Singin' in the Rain
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Singin' in the Rain
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1989.
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Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American musical-romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to "talkies".
Plot
In 1927, the former stunt Don Lockwood becomes a successful actor with the company of his best friend Cosmo Brown forming a romantic pair with the actress Lina Lamont. In the period of transition from silent movies to talking pictures, Don accidentally meets the aspirant actress Kathy Selden while escaping from his fans and fall in love with her. Lina has troubles with the sharp tone of her voice, and Cosmo and Don decide to dub her, using Kathy's voice, to save their movie. When the jealous Lina finds out the strategy of the studio, she does not want to share the credits with Kathy and tries to force the studio to use Kathy in the shadow to dub her in other productions. But when Lina decides to speak and sings to the audience, the truth arises.
Why It's A Glorious Feeling
- With a lot of infectious songs, as well as marvelous dancing, comedy, and wit, Singin' in the Rain represents the pinnacle of the musical genre and Hollywood craftsmanship. While it may not be the best musical ever filmed, it’s one of the easiest to like, considering how it mocks the efforts of a previous generation in a playful way. Its easy exuberance gives off a sense that nothing could be more fun than making movies, which it probably captured best when Kelly’s character as dancing in a rain drenched street.
- Even though most of the film's songs (by Freed and Nacio Herb Brown) had been written years earlier, and featured in other movies before this one, those songs became more memorable and iconic than ever when this film came out, and they actually blend in with the actual movie, unlike songs in various other musicals.
- Even the one Freed and Brown song that was actually written for the film ("Make 'Em Laugh") still manages to be a hilarious and amazing showstopper.
- With the story being set during the same period where some of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown’s songs became hits – namely, the late 1920s and early 1930s – the transition from silent films to talkies serves as the overall plot. Hollywood lore was filled with stories about the casualties of sound; the same way many newcomers got their start because of the new technology. The screenwriters drew from reality: numerous films shot as silents in the late 1920s actually had been converted to talkies. Some silent stars didn’t survive the transition because their voices were unacceptable, and several early sound films did suffer from technical issues surrounding the placement of microphones on the set. All this was perfect fodder for musical comedy.
- As an affectionate satire of Hollywood, it's filled with stories; some apocryphal, some experienced by Freed and Brown themselves.
- Jean Hagen, as Lina Lamont, is another vital part of the comedy’s success, and she was Oscar-nominated for the role.
- One of the keys to Singin’ in the Rain, is its cleverness as a comedy. It takes Hollywood’s stock-in-trade—the creation of illusion—and repeatedly treats it as the basis for satire. At the film’s outset, for instance, Don Lockwood tells a crowd about his early life and career as a stuntman, declaring it was imbued with “dignity, always dignity”—as flashbacks reveal it was anything but. Characters pretend to be something they aren’t, as when Kathy claims disinterest in movies only to pop out of a cake at a Hollywood party. A major plot point involves Kathy dubbing Lina Lamont’s voice for the film within the film, leading to a huge comic payoff when this illusion is revealed to the public.
- Musical numbers can be considered ultimate movie illusions because they always represent some degree of leap into unreality. This is especially true when they are presented not in theatrical settings but in “real,” nonmusical environments. The film guides its audience in and out of both types of numbers so fluidly that the transitions are barely noticeable—from the joyous “All I Do is Dream of You” and the romantic “You Were Meant for Me” to the comedic “Moses Supposes,” among many more.
- Throughout the film, dance numbers are imbued with depth by means of innovative choreography, camera placement, lighting, and color.
- When Don, Cosmo, and Kathy sing “Good Morning” at 1:30 a.m. and dance over furniture, it feels like a perfectly acceptable and even logical way for them to express their happiness at having solved a key plot problem.
- And when Gene Kelly, as Don, starts humming while he walks down the street in the rain, the feeling is just as natural. Kelly later said of the “Singin’ in the Rain” number, “All I had to do was skip down a sidewalk, climb a lamppost, have a drainpipe cascade on my face, and jump around in puddles.” That may have been true, but on screen, he floats down the sidewalk, soars onto the lamppost, revels in the cascading drainpipe, and frolics in the puddles like the happiest kid in the world. His unmitigated joy leaps off the screen. (It should also be noted that Kelly was suffering a 103-degree fever while splashing in all that Hollywood “rain”, which just makes his dancing, acting, emoting, and directing even more impressive.)
- Kelly’s (and Stanley Donen’s) choreography of the camera is just as exciting, with exhilarating crane shots enhancing the emotion of the performance and the music.
- The scene also finds humor in the very issue of unreality in musical numbers: a policeman enters the frame, puzzled by all this singing and dancing going on, and the moment begins to usher Kelly—and the audience—gently back toward reality. Kelly finishes his song, gives his umbrella to a passerby, and jaunts away down the sidewalk, ending four of the most euphoric minutes ever put on film.
- The film's characters are brittle, self-deluding show-biz types who pretended to be impervious to rejection and humiliation while embracing the hedonism and adulation that came with stardom. The script mocks everyone from Clara Bow to Richard Barthelmess, whose Weary River was an early example of a star's singing voice being dubbed. Part of the fun is guessing which real-life figures the characters represented.
- R.F. Simpson is close to Arthur Freed while Roscoe Dexter is possibly a Busby Berkeley stand-in.
- The “Broadway Rhythm” ballet toward the end of the film – which cost over $600,000 – while loosely plotted, strings together speakeasies, gangsters and chorus lines, but it’s especially a showcase for dancer Cyd Charisse, who’s extremely talented.
Bad Qualities
- A couple of historical inaccuracies.
- For one thing, during the film, The Jazz Singer was a smash hit all the movie theatres are instantly installing sound equipment, the studios are racing to adapt and actors are struggling to make the transition, all within the space of a few months. In reality — as at the beginning of the film — the sound was first regarded as a fad that wouldn't last, and it wasn't until 1929 that the studios really adopted 'talkies' as a standard feature; the first full-length talking picture, ‘’Lights of New York’’, was released in 1928. Even until the mid-1930s, most Hollywood films were produced in dual silent and talking versions, and cinemas only gradually adopted the equipment necessary to play 'talkies'.
- Also film takes place in the late 1920s at the very start of the sound era, however the "Beautiful Girl" segment, supposedly being shot for a movie of the era, is technologically too advanced for what was possible at the time.
- "Broadway Melody", as well-choreographed as it was, was out of place and unnecessary to the film's plot, and it goes on for 14 minutes.
- Director Stanley Donen thought the film was too long and that only Lina Lamont was fully fleshed out. (Then again, this was likely intentional as the characters were meant to be caricatures of real-life Hollywood figures)
- False Advertising: Cyd Charisse was advertised as being a central character in the film, but during the actual film, she only appears in the "Broadway Melody" number, which could of been cut without harm.
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