No Doubt About It, One of the Best

Rating: 10/10 (14 April 2020)

This 1952 classic romp often tops critics' and audiences' lists of best musicals-sometimes of best movies, period-of all time. Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor star as dancing buddies, while Debbie Reynolds sets her sites on Kelly by trying to convince him that she is not the least bit interested. Watch as O'Connor throws himself around like a ragdoll, singing "Make 'Em Laugh," and Cyd Charisse, one of the best dancers ever to appear on screen, adds elegance to a film that is set in the 1920s, when sound motion pictures spelled career-end for many a whiney-voiced silent film star, spoofed in this film by the hilarious Jean Hagen. The film also revived the song of the same title by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, which was first popularized in "Hollywood Review of 1929." Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen directed the movie, with story and screenplay by the dynamic husband-and-wife team Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Arthur Freed. What a glorious feeling; I'm happy again. ---from Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013