Singin' in the Rain (1952)

 

Singing in the Rain features so many joyous moments. Everyone, of course, remembers Gene Kelly’s dazzling rendition of the title song, but there are lots of great performances throughout the film. It’s very easy to see why it’s considered one of the greatest of movie musicals. It also depicts a significant historical period in film, the transition from silents to talkies, and it manages to have lots of fun along the way. I’ll admit that the main plot itself isn’t particularly complex, but what Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor manage to do to “fill” the time is what makes it work so spectacularly. The film begins with the arrival of Kelly’s Don Lockwood and Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont at the premiere of their new film, The Royal Rascal. Prompted by an interviewer who bears a striking resemblance to Louella Parsons, Don starts recounting their (well, mostly his) history. Interestingly, the verbal and the visual of his life story don’t quite match. Don claims his motto is “dignity, always dignity,” but the song “Fit as a Fiddle” with O’Connor’s Cosmo show that they certainly haven’t always lived up to that motto. We get to see a bit of behind-the-scenes filmmaking as Don and Lina prepare for their next film, The Dueling Cavalier, but everything gets interrupted by the arrival of talking pictures. The exaggerated style of silent film acting has to be replaced by the more subtle performances that would come to be associated with the sound era. And poor Lina, with her high-pitched, grating, low-rent voice, struggles the most with trying to fit in with the new expectations of stardom. After the film is completed – despite numerous ridiculous and hilarious problems with sound recording – preview audiences can only laugh at how awful it is and how badly Lina sounds and how silly Don’s overacting is. To “save” the film, Don and Cosmo and studio head R.F. Simpson (a deadpan Millard Mitchell) decide to reshoot it as a musical without letting Lina know that her voice will be replaced by Reynolds’ Kathy Selden, an aspiring actress Don met through one of the funniest “meet-cutes” in film history. It’s the musical numbers that stand out in your memory after watching this film. The performance of the title song is justifiably famous, but the film features a lot of great moments of singing and dancing. For example, “Make ‘Em Laugh” had to be painful for O’Connor, but what a feat of physical comedy he demonstrates. “Moses Supposes” takes the diction training to a new level of hilarity. Kelly’s Don creates a magical atmosphere on a soundstage to tell Kathy that he loves her through the song “You Were Meant for Me.” The biggest number in the film is probably the “Broadway Rhythm” sequence, which doesn’t really fit within what we know of as the plot to The Dueling Cavalier. But it features Cyd Charisse, a particular favorite of mine, in a showcase of her dancing ability. A journey through burlesque, vaudeville, and contemporary theater, the number dissolves at one point into a pure fantasy sequence on a soundstage, featuring the longest white veil in movie history. Again, what this has to do with a movie starring Lockwood and Lamont or, frankly, Singin’ in the Rain’s plot is a mystery, but it’s certainly a beautiful mystery. What strikes me when I watch a classic musical like Singin’ in the Rain is how long the takes last. They had to make movies the hard way in those days: you did all or almost all of the number, and if it took many retakes, you did it over and over again. These performances were not created in the editing room. It took real talent at singing and dancing. All of the stars are great here, and even Rita Moreno in an early and small part makes quite an impression. It’s interesting to watch the film and see Kathy Seldon and Debbie Reynolds become stars simultaneously. Reynolds certainly manages to hold her own in her scenes with Kelly and O’Connor, two of the Hollywood’s most famed dancers. Much has been made of the fact that only Jean Hagen was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, but it’s not as if she were going to compete with the three top-billed performers in the same category. Sometimes, the Academy overlooks people, frequently for decades, but that doesn’t diminish Hagen’s accomplishments here. She takes her few moments on screen and gives them a jolt of excitement and humor that serves the overall plot well. You try delivering the line “I make more money than Calvin Coolidge put together” and see if you can make it as funny as Hagen does.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jean Hagen) and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

Tommy (1975)

 

Tommy, based upon the rock opera by the Who, is one bizarre movie. It’s not always easy to follow the possible meanings of what happens on screen, but it is certainly intriguing to watch. The film follows the life of a young boy who watches his father, presumed dead in World War II, get killed by his mother’s new lover. His mother, Nora (Ann-Margret), and her lover, Frank (Oliver Reed), convince Tommy that he didn’t see or hear what he actually saw and heard; they also tell him never to speak of what he saw or heard. When he then behaves as if he’s – in the language of the time – deaf, dumb, and blind, they seem shocked. I’ve found this odd every time I’ve seen this film; they demand that he behave as if he were deaf, dumb, and blind, then they try to figure out how to “cure” him of his deafness, dumbness, and blindness? Very peculiar of them not to figure that out for themselves. Nevertheless, the couple embark on a series of strange potential remedies. Nora takes Tommy to a meeting of a cult that worships Marilyn Monroe. Really, it’s an excuse for Eric Clapton to perform “Eyesight to the Blind,” but having all of those masked Monroe impersonators touching all of the people seeking cures is quite creepy. Frank then takes Tommy to a drug-addled prostitute called the Acid Queen. She’s played with great ferociousness by the amazing Tina Turner, a quite hypnotic presence on the screen. Her few moments are a highlight of the film even if some of the imagery is quite unsettling to watch. Nora and Frank then try to find appropriate babysitters for Tommy and make some awful choices: Cousin Kevin (Paul Nicholas), a sadist who tortures the poor boy, and then Uncle Ernie (the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon), who is some sort of pervert. Uncle Ernie’s portion is depicted as just weird sounds with a black screen; we should probably be grateful. I haven’t even mentioned that Tommy is played as an adult by Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of the Who, but to be fair, it’s not much of a portrayal for much of the film. He really seems more catatonic than deaf, dumb, and blind. He stares at a mirror a lot until he wanders away from home one night and finds a pinball machine – a working pinball machine at that – in a junkyard because, of course, there would be a working pinball machine in a junkyard atop a bunch of wrecked cars. Why wouldn’t there be? It turns out that Tommy is some sort of prodigy, and he has to face the Pinball Wizard (Elton John, glorious in that outrageous outfit with the enormous shoes, another highlight of the film) in a tournament. Tommy becomes rich playing pinball because, of course, you become rich playing pinball, so his family takes advantage of his success and starts making money from his fame. Later, when Tommy becomes a new messianic figure, the head of a new cult, Nora and Frank again make money off his fame. When the attendees at Tommy’s “holiday camp” near the film’s end revolt because he’s not providing them with anything useful, you sense that there’s some sort of commentary on capitalism going on, perhaps a critique of Great Britain’s post-war treatment of the working class, but gain, it’s tough to discern exactly what the film is trying to say because everything just seems so strange. The production design for Tommy is amazing, as is the costume design. Ann-Margret’s outfits become quite spectacular as the film progresses, but the costumes worn by Turner and John are certainly iconic as well. At times, Tommy calls into question what is real and what isn’t. For example, Ann-Margret’s infamous scene where the television she’s been watching spills out stuff like foam and baked beans and chocolate may be a figment of her imagination. It’s almost impossible to tell for certain. Given that this is the film version of a rock opera, you’d expect the performances by the rock stars like the Who and Clapton to be good, and they are. However, Oliver Reed is no singer, and Jack Nicholson as a doctor with a potential cure for Tommy isn’t a singer either. Daltrey himself doesn’t even sing until almost seventy minutes into the movie. Doesn’t it seem odd that the lead singer of the band that created the work upon which the movie is based would be relegated to just a few songs in the last third or so of the movie? Yes, I understand that the plot calls for Tommy, his character, to be deaf, dumb, and blind, but someone else could have played the role so that most of the singing duties weren’t delegated to Pete Townsend – not that I have anything against Townsend’s singing.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Ann-Margret) and Best Original Song Score and/or Adaptation

The North Star (1943)

 

The North Star features a lot more singing than you’d expect in a war movie set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The film’s music was written by one of our greatest composers, Aaron Copland (who received an Oscar nomination for his work here), and the lyrics are by the renowned Ira Gershwin, so it’s pretty good music. The plot begins with about thirty minutes of idyllic life in a farming village outside Kiev (now Kyiv, the modern-day capital of Ukraine). It’s the last day of school for the year, and a group of five young people are planning their trip to the larger city. So the peasants sing a lot, and why not? They sing at the school, they sing in the village at what appears to be some sort of outdoor festival, and the five young travelers sing on their way to Kiev. The five include Dana Andrews as Kolya Siminov, a pilot trainee in the Soviet air corps; an impossibly young and beautiful Farley Granger in his film debut as Kolya’s younger brother Damian, who’ll be a student at the University of Kiev in the fall; Anne Baxter (always looking like she’s plotting her next move) as Damien’s girlfriend Marina Pavlov; Jane Withers (of all people) as Marina’s close friend, Clavdia Kurin; and Eric Roberts (no, certainly not that one) as Grisha, Clavdia’s younger brother. After they’ve journeyed for a while (and, naturally, sung a few songs), they hear airplanes. We too can hear the faint noise of the plane engines before they appear on the screen. The Nazis attack, killing everyone in sight; only a few people on the road (including, at least temporarily) our five travelers. The Nazis are on their way to the village, apparently the North Star of the film’s title, in order to take care of their wounded. The men of the village realize that the Nazis will kill everyone they encounter, so they leave to defend the village but also leave orders for those who stay behind to destroy everything if the Nazis make it through. You’ve certainly seen enough World War II movies to know that the Nazis do, indeed, make it to the village before it can be destroyed, and they commit such a horrific act that it’s impossible to believe that something like that could happen while simultaneously believing that it’s exactly what could have happened. They start draining the blood of the children of the village to save wounded Nazis, sometimes taking so much blood that the child dies. The men of the village plan an attack, and the film features some outstanding stuntwork during that counterattack by the villagers. The North Star is also beautifully photographed by the great James Wong Howe. There’s a stark brightness and visual clarity in the scenes of village life before the Nazi attack, and those moments are clearly contrasted with a darkness for the scenes where the villagers try to reclaim their homeland. Lots of famed character actors appear in the film, including Walter Brennan as a farmer/wagon driver. (He was always stuck driving a wagon in his movies, wasn’t he?). Walter Huston is the town doctor and father to Clavdia and Grisha. Even Erich von Stroheim shows up as a Nazi doctor who’s apparently supposed to be sympathetic because he knows that what he’s doing is wrong (and that what the Nazis are doing is wrong). Of course, that’s complete bullshit, and the film doesn’t exactly make him seem very human at all by the end of the first sequence where a child is drained of blood and collapses in Huston’s arms to die. SIDE NOTE: I find it interesting that the House Un-American Activities Committee, that fabled band of deep thinkers, considered this film to be too pro-Soviet during the early years of the Cold War when they were trying to find Communists under every rock they could. Of course, the Soviets were our allies during World War II, and the film is set during 1941 before the United States entered the war. Lots of films were made during the war years to show support for our soldiers and perhaps sympathy for our allies fighting against the Nazis and the Axis powers. I didn’t quite see the film as so much pro-Soviet as it is strongly anti-Nazi. The screenwriter, Lillian Hellman, was certainly known as a Communist sympathizer even though she denied being a part of the Communist Party. There’s apparently a heavily edited version of the film that was released in the 1950s where all of the allegedly collectivist village life was deleted, and all references to the characters being Russian in any way were removed. That must have made for a very short film indeed.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound Recording, Best Special Effects, Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture