Movie musicals are not totally in fashion anymore although from time to time something like "Chicago" and the upcoming "Les Miserables" will sneak through the studio system and become a big hit. But at one time, they were consistent "Best Picture" contenders and so popular that "Singin' In The Rain", possibly the most recognized one of all, is actually a parody of what was considered "the musical genre" back in the fifties. Much like "Rock Of Ages", "Singin' In The Rain" is mostly made up of already known songs from previous musicals, all bundled up together for easier consumption by the public. Yet "Singin' In The Rain" has transcended its comedic roots to become one of the most acclaimed American films of all time. It's one I held off seeing for many years, even taking into account how highly it ranks in the "Sight And Sound" great films list done every decade. I've nothing against musicals, but there's a formula in these older ones which gets tiring after awhile. But it was about time so I bit the bullet and checked it out.
"Singin' In The Rain" starts in with the singin' right from the very second the film begins. You would NEVER see this done sincerely today, but here we have stars Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor dressed up as the Gorton's Fisherman, gleefully performing "Singin' In The Rain" as they walk towards the camera. Then the story starts proper as we are introduced to huge silent film stars Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) at the premiere of their latest smash in 1927 Hollywood. Although Lamont is a huge diva, the two continue to make smash after smash until the invent of sound film throws an obstacle their way due to Lamont's grating voice which sounds like a Brooklyn/Southern infant rubbing a balloon. The clips we see of their first attempt at a film with sound are very funny as is most of the first thirty minutes. Luckily, Lockwood meets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) an aspiring actress with a fine voice and gets the idea to have her dub Lamont's lines to save the film. Along the way, we get a bunch of musical numbers, which start out endearingly with fun choreography, but which eventually become increasingly grating to watch.
The movie is just one hour forty-three minutes, but the plot is only able to fill about half of that, leaving us with a bunch of song and dance, only some of which have to do with what we're seeing on screen. I was surprisingly on board for this for a long time with classics like "Make 'Em Laugh", "Good Morning", and "Singin' In The Rain" very fun to watch. I loved the way the songs were integrated into the plot and they all felt perfectly natural. However, once the "Beautiful Girl" montage began I started to lose my patience. It's a totally weird musical number with green screen craziness (disembodied legs doing a can-can) and no characters we've seen before or will ever see again. It feels like it never ends and I literally had no idea what the hell I was watching. Then comes "Moses Supposes" (one of the few original songs in the film), which starts with Lockwood preparing for his sound debut by taking diction lessons only to be joined by his partner Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) who turns the tongue twisters of the class into a crazy song and dance where they abuse the teacher and make a mess of things. At this point it was like "Just Stop". And that's not even getting to the "Broadway Melody Ballet" which lasts for at least ten minutes, feels like double, and is an example of the types of ballets which were the craze of the biggest musicals of the time like "Oklahoma". I played Ali Hackem in "Oklahoma" in college and was lucky enough to be the only major character not needed for our ballet and this scene brought back the boredom I was accustomed to every time that scene was rehearsed. Again, the choreography for these songs is awesome, but the scenes very much stand out as relics of their time.
The acting is much better, with all four main characters getting some great comedic moments. Gene Kelly goes around the whole film with a huge smile plastered on his face, coming across as Mandy Patinkin doing Michigan J. Frog. I never realized how indebted "The Artist" and Oscar winner Jean Dujardin are to Kelly and "Singin' In The Rain" as Kelly and Dujardin are basically giving the same performance. Kelly was also co-director of the film and I was disappointed to learn he was a staunch perfectionist who drove Donald O'Connor to exhaustion and Debbie Reynolds to tears. Here though he's a thoroughly likable guy with some spectacular dance moves. Donald O'Connor has a real spotlight in "Make 'Em Laugh" which has some of the best physical comedy that's ever existed, but he's a weird case where his physical charisma is fantastic while his verbal charisma is lacking. He's funny and has some great lines, but he just comes across as very bland. A hyperactive Andrew McCarthy/Matthew Perry type of comedian, by the end of some of his numbers I'd want to punch him out just to make him stop.
Debbie Reynolds was only twenty when this came out, but she's an old twenty, giving off a sense of intelligence and maturity in her scenes with Gene Kelly (a young forty). She should have been bigger than she was (Maybe she was, but I just regard her a Las Vegas "star") since here she's quite good. Jean Hagan as the bitchy Lina has the best comedic opportunities and pulls them off with great aplomb. I wasn't surprised to see she understudied Judy Holliday as "Billie Dawn" in the great "Born Yesterday" as that's the role Lina Lamont reminded me of the most. She had an interesting career starring in three classics ("Adam's Rib", "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Singin' In The Rain") and doing the first few seasons of "Make Room For Daddy" with Danny Thomas before an illness seriously derailed her career. Again, here she's very funny. Overall, the acting in general is very broad, like a play, but it works to the benefit of the story which in itself is very theatrical.
The reputation of this film precedes it and I found myself wondering if the best thing going for it is that very reputation. I feel like I my overall opinion of it is shaded by the knowledge that it's regarded as one of the best and unlike my feelings toward "Citizen Kane" (which I think is AWESOME), I found myself disappointed. It's a quality film, but I'm not familiar enough with the early musicals to know if it's just run of the mill for that time or something more special. It's another film that I've seen recently that starts off with a head of steam only to be derailed in the second half, here with the nonstop musical numbers, but at the same time, I bet that if I was in a theatre in 1952, I'd be drooling over those amazing sequences while shoveling popcorn in my face. If it came out today I'd hate it, absolutely, but as it stands I can totally respect and appreciate it, but it's just not my sort of thing.
Rating - 4 out of 5 stars (Again, despite the overall negativity of my review, I did actually like this. Just very disappointed).
Random Thoughts -
I've done a lot of musicals and actually enjoy them very much. My father is not a theatre lover, but happened to introduce me as a child to two fantastic older musicals, "Damn Yankees" and "Paint Your Wagon". One is about baseball and the other about the gold rush. Both have awesome songs. And both movies are fast, fun, and not to be taken too seriously. I think the difference between "Singin' In The Rain" and those two is that neither are held up to the standard of being an all-time great and the song and dance in "Yankees" and "Wagon" move the story along rather than exist in a vacuum.
I do have a hard time watching movies dealing with Hollywood or acting in general; it's one of the reasons I held off on watching this and films like "Sunset Blvd." for so long ("Sunset" by the way is an INCREDIBLE picture). Living in Los Angeles, the magic of watching a film dealing with things far away from your normal life is missing, and watching other people live and portray that profession hits too close to home in some respects. But in the end, a great film is a great film and I do find that great films about acting are sometimes better than the average great film.
Selden meets Lockwood after he falls into her car running away from adoring fans. They get along sourly at first with Selden being nonplussed by Lockwood's repeated jokes about her aspirations in theatre (serious acting). Even when Lockwood, the biggest star in Hollywood, repeatedly tracks her down to romance her, she shrugs him off. All I know is if say Natalie Portman and I met somehow and she was all about what I was offering, I'd say yes and take that no questions asked, both for the personal attraction and because of the professional opportunity.
I so dig the old Hollywood studio system, especially when it's portrayed in films. Guys dressed up clowns having a smoke with guys dressed up as astronauts while guys dressed up as pirates make fun of guys dressed up as hobos. That's what the movies are all about. Here we see Lockwood and Brown walk across a huge sound stage where due to the silent nature of these pictures, multiple movies can be filmed all at once. So we first see them travel through a "Darkest Africa" scene full of natives with giant scary wooden masks (horribly racist, but hey I bet Disney still has those stereotypes on their Jungle Cruise), then past a bleacher set full of cheering college students, and finally past a stagecoach fight scene from a Western. Absolutely love that stuff.
My sister took dance for a few years and I use to go to her recitals. We'd sit in a dark auditorium for what seemed like hours, but was probably only one, and watch a bunch of different dance routines. Sitting there watching routine after routine, my body and mind would enter an almost zen like boredom. At that point the advanced dancers would come out to do their stuff and the combination of darkness, Enya/Enigma music, and fairly complicated dance moves brought me an amazing sense of serenity. I even wanted to try dancing myself after that, but my mother justifiably told me that was a bad idea.
Next - "Lincoln" on Monday, November 19th.
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