unequivocally the best American musical-comedy out of (and about) the Hollywood Golden age

Rating: 10/10 (31 March 2007)

Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain embraces conventions and self-reflection like it's the most wonderful things that can be accomplished with a musical-comedy. It's knowing so well of everything that made up the Hollywood musical- and the bumpy transition from silent film to sound- and always gives a wink and a nod while retaining as a form of pure cinema, in a sense, by giving into its gleeful archetypes. It's also, surprisingly, very smart and witty for a comedy, with its goofy and cornball moments well earned thanks to the earnest effort put into looking so effortless and totally fantastical. It's a fantastical sensibility that can only come out of the movies, the escapism of smitten romances, eccentric characters, and a more contemporary spirit than one might expect (one ends up laughing at how risquÃ© the humor can get, and how guiltlessly silly). And ultimately, it breaks ground, like Citizen Kane, using all of the songs, tricks and superlative technical additives at the disposal of the artists to make a film/amalgam a marvel on all fronts. To put it in a more direct way, if you don't feel happy once this movie ends, it may be time to hit up the the doctors for some heavy medication.
The story is like a double-edged sword, where the world of film-making and musicals get their just due in being revealing and reveling in the history of it all. Two movie stars (Kelly and Jean Hagen) of the silent era on high acclaim, who really shouldn't be together, get put to the task of there being a new medium: the sound picture, where people need to talk into the microphone, big physical acts and motions of the grandiose don't quite fit, and the dialog needs to make sense- through strong voices. After a disastrous test screening, a new plan is hatched- that the leading lady, the wonderfully high-strung and "dumb" Linda, be dubbed over from her squeaky voice to the impeccable voice of Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds). Adding in the musical sequences, and tweaking it a bit, make it a total hit, but at what cost? This is the broad stroke of the story, anyway, but there's much more to Singin' in the Rain than the usual double-crossings and cynicism to the Hollywood "dream factory".
All the humanity that the principle characters feel, be it humor ("Make em Laugh" is a classic number), or in love (the sweet song behind the Dali-esquire set behind Kelly and Reynolds), or in just enjoying what the world has to offer ala "Good Morning"), gets expressed through song and music, with the title song given a classic form of song and dance expression- as elsewhere in the film- as the camera gets its chances for going into the vibrant style, but also is patient in just capturing all the music on all fronts. On top of being such a sharply crafted comedy, with practically all of the jokes hitting levels of hilarity few musicals could aspire to today (usually in part to Donald O'Connor's determined comic relief and levity), Kelly creates indelible images of choreography, in painstaking detail of foot-work and in the timing of movement with the characters. This all reaches its nexus in a sequence that's all the more brilliant considering it's not even a filmed scene within the film, but that it's the visualization of the idea behind a musical sequence in the film, as Kelly pitches it to his producers.
It's loaded with bits of sensuality one wouldn't expect in a 1950s movie (look at those legs!), and encompassing all of the juicy, delightful bits in the crossroads between Broadway and Hollywood musicals. You can lose yourself in this sequence, and always with a big grin at the proceedings. Even towards the end it doesn't lose sight of its 'movie-ness', yet critiquing the nature of the business amid the magic that comes out of it. So get ready to tap your feet and, if inclined, sing along to what serves as the perennial feel-good movie, a work of popular art that has some serious questions in the subtext and never relents to let the audience have a good time at the absurdity of it all- a master's class in absurdity, artificiality, and a love of all things Golden-Age-Hollywood. Think of it as the musical-comedy side of the coin to the dark film-noir coin of Sunset Boulevard; both question what it is to work and stay pertinent in the Hollywood system, but where one treats Hollywood with tougher satire and darker themes, the other goes the route of everything being so fake that it resembles a reality of a fluffy, knowing and kidding dream. An essential of 50s cinema.