Classic Musicals: Singin' in the Rain (1952)

This film is so colorful, saturated, and kinetic that it hurts.  Welcome to show biz 1952.  It is exhibit A in the case that a film doesn't have to make a lot of sense in it parts if it has the right trajectory.  Indeed the story is largely a pretext for a lot of song and dance but that is neither here nor there.   Out with the old and in with the new.  What is new in Hollywoodland is the talkie, which came in around 1927.    This catches the movie industry, smug and silent up till then, flat-footed when innovation of synchronized sound and speech hits the film world by storm.   Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lemont (Jean Hagan) are matinee idols in the silent movies.  Suddenly they have to adapt to the world of sound, which suits Lockwood fine, but Miss Lemont has a high squeaky voice just this side of Mira Sorvino.   This was all well and good when film was silent, but now that technology has moved on, Lemont has a problem, and seems unaware even that she has one.  

Not only is she oblivious of her deficiencies but she is mean and not shy about manipulating and intimidating anyone and everyone who stands in her way, even the studio head.  Not only that but she is possessed of the delusion that her frequent costar belongs to her romantically even though it is clear to any observer that he despises her.  She has in short a tragic lack of self awareness and a ton of conceit.

Meanwhile Lockwood has problems of his own.  Principally he needs to hire a phalanx of bodyguards when he goes out in public.  Desperate to escape from crazed fans he climbs to the top of a moving streetcar and then leaps into the open convertible driven by none other than Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) who is a struggling actress

doing lowly party acts and bursting out of giant birthday cakes.  The fact that Miss Selden is studiously unimpressed by Don Lockwood attracts him.  He is smitten with her however and tracks her down and wins her over.  And she is of course that undiscovered bundle of talent that is waiting to emerge. It is hard to believe that she was only 18 years old when she made this picture.

The choreography and music are stunning.  Donald O'Connor in "Make 'em Laugh" makes me wonder when he stops to catch his breath as he does backflips after walking up the sides of walls and all the pratfalls and running into bricked up doorways.  I would think they would have had to hose him down and towel him off after each take.  And of course the eponymous sequence where Gene Kelly is singin' in the rain is marvelous.  What an athlete.  The set must have been enormously expensive with some powerful pumps recircling water from drains and dropping it in front of the camera.  

The ballet sequence "Gotta Dance" has to be seen to be believed.  This "dream sequence" with (for some reason) Cyd Charisse is a story within a story.  Here the Lockwood character is pursuing Charisse in a diaphanous white gown, is rejected by her, is thrown out of a bright red club by a couple of tuxedoed tough guys, then climbs the heights of

show biz, dances with Charisse with at least half a dozen costume changes, and one amazing number in a set that looks like some bleak landscape by Paul Klee and where Charisse is wearing a very long gown that is blown completely out to sea or something.  This is artifice at its very best.  

Where was I?  What was the story?  Oh yes, something about the new throwing out the old, about the deserving underdog overthrowing the entrenched and corrupt insider.  Was the transition to sound such a clunky and cheesy process?  I kind of doubt it.  Is it a beautiful spectacle, a pastiche, a delightful bit of happy nonsense?  Yes.  Is it the best musical of all time?  I don't know.  It's very good, but I haven't seen every musical so I couldn't say.