Singin' in the Rain (1952) dir. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly

The older I get and the more movies I watch, the more I appreciate the fabulous. Ever since I was little, the singing of Angela Lansbury, Debbie Reynolds, and many others were instilled in me through repeated viewings of their contributions to children's musical films.

And when you get more exposed to these personalities through film and theater (myself being a professed highschool drama nerd and Sweeney Todd fanboy [not the fucking film, the musical]), you can't help but proudly and unashamedly shout that Angela Lansbury is just fabulous. And that's what Singin' in the Rain is. It's fabulous.

Being a moderate musical theater fan, I don't think I can even call this movie a musical in confidence, though. It's a dance movie. It's a Gene Kelly variety show and, by the way, a plot. Gene Kelly was like an auteur of his own body-- deliberate and tyrannical. There were a lot of dancers back then and they all had their different styles; different visions that they were trying to portray. Kelly was trying to contribute to the film form with dance as both a performer and a filmmaker (with the help of many talented Hollywood men), and these messages have been pointed out by many critics.

Leo Braudy, a prominent film theorist, studies Kelly's specific contribution to the musical (again, though, I don't think this film is a proper musical) in his writings about genre. And what he has to say is that Kelly is sort of an adversary to Astaire in that his dancing was less about fanciness and formality and more about reaching the common man. It was blunt and athletic and emphatically unelegant. It's the dancing a man would do privately, or with friends-- informal and spontaneous. What we see in the titular song is Don Lockwood breaking into dance because he is so madly in love. The steps are improvised by his character (and apparently by Kelly, himself). That's what makes Kelly a joy to watch. He made dancing look easy and fun and common. He made us want to dance.

But I don't want to talk about Gene Kelly. Not really. The movie, I think, has a lot more to offer than it's namesake.

To start off, I want to acknowledge the other half of this film, the one who directed it alongside Gene Kelly. Stanley Donen did a lot of good films, he's just not a household name. Of course, I called this a dance movie. It is a Gene Kelly picture. That doesn't mean Donen had no creative input. The film is not just a well choreographed pageant, it is also visually and technically distinguished.

Donen casts great actors, actors who can portray chemistry even if they don't actually get along (as Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly definitely did not). Donen often gravitates to stories that contain two characters whose immediate attraction to each other is put into a stalemate because of one major conflicting factor.

Between Albert Finney and Hepburn in Two for the Road (1967), where it's more of an emotional block (their cynicism, their mutual stubbornness). You've also got Charade (1963) with Cary Grant and...Audrey Hepburn (okay, maybe there's another reasons his movies have chemistry...) where a whole range of things become obstacles. But the real issue is honesty. Both characters feel forced to hide something from one another. To carry on a charade. Hence the title.

Singin' in the Rain takes the simple route, this time, by separating Don Lockwood and Kathy Selden by way of Don's commitment to Lina Lamont. Don instigates many of the events in the film and he is motivated to do so by his attraction to Kathy, an attraction that can't be resolved unless he can drop his relationship with Lina, who only stifles him (Lina is the past, the silents. Kathy is the future, the talkies).

Donen and Kelly

Donen has a unique approach to editing. With Singin' in the Rain, there's a much wackier tone. Not only does it have to keep up with the dancing but it also has to keep up with the setting they have. The films is taking place during the peak of cinematic progress and cut-throatiness. In addition to this, it's a comedy. So as the more cinematically technical side of the directing team, Donen inserts comedic nuances into the visuals. His unique approach to editing comes in play here., It's similar to his later film, Two for the Road.

A sequence showing Don and Cosmo's rise to stardom contains a quick scene of Don performing an explosion stunt. The shot then makes a deliberately obvious jump cut before the explosion to make fun of phony old Hollywood trick shots and special effects. 

Donen uses this comedic jump cut in another context in Two for The Road. Albert Finney's character is running after Audrey Hepburn's after a fight. When his pleas for her to stay are angrily rebuffed, he finally resorts to asking for marriage. He shouts this question when she is easily the length of a football field away from him.

That's probably one of my favorite thing about Donen's style, and so I'll just leave that up as the major example of Donen's trademarks on the film. Suffice it to say, the film is visually and technically competent from a filmmaker's perspective and not just an actor/dancer perspective. While the choreography dazzled me like it did everyone else, there was also big, complex movie shit that really got me jazzed. There's this transition between scenes that goes from color (film being made) to black and white (film being viewed) which was really impressive.

Onto the major thrust of the film. Even though it is a light hearted, sing songy story, it is absolutely brutal in its parody of early talkies and of the whole sound spectacle in general. One of the first things we see is a celebrity reporter interviewing Don and Lina with a conspicuously large microphone.

A scene where members of the studio view early sound footage at a party features a grotesque Vincent Price caricature conducting the experiment.

What's really interesting about this sequence is it points and laughs at the simplicity and the novelty of sound in that time, but it also represents the fear that people had when sound film was invented. People worried that hearing actual voices on film would come across as unsettling and vulgar. Uncanny valley, perhaps?

The most obvious skewering of early talkies happens when Don and Lina's first sound film comes out. The recording is so bad, her voice is so annoying, and the dialogue is so horrendous the audience can't stop laughing. It is a harsh, harsh mockery of those films, yet Singin' in the Rain is its progeny.  The film uses this idea of sound to set up a lot of contrasts. For instance, despite being silent movie stars, the characters themselves are quite chatty. The film actually relies on a lot of verbal gags. Even Cosmo, who does great physical comedy in the film, makes tons of one liners that would have been prime real estate for a talkie.

And speaking of Cosmo, he is easily the greatest character in the film. Not only is the dancing and the energy so mind boggling high in "Make Em' Laugh", but as a persona and actor, Donald O'Connor (Cosmo) is a mad man. His presence in the scenes is not only enjoyable, it's necessary. You couldn't have "Moses Suposes" or "Good Mornin" without Cosmo. His face defies all concept of gestalt, each feature having an independent life and position.

The ironic thing is that no one ever laughs at Cosmo's one liners once in the film.

Well, that's all I really gotta say. An interesting comparison to this would be a previous registry film, Sunset Boulevard (1950). Singin' in the Rain was made only two years later. They are both examinations of their own industry, just with two totally different approaches. What's really cool about the 50's movies is that they quite possibly marked the beginning (and in some way the major precedents) of the study of film. Films like this were the culmination of cinema from the half century it was around, and it's exciting to find the moments where an art has advanced so much that it begins to critique itself.


Next Film on the Registry: The Searchers (1956)