Yesterday, who obtained the role turned down by Holliday, for whom the screechy-voiced character is based), where the rumor mill has the two about to be engaged in marriage, but the truth behind-the-scenes is Lockwood can barely stand her. Even more amusing, speaking before an adoring public, he recounts his childhood rags-to-riches rise to fame, claiming “dignity” has always been his motto, yet clearly the dizzying montage of evidence suggests otherwise as we take a walk through memory lane, where it’s all a complete fabrication, mirroring what the Hollywood industry is all about, serving up escapist fantasies to help people get through the ordinary dreariness of their lives. While his every move is dictated by the studio, we quickly discover he’s not very honest about his “talent,” with something of a swelled head, but remains loyal to his childhood friend, Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor), the musical inspiration behind many of the songs. As fate would have it, Lockwood’s car breaks down along Hollywood Boulevard on the way to an after-party held by studio boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), where he is mobbed by rabid fans, tearing his clothes, forcing him to escape into a passing car driven by Kathy Selden, an unproven 19-year old Debbie Reynolds, winner of the Miss Burbank beauty contest with no previous dance experience, backed by Donen, while Kelly was dead set against her, reportedly treating her badly while physically pushing her to her limits. Unimpressed by his credentials, she passes herself off as a stage actress, describing his movies in a less flattering light, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.” Clearly stunned by her rejection, a matinee idol used to having any girl he wants, he takes a perverted joy at seeing her jump out of the party birthday cake, Singin' In The Rain (1952) -- (Movie Clip) All I Do Is Dream Of You YouTube (2:38), discovering she’s actually a chorus girl. When Lina has her banished from the studio, jealous from all the attention she was receiving, he languishes in her absence, finding himself down in the dumps, continually obsessed by the thought of her, with Cosmo’s Make ‘Em Laugh designed to cheer him up, having the same effect on the audience.
When THE JAZZ SINGER (1927) turns into a box office smash as the first talking picture, audiences clamor for more, turning the industry upside down trying to reinvent “how” they make pictures, with sound suddenly at the forefront of every shot, producing an endless series of embarrassing and often disastrous blunders, as silent actors are suddenly heard, and not just seen, where the voices typically don’t match the screen image, with audiences howling with laughter in ridicule and scorn, costing many their careers, including the adorable couple of Lockwood and Lamont, who must shift gears, returning to the glory days of vaudeville, where singing and dancing suddenly becomes the rage, which brings Kathy back into the picture. This is reflected in an early dance sequence using a song borrowed from Busby Berkeley’s BABES IN ARMS (1939), Singin' in the Rain | Good Mornin' | Warner Bros. Entertainment YouTube (3:25), where the final shot reportedly took 40 takes, with Reynolds reporting that her feet were bleeding at the end of a 14-hour day shooting the scene. Still, Kelly post-dubbed the tap sounds for Reynolds’ dance routine, and while she voiced this song, there are three others where Betty Noyes is the uncredited and unseen voice of Reynolds behind the scenes (Would You?, You Are My Lucky Star, and the final number Singin’ in the Rain), an ironic guilty practice of the film itself, a reflection of how the industry routinely steals the talent of others without giving it so much as a thought. But it’s not the spoken voice, or even singing that grabs that public’s attention, what this film, in particular, offers, is extraordinary dancing with showstopping musical numbers, where Lockwood’s early career as a stuntman may be a precursor to the physical demands on display in the dancing. Donald O’Connor starts it off with a gymnastic series of pratfalls and physical contortions in Make ‘Em Laugh, running up the walls and landing with backflips (liberally borrowed from the Nicholas Brothers), or the eruption of seemingly spontaneous dance routines in Moses Supposes, where Kelly and O’Connor, defying all boundaries, provide exuberant, unrestrained, yet very muscular tap-based numbers that accentuate their athletic prowess, emulating the male athleticism in professional sports, dispelling any stigma of effeminacy associated with ballet or dance. The coup de grâce, appropriately enough, is Kelly’s lovestruck acrobatics swinging from a lamp post with an umbrella in a downpour of rain, ignited by a kiss, offering a masterful carefree style with plenty of romanticism and pizzazz, unmatched in its exhibitionist athleticism, a trademark of the Kelly persona along with that everpresent smile, and the epitome of what this picture is all about, where the scene has been described by BFI’s Peter Wollen as “the single most memorable dance number on film,” "Singin' In The Rain" 4K UHD | High-Def Digest - YouTube (4:47). While there are cinematic ways to enhance and edit dance sequences, in this film O’Connor and Kelly (who was 40 at the time) do all their own dancing, displaying their agility and flexibility, almost like floating in air, which adds to the many pleasures of the film, becoming a compendium of various musical styles, all merging together at a time when sound films and musicals were born. An unsung aspect of the film, pointed out by Julie Dash in her groundbreaking early work Illusions (1982), is the influence of Lela Simone, highly cultured and educated, born in Germany with a classical music background, studying under Arthur Schnabel, and even played concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra before Hitler came to power, yet transitioned to Hollywood when she emigrated to America. Starting as a solo recording pianist for the musical department, she served as the music editor and assistant scorer on the Arthur Freed Unit from 1945 to 1958 that specialized in the production of musicals at MGM studios, while also serving as an executive assistant to Freed, becoming a noted trouble shooter smoothing out various sound glitches, reportedly one of the best editors in the business. Despite the labor-intensive nature of her work, given the arduous task of synching music to the production numbers, often working simultaneously on two or three different musicals at the same time, she was responsible for the painstaking process of sequencing sound to match the sophisticated dance movements in film, especially the rain dance sequence, accentuating each of the necessary sounds, where her command of technical detail and expertise was unparalleled, yet she was paid substantially less than the men and remained largely invisible behind the scenes until, finally exasperated, she walked off the post-production set for GIGI in 1958. While her input was invaluable, her conspicuous anonymity, and the fact that she’s still not recognized even today, is one of the underlying themes of the film.
While Lockwood is able to adapt to the future, based on his extensive musical roots background of menial and demeaning jobs, Lina is not so lucky, as she has no knowledge of Hollywood’s past, including slapstick comedy or low-brow vaudeville humor, and we never see her dance, always an inert presence onscreen, with Lockwood basically forced to do cartwheels around her. On top of that, she cannot speak properly, with a thick Brooklyn accent, where her lack of refined grace is always evident, relying instead upon a studio contract and the publicity stories she plants in the newspapers. This becomes painfully obvious with the transition to sound pictures, as she lacks the agility to adjust to the placement of the microphones, becoming a comedy of errors, where she lacks the insight to comprehend that she’s doing anything wrong. Lina is a younger version of Gloria Swanson’s deluded Norma Desmond in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), another silent screen star whose time has passed her by, who famously declares, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” However, due to her past success, she’s used to adoration and being treated like a star, and Hagen gives a memorable comic performance as the vain and spoiled prima donna who whines and complains about everything under the sun, all of which covers up for her egregious lack of talent. While the studio thinks they’ve solved the problem by changing the epically bad sound production of the historical costume drama The Dueling Cavalier into the song-and-dance version of The Dancing Cavalier, but they quickly discover Lina’s voice problem cannot be solved, as the image and voice go out of synchronization during the preview screening that becomes a fiasco, with customers claiming it’s the worst film they’ve ever seen, revealing the studio has a real nightmare on their hands. Lockwood offers a lip-synching fix, turning the film into a musical comedy with an unseen Kathy dubbing Lina’s voice (the inside joke was Hagen actually dubbing Kathy’s voice), creating an extended fantasy sequence of a young dancer’s alter-ego adventures in New York entitled Broadway Melody, borrowing from the 1929 film, the first musical and sound picture to win an Academy Award, spawning its own series of 30’s and 40’s musicals, where he’s a country hick initially rejected by all the agents, but ultimately becomes a smash hit, yet the most important encounter is a sizzling sequence with Cyd Charisse, who was brought into the picture late due to Reynolds’ lack of experience. Dressed in a green sequined dress and Louise Brooks–style hair, Charisse provides the ultimate sensuality in a speakeasy as a gangster’s moll in a classic femme fatale role, with Lockwood finding his hat dangling on her foot, exposing the entire length of her leg, as she kicks it away along with his glasses, transforming into his unobtainable, idealized woman in a hypnotically alluring jazz dance of seduction, “Gotta Dance” — Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, 1952 - YouTube (4:56), evolving into a surreal and fantastical dream ballet where the fluidity of movement is nothing less than inspired, Cyd Charisse & Gene Kelly - The Broadway Melody Ballet YouTube (3:49). There is some notable censorship editing in the speakeasy sequence, as Charisse was apparently too suggestive wrapping her legs around him (unbelievably, she had just given birth to a baby just a few months earlier), as seven seconds were removed and lost forever, with the music rescored to match the new cut, Singin in the Rain' "Broadway Melody" ballet - original uncut ... YouTube (3:52). The sequence also features the one and only time Charisse ever smoked a cigarette. Apparently her influence transforms Lockwood into a Broadway star, seen dancing in various musicals in different costumes, culminating in a tuxedo, where he’s finally the toast of the town. The brilliance of the sequence is the way it abandons Lockwood’s wooden fictional movie character and gradually realizes his own star persona as a charismatic dancer. The success of the picture not only celebrates Lockwood’s integration into musical pictures, but it also cements his budding relationship with Kathy, both dreaming of their life making pictures together, where the dream ballet with Charisse offers a matching counterpoint to their earlier romantic encounter, You Were Meant for Me - Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds YouTube (3:32), a scene exposing the cinematic illusions in the shot, but Lina interrupts their romantic kiss, flying into a rage, starting her own campaign to keep Kathy behind the scenes dubbing her voice, and nothing else, as that’s the price of stardom. It’s a stunning Wizard of Oz-like cinematic revelation, where sound (Kathy’s voice) is truth, while the image (Lina’s performance) is a manufactured illusion, cleverly depicting the falsity and superficiality of Hollywood, yet unlike darker noirish films of the era that do the same, like ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), SUNSET BLVD. (1950), and THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952), all shot in black and white, this film shot in glorious Technicolor is feverishly optimistic. Of course, there’s an unexpected twist of fate where Lina’s ultimate triumph is undone by her own boastful antics, publicly exposed as the fraud she is, where her humiliation is a repository of the guilt the industry faces for doing the exact same thing. While there’s a happy-ever-after finale, there’s also the stinging reveal that these behind-the-scenes shenanigans are a routine aspect of a cutthroat business, where the ultimate irony is that Reynolds isn’t even singing some of her own songs, which is part of the shady history of show business, which this film wraps up in a bow, blending the fictional with the real and turning it into movie magic.
Watch Singin' in the Rain Full Movie Online Free With English ... entire film may be seen on Fshare TV (1:42:48)
