Day 121: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Movie #78 – Singin’ in the Rain (1952) - 103 min, cert U.

Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is a silent movie star in 1920s Hollywood. Suddenly ‘talkies’ come along and, not wishing to be left behind, his studio want to convert his latest silent movie to use the new technology. This would be fine, but for the fact that his long-time co-star, the beautiful Lina Lamont, has a terrible, screechy voice and is unable to get to grips with the requirements of sound. The movie is a disaster and everyone involved faces potential ruin if it is released, but release it they must as they are contractually obliged to do so. Lockwood, his long-time friend and musical director Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) and chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) hit upon a plan to transform the film into a musical, using Kathy to dub over Lina’s voice with her own, thereby rescuing the movie.

This is a great movie. It surely has to be the best musical of the era. Many of the musical numbers are well-established in the public consciousness, like Good Morning, Make ’em Laugh, You Were Meant for Me, and of course the title track itself. Gene Kelly has to be the greatest song and dance man that Hollywood ever produced and he is sublime in this movie. But Donald O’Connor is very nearly as good and the solo routine he does to Make ’em Laugh, including the ‘walking up wall thing’ immortalised in The Full Monty, is every bit as accomplished as Kelly’s famous routine through the rain-soaked streets. In fact, I struggle to watch this dance of Gene Kelly’s without thinking of Morecambe & Wise’s famous spoof. I find some of the films finest moments are when the two of them are dancing together.

Score – It has to be 10/10. It’s a marvellous film that will never lose its appeal.

Next up is Rashomon, a Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa. I found his Seven Samurai quite hard going, but this is much shorter at only 88 minutes.