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