Timeless Perfection from Hollywood's Studio System

Rating: 10/10 (5 September 2007)

Up there with film classics such as 'Casablanca' and Orson Wells' groundbreaking 'Citizen Kane', 'Singin' in the Rain' is one of the all-time top films to come out of Hollywood. Considered by many (including the American Film Institute) to be the greatest film musical, 'Singin' in the Rain' , with its awesome production values, was made 12 years before the stunning 'West Side Story'.
When I first saw the film as a teenager, however, failing to see beyond its American sugar-floss sentimentality, I arrogantly despised it. Yet just one year later I sat through it again and instantly came under its spell, caught up in a magic that has never left me. 'Singin' in the Rain' is a riot of self-indulgent fun, studio skulduggery, romance and innocence of not just one, but two by-gone ages: and therein lieth part of its enduring magic. In rich Technicolor, with some of the finest and slickest visual stunts, (it all looks so effortless on screen) along with some of the greatest song and dance numbers, no one can really say they 'know Hollywood' until they've laughed and cried their way through this film. Parodying a Hollywood back in the days when sound was first coming to the silver screen, it simultaneously reflects the late 1920s, in which the film is set, and the early '50s, (the era in which it was produced). Thus, unwittingly encapsulating much of the entire golden age of Hollywood in one motion picture, like fine wine, it has simply matured with age. The production values are so flawlessly high that I sometimes have to pinch myself to remember that the film recreates in song and dance an era some 25 years earlier..
All the songs, including the famous title number, are revivals of numbers that appeared in early sound films, giving the film an air of authenticity. Donald O'Connor's 'Make 'Em Laugh' number is a particular highpoint to watch out for. The typically flamboyant Gene Kelly ballet sequence in the second half is slightly more controversial, with some viewers feeling that despite its brilliant choreography and staging, it slows the action and is out of touch with the naive innocence of the rest of the film, but others view it is the sequence that makes the movie, giving it balance.
It is worth noting that this ballet sequence probably would never have made it into the film at all has it not been for the stunning 1948 British film, 'The Red Shoes' (produced by Powell and Pressburger). The ballet sequence featuring Moira Shearer included 15 minutes of uninterrupted, dialogue-free screen time. Gene Kelly loved it, and thanks to the critical and popular success of 'The Red Shoes', (photographed by the legendary Jack Cardiff), Kelly convinced producer Arthur Freed that ballet on film was commercially viable.
Just five months before the 1952 premier of 'Singin' in the Rain', MGM had released another major Gene Kelly musical, 'An American in Paris', and initially, this was the film critics preferred. However, with audiences making 'Singin' in the Rain' a box-office hit from the very start, critical opinion began to change and it soon became clear that 'Singin' in the Rain' possessed a timeless quality approaching sheer perfection, revealing that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. Overall, in a happy combination of chance and design, (not forgetting the chemistry a 19 year-old Debbie Reynolds brought to the screen and Adolph Green and Betty Comden's wonderful script), the production elements in 'Singin' in the Rain' flow together perfectly, revealing just how well the Hollywood studio system really could work at those special moments when everyone, craftsmen and artists alike, were on peak form.
Due to loving restoration and the marvels of modern digital transfers, we can now see the film as it originally looked, in all its brilliant colour saturation - a far cry from the washed out versions you may have seen as Christmas time TV fodder. If this is the fist time you've ever seen it, then I hope you are wiser than I was, and that you fall in love with this timeless picture first time around: it really is a cinema treat for all ages! C 2007 John Ruffle