104 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Music sustains old-hat plot of vaudeville couple determined to play Palace, circa WWI. Kelly's film debut enhanced by he and Garland singing title tune, "When You Wore a Tulip," etc.
 

For Me and My Gal
US (1942): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

104 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Fresh from his Broadway success in Pal Joey, Gene Kelly made his movie début here as a good-bad guy, playing opposite Judy Garland. They are a vaudeville team who are just getting their big break when Kelly is inducted (the period is the First World War); he deliberately injures his hand so he won't have to fight and—the movie having been made during the Second World War—he must then reform and become a gallant hero. The story is naďvely patriotic and sentimental, but Kelly is amazingly fresh; his grin could melt stone, and he and Garland are a magical pair (especially when they're singing "The bells are ringing for me and my gal"). The songs include "Ballin' the Jack," "Smiles," and "After You've Gone," and there are some nifty comedy routines featuring Kelly and Ben Blue. Produced by Arthur Freed and directed by Busby Berkeley; with George Murphy, Horace McNally (later Stephen), Richard Quine, Keenan Wynn, and Marta Eggerth. The writers were Fred Finklehoffe, Sid Silvers, Richard Sherman, and Howard Emmett Rogers. MGM.

The Cross of Lorraine
US (1943): War
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

90 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

High-grade propaganda of WWII POW camp with hero Aumont rousing defeated Kelly to battle; Whorf is dedicated doctor, Lorre a despicable Nazi, Cronyn a fickle informer.

DuBarry Was a Lady
US (1943): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

101 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Nightclub worker Skelton pines for beautiful singing star Ball; when he swallows a Mickey Finn, he dreams he's Louis XVI, and has to contend with the prickly Madame DuBarry (Ball). Colorful nonsense, missing most of the songs from Cole Porter's Broadway score, though "Friendship" is used as the finale. Opens like a vaudeville show, with beautiful chorines and specialty acts, including young Mostel, and Dorsey's band—with Buddy Rich on drums—doing a sensational "Well, Git It." They turn up later in powdered wigs, as do the Pied Pipers, with Dick Haymes (in his film debut) and Jo Stafford. Lana Turner has a bit part.

Pilot #5
US (1943): War
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

70 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

GI pilot Tone volunteers to take on a suicide mission. As he flies to his death, his buddies recall his troubled past (most notably his involvement with a Huey Long-like governor). Good cast uplifts so-so curio; it's intriguing to see Kelly in a supporting part, as a hothead. Watch for Peter Lawford at the opening.

Thousands Cheer
US (1943): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

126 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Grayson lives with officer-father John Boles at army base, falls for hotheaded private Kelly and decides to prepare an all-star show for the soldiers. Dubious plot is an excuse for specialty acts by top MGM stars.

Thousands Cheer
US (1943): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

126 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

An army camp puts on a big show, culminating in "United Nations on the March"--a work by Shostakovich-star extravaganza, Lena Horne sings "Honeysuckle Rose," and Judy Garland tackles "The Joint Is Really Jumpin'," but nothing could save it. Maybe José Iturbi put the seal of doom on the venture when he sat down to play boogie-woogie; he hits the notes all right, but his boogie-woogie is (arguably) the most mechanical ever recorded. The dull, dull plot involves Mary Astor, John Boles, and Kathryn Grayson. With Mickey Rooney, June Allyson, Gloria De Haven, Ben Blue, Eleanor Powell, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, and many others, plus the bands of Kay Kyser, Benny Carter, and Bob Crosby. Written by Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins; produced by Joe Pasternak. George Sidney directed.

Christmas Holiday
US (1944): Mystery
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

92 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Somerset Maugham novel reset in America. Crime story with Durbin gone wrong to help killer-hubby Kelly; songs include "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year."

Christmas Holiday
US (1944): Mystery
Pauline Kael Review

92 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

The screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz, took Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name, changed the setting from France to New Orleans, and turned it into a vehicle for Deanna Durbin, who had outgrown her singing adolescent heyday. Though a bit chubby-cheeked (maturing child stars are rarely lucky in their bone structure), she's not too objectionable in the role of a young singer from Vermont who marries a no-good charmer (Gene Kelly), scion of an old Creole family. Just about everything is sodden and unconvincing, though. The husband murders a bookmaker, and the wife blames herself for not having been a stronger influence on him. The director, Robert Siodmak—so astute in many of his other films—seems stuck and has to take these sentiments unduly seriously. (This film was made in the days of the Code, and when the wife is forced to perform in a dive we have to accept her word that she is leading a degraded life, since what we see is peachy clean.) Durbin sings "Always" and "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year;" Kelly neither sings nor dances, and he hasn't much more luck with the weakling role than actors generally do. With Richard Whorf, Gladys George, Gale Sondergaard, and David Bruce. Universal.

Cover Girl
US (1944): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

107 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Incredibly clichéd plot is overcome by loveliness of Rita, fine Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin musical score (including "Long Ago and Far Away,") and especially Kelly's solo numbers. Silvers adds some laughs, but Eve Arden steals the film as Kruger's wisecracking assistant.

Cover Girl
US (1944): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

107 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The wartime plot about hoofers and models is a shambles, and there's a prolonged flashback to the Gay Nineties that is almost ruinous, but this big, flashy, Technicolor musical has a lot to recommend it: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Phil Silvers, and songs by Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern, including "Put Me to the Test," and the slurpy but affecting "Long Ago and Far Away." Kelly and Silvers are a livelier team than Kelly and Hayworth, though she does look sumptuous, and her big smile could be the emblem of the period. The cast includes Lee Bowman, Otto Kruger, Eve Arden, Edward Brophy, Jinx Falkenburg, and dozens of celebrated models. Charles Vidor directed; Virginia Van Upp wrote the script; Stanley Donen, Kelly, Seymour Felix, and Jack Cole staged the dances; Nan Wynn dubbed Hayworth's singing. Arthur Schwartz produced, for Columbia.

Anchors Aweigh
US (1945): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

140 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Popular '40s musical of sailors on leave doesn't hold up storywise, but musical numbers still good: Sinatra's "I Fall in Love Too Easily," Kelly's irresistible dance with Jerry the cartoon mouse.

Anchors Aweigh
US (1945): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

140 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

This Gene Kelly-Frank Sinatra musical has an abundance of energy and spirit, and you may feel it could be wonderful if it weren't so stupidly wholesome, and if you could just do something about Kathryn Grayson and José Iturbi—like maybe turn Terry Southern loose on them. The sugary wholesomeness was the stock in trade of the producer, Joe Pasternak; characters in his movies always look scrubbed and sexless, and act embarrassingly young. Pasternak doesn't destroy Kelly's bounding vitality, however; this was the hit movie that made him a hugely popular star. He and Sinatra play sailors on shore leave in Hollywood who get involved with Grayson, a singer working as an extra and living with her chubby-faced angelic little nephew (Dean Stockwell). In the worst sequence, Sinatra sings Brahms' "Lullaby" to Stockwell. Kelly has three big dance numbers, including the famous Jerry the Mouse cartoon dance, and he and Sinatra perform together amiably. With Pamela Britton, Edgar Kennedy, Grady Sutton, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, and Sharon McManus—the little girl who dances with Kelly. George Sidney directed; Kelly choreographed, with Stanley Donen assisting. The songs are mostly by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne. MGM.

Ziegfeld Follies
US (1946): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

110 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Variable all-star film introduced by Powell as Ziegfeld in heaven. Highlights are Brice-Hume Cronyn sketch, Astaire-Kelly dance, Moore-Arnold comedy routine, Skelton's "Guzzler's Gin," Horne's solo, Garland's "The Interview." Various segments directed by George Sidney, Roy Del Ruth, Norman Taurog, Lemuel Ayers, Robert Lewis, Merril Pye. Filmed mostly in 1944.

Ziegfeld Follies
US (1946): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

110 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Vincente Minnelli directs an extraordinary cast in this plotless, often tedious MGM musical revue. It features a peculiar Hollywood-40s style of decor (chorus boys with jewelled antler-shaped branches, chorus girls clad in vermillion, and so on). Some high spots: Fred Astaire dances "Limehouse Blues" in a set left over from THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY; he and Gene Kelly do a routine together ("The Babbitt and the Bromide," by George and Ira Gershwin); and Judy Garland appears at her most lighthearted in the dance-and-patter number--"A Great Lady Has an Interview." The other performers include Lena Horne, Fanny Brice, Victor Moore, Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Keenan Wynn, Jimmy Durante, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, James Melton, Hume Cronyn, Edward Arnold, and William Powell as Ziegfeld up in heaven dreaming this big bash. The fastidious are advised to head for the lobby while Kathryn Grayson sings "There's Beauty Everywhere" against magenta foam skies. Produced by Arthur Freed.

Living in a Big Way
US (1947): Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4

103 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Kelly returns from WWII to get to know his war bride for the first time and clashes with her nouveau riche family. A notorious flop in its day, but not all that bad; Kelly does a couple of first-rate dance numbers.

The Pirate
US (1948): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Judy thinks circus clown Kelly is really Caribbean pirate; lavish costuming, dancing and Cole Porter songs (including "Be a Clown") bolster stagy plot. Kelly's dances are exhilarating, as usual. Based on S.N. Behrman play.

The Pirate
US (1948): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Judy Garland is a 19th-century maiden on a Caribbean island, dreaming of a famous pirate, and Gene Kelly, bouncing with élan in the manner of Fairbanks, is a travelling actor who pretends to be that pirate. This Vincente Minnelli musical, based on an S.N. Behrman play that the Lunts performed, is flamboyant in an innocent and lively way. Though it doesn't quite work, and it's all a bit broad, it doesn't sour in the memory. The Nicholas Brothers join Garland and Kelly in the celebrated "Be a Clown" number. The score is by Cole Porter. With Walter Slezak, Reginald Owen, Gladys Cooper, and George Zucco. MGM.

The Three Musketeers
US (1948): Comedy/Adventure
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

125 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Oddball, lavish production of Dumas tale with Kelly as D'Artagnan. Occasional bright moments, but continual change of tone, and Heflin's drowsy characterization as Athos, bog down the action. Lana makes a stunning Lady DeWinter.

The Three Musketeers
US (1948): Comedy/Adventure
Pauline Kael Review

125 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

In grinning, leaping homage to Douglas Fairbanks, Gene Kelly plunges his sword into dozens of extras, vaults onto more horses than there are in a rodeo, swings from assorted drapes and chandeliers, and hops about 17th-century rooftops. His D'Artagnan veers between romance and burlesque, but is always enjoyable. However, the lavish MGM production is a heavy, roughhousing mess. As Lady de Winter, Lana Turner sounds like a drive-in waitress exchanging quips with hot-rodders, and, as Richelieu, Vincent Price might be an especially crooked used-car dealer. (The studio didn't want to offend anyone, so this Richelieu doesn't wear clerical trappings, and is never addressed by his ecclesiastical title.) Angela Lansbury wears the crown of France as if she'd won it in a milking contest at a county fair, and, as Lady Constance, June Allyson looks like a little girl done up in Mama's clothes. Kelly's amorous grapplings don't seem as strenuous as they actually were: he threw Lana Turner on her bed so hard that she fell off it and broke her elbow. He should have thrown the director, George Sidney, and the costume designer, Walter Plunkett, who swaddled the performers. Among them are Van Heflin, Gig Young, Frank Morgan, Keenan Wynn, John Sutton, Ian Keith, Patricia Medina, Robert Coote, and Reginald Owen. Produced by Pandro S. Berman, from Robert Ardrey's script.

Words and Music
US (1948): Musical/Dance/Biography
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

119 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Sappy biography of songwriters Rodgers (Drake) and Hart (Rooney) is salvaged somewhat by their wonderful music, including Kelly's dance to "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue."

Words and Music
US (1948): Musical/Dance/Biography
Pauline Kael Review

119 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Double bio of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, with Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney insanely miscast in the roles. The story part is painfully embarrassing to watch, but some of the musical numbers are just fine. The huge cast includes Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Perry Como, Janet Leigh, Gower Champion, Gene Kelly (who choreographed the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ballet that he dances with Vera-Ellen), and June Allyson, whose "Thou Swell" with the Blackburn Twins is a bright spot in her career. Also with Lena Horne singing "The Lady Is a Tramp," and Ann Sothern, Mel Tormé, Betty Garrett, Allyn Ann McLerie, and Marshall Thompson. Norman Taurog directed, from a script by Fred Finklehoffe, based on a story by Guy Bolton and Jean Holloway. Robert Alton and Kelly staged the dances. The roughly two dozen Rodgers and Hart songs include "Where or When," "There's a Small Hotel," and "This Can't Be Love." MGM.

On the Town
US (1949): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

98 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Jubilant Betty Comden-Adolph Green-Leonard Bernstein musical (inspired by Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free) about three sailors on leave for one day in NYC. "New York, New York" tops a bright, inventive score, with Roger Edens and Lennie Hayton earning Oscars for their arrangements. This was Kelly and Donen's first full directing assignment—and (rare for an MGM movie) they actually shot on location in NYC

On the Town
US (1949): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

98 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

This musical about three sailors with 24 hours leave in New York has an undeserved high reputation. Yes, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, Vera-Ellen (as Miss Subways), and Florence Bates, Tom Dugan, and Alice Pearce are all in it, and it's the Comden and Green musical with the remnants of the Bernstein score. But its exuberant love of New York seems forced, and most of the numbers are hearty and uninspired. Kelly and Stanley Donen choreographed and directed. Produced by Arthur Freed, for MGM.

On the Town
US (1949): Musical/Dance
CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review: 5.0 stars out of 5

98 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

New York City never looked more beautiful or exciting on screen than in ON THE TOWN, a breakthrough film that, for the first time, took the musical out of the claustrophobic sound stages and onto the streets for on-location shooting. Perfectly fusing story, songs, and dances, with no production number staged merely for its own sake, ON THE TOWN is so energetic and vital that the screen barely contains it; the actors seem ready to leap off and dance up the aisles.
 Synopsis
Sailors on liberty   The slim story follows sailors Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) during their 24-hour pass in New York. In the subway, they note the picture of this month's "Miss Turnstiles," with whom Gabey is especially taken; later they meet Miss Turnstiles—one Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen)—in the flesh, but she vanishes into the rush-hour crowd.
Pairing off   Chasing after her, they enlist the help of cabbie, Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett), who takes a fancy to Chip. Continuing their search, they meet anthropologist Claire Huddesen (Ann Miller), who sets her sights on Ozzie. The group splits into three units— Brunhilde and Chip, Claire and Ozzie, and Gabey —to look for Ivy, agreeing to meet on the Empire State Building's observation deck that night.
After a day of romantic adventures and misadventures, they rendezvous at the appointed site, Gabey squiring Ivy, whom he mistakenly believes to be a big star in her position as Miss Turnstiles. By the time she gets around to telling him she's really just a no-name dancer from a tiny town (as it happens, the same tiny town he's from), it makes no difference to the smitten Gabey, and, after a run-in with the cops that forces the gobs to pretend they're girls, they return to their ship exactly 24 hours from the time they left. Brunhilde and Ivy sadly wave farewell as the men board. 98 minutes have gone by and it feels like five.
 Background
Louis B. Mayer bought the show for $250,000 before it was produced but didn't like the play when he saw it, deeming it "smutty" and "communistic" because there was one scene that had a white sailor dancing with a black woman. Producer Arthur Freed prevailed upon Mayer to give him a $2 million budget, including $110,000 to Betty Comden and Adolph Green for rewrites and new lyrics to the music by associate producer Roger Edens (Freed disliked Leonard Bernstein's stage score).
Location shooting   Mayer didn't want the film to go on location, while codirector Kelly wanted to shoot the entire picture in New York, leading to a compromise in which Kelly was allowed one frantic week of location shooting, filming the Bronx, the Battery, Coney Island, Brooklyn, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Fifth Avenue, Radio City, the Bronx Zoo, Central Park, Carnegie Hall, the subway, Wall Street, Grant's Tomb, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Perhaps it was the short shooting schedule that contributed to the frantic pace of the film, a jampacked tour without a wasted second.
Codirectors   ON THE TOWN was the first of Kelly and Stanley Donen's codirecting triumphs (SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, 1952 and IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER, 1955 would follow), with Kelly helming the dance sequences. (For one ballet, Kelly adopted the strategy of Agnes De Mille in OKLAHOMA!, 1955, substituting dancers more proficient in ballet for the leads.) There may have been better songs and even better performances in other musicals, but for effervescence and raw energy nothing has yet come close to the joyous, influential ON THE TOWN.
 Music
Songs include "New York, New York," "I Feel Like I'm Not out of Bed Yet," "Come Up to My Place" (Bernstein, Comden, Green), "Miss Turnstiles Ballet" (Bernstein), "Main Street," "You're Awful," "On the Town," "You Can Count on Me," "Pearl of the Persian Sea," "Pre-Historic Man," "That's All There Is, Folks" (Roger Edens, Comden, Green).

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
US (1949): Sports/Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

93 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Contrived but colorful turn-of-the-century musical, with Williams taking over Sinatra and Kelly's baseball team. "O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg" and Kelly's "The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day" are musical highlights.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
US (1949): Sports/Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

93 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

This big MGM musical, set in the early part of the century, began with a not too inspired script idea from Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and after it went through a series of cast changes and then got assigned to Busby Berkeley to direct, it was a full-scale mess. Kelly and Frank Sinatra are vaudevillians who are also baseball players; Esther Williams, the manager of the baseball team, is in love with Kelly, but Sinatra is in love with her. And there are gangsters trying to get the boys to double-cross her and lose a game. This asinine story just about smothers the good-natured hoofing. Comden and Green and Roger Edens did the songs, but the musical numbers have that flag-waving Irish-American cheeriness which also blighted many Fox musicals made in the same period. With Betty Garrett and Jules Munshin, who work well with Kelly and Sinatra. They all got together—sans Esther Williams—the following year in ON THE TOWN. The finale here isn't by Berkeley; it was co-directed by Kelly and Donen, and served to persuade the studio to let them co-direct ON THE TOWN. Script by Harry Tugend and George Wells; with Edward Arnold and Tom Dugan.

Black Hand
US (1950): Crime
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

93 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette
 
 

Kelly avenges his father's murder by the Black Hand society in turn-of-the-century NYC. Atmospheric, well-made film with Kelly in a rare (and effective) dramatic performance.

Summer Stock
US (1950): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

109 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Kelly's theater troupe takes over Judy's farm, she gets show biz bug. Thin plot, breezy Judy, frantic Silvers, chipper De Haven. Judy sings "Get Happy," Kelly dances on newspapers.

Summer Stock
US (1950): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

109 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The emotional rapport of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly transforms the corny, simpleminded story material--a reworking of the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney pictures about adolescents staging a show in a barn. Though Garland is overweight and obviously uncomfortable in much of the picture, she and Kelly bring conviction to their love scenes and make them naďvely fresh. As a team, they balance each other's talents: she joins her odd and undervalued cakewalker's prance to his large-spirited hoofing, and he joins his odd, light, high voice to her sweet deep one. Their duet on "You Wonderful You" has a plaintive richness that stays with one. The most famous sequence is Garland's rakish "Get Happy," shot almost three months after the rest of the picture; exultantly thin, in a black hat and short jacket, she flaunts her spectacular long legs. It is one of the great cheerful numbers of her career. For all the messiness, this is a likable picture, with lots of good songs and dances; they were staged by different hands--Kelly, Nick Castle, and the director, Charles Walters (he choreographed "Get Happy"). With Phil Silvers, Gloria De Haven, Eddie Bracken, Marjorie Main, Hans Conried, and Carleton Carpenter; the dancers include Carol Haney and Jeannie Coyne. Most of the songs are by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. From a screenplay by George Wells and Sy Gomberg. MGM.

An American in Paris
US (1951): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

115 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Joyous, original musical built around Gershwin score; dazzling in color. Plot of artist Kelly torn between gamine Caron and wealthy Foch is creaky, but the songs, dances, production are superb. Oscars include Best Picture, Story and Screenplay (Alan Jay Lerner), Cinematography (Alfred Gilks and John Alton), Scoring (Johnny Green and Saul Chaplin), Art Direction, Costume Design, and a special citation to Kelly. Look fast for Noel Neill as an art student.

An American in Paris
US (1951): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

115 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The Academy Award-winning musical, directed by Vincente Minnelli, about a romance between an American painter (Gene Kelly) and a French girl (Leslie Caron). Too fancy and overblown (there's a ballet with scenes in the styles of Dufy, Renoir, Utrillo, Rousseau, van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec), but the two dancing lovers have infectious grins and the Gershwin music keeps everything good-spirited. The songs include "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," and " 'S Wonderful," and Georges Guétary sings a spiffy arrangement of "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise." With Nina Foch as a rich, decadent American, and Oscar Levant thumping away happily on the piano. Written by Alan Jay Lerner; choreographed by Kelly; art direction by Cedric Gibbons and Preston Ames; produced by Arthur Freed. MGM.

An American in Paris
US (1951): Musical/Dance
Roger Ebert Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

115 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS swept the Academy Awards for 1951, with Oscars for best picture and the major technical categories: screenplay, score, cinematography, art direction, set design, and even a special Oscar for the choreography of its 18-minute closing ballet extravaganza.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, released in 1952 and continuing the remarkable golden age of MGM musicals, didn't do nearly as well on its initial release. But by the 1960s, SINGIN' was routinely considered the greatest of all Hollywood musicals, and AN AMERICAN IN PARIS was remembered with more respect than enthusiasm.
Now that the film has been restored for a national theatrical release and an eventual relaunch on tapes and laser discs, it's easy to see why SINGIN' passed it in the popularity sweepstakes. Its story of two Americans in Montparnasse—a struggling painter (Gene Kelly) and a perennial piano student (Oscar Levant)—is essentially a clothesline on which to hang recycled Gershwin songs ("I Got Rhythm," "S'Wonderful") and a corny story of love won, lost, and won again. Compared to SINGIN'S tart satire of Hollywood at the birth of the talkies, it's pretty tame stuff.
And yet AMERICAN has many qualities of its own, not least its famous ballet production number, with Kelly and Leslie Caron symbolizing the entire story of their courtship in dance. And there are other production numbers, set in everyday Parisian settings, that are endlessly inventive in their use of props and locations.
The stories of the two movies are curiously similar. In both of them, Kelly must break his romance of convenience with a predatory older blonde (Nina Foch in AMERICAN, Jean Hagen in SINGIN') in order to follow his heart to a younger, more innocent brunette (Leslie Caron and Debbie Reynolds). In both, he is counseled by a best friend (Oscar Levant and Donald O'Connor). And in both there is a dramatic moment when all seems lost, just when it is about to be gained.
SINGIN' is the more realistic picture, which is perhaps why it holds up better today. AMERICAN has scenes that are inexplicable, including the one where Levant joins Kelly and their French friend Henri (Georges Guetary) at a café. When he realizes they are both in love with the same woman, Levant starts lighting a handful of cigarettes while simultaneously trying to drink coffee. Maybe it seemed funny at the time.
There's also a contrast between the Nina Foch character—a possessive rich woman who hopes to buy Kelly's affections—and Jean Hagen's brassy blonde, a silent star whose shrieking voice is not suited to the sound era. Foch's blonde is just plain sour and unpleasant. Hagen's blonde is funny and fun. And, for that matter, there's no comparing the ingenues, either: Caron, still unformed, a great dancer but a so-so actress, and Reynolds, already a pro in her film debut, perky and bright-eyed.
The version now being released is a "true" restoration, according to the experts at Turner Entertainment, who say the job they did on AMERICAN compares to the salvage work in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962). Because two reels of the original negative were destroyed by fire, painstaking lab work was necessary to match those reels to the rest of the film. The result is a bright and fresh-looking print, in which the colors are (probably deliberately) not as saturated or bold as in the classic Technicolor process.
The ads say the movie is now in stereo. This is not quite true. Only the 18-minute ballet has been reprocessed into a sort of reconstructed stereo, and if a theater plays the whole film in stereo, the result may be the kind of raw-edged sound I heard at a press screening, before the projectionist gave up and switched to mono. The best choice would probably be to start in mono and physically switch to stereo when the ballet starts—although why so much labor is expended on quasi-stereo effects is beyond me. The real reasons to see AN AMERICAN IN PARIS are for the Kelly dance sequences, the closing ballet, the Gershwin songs, the bright locations, and a few moments of the ineffable, always curiously sad charm of Oscar Levant.

An American in Paris
US (1951): Musical/Dance
CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review: 5.0 stars out of 5

115 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

A classic film featuring the music of George Gershwin long after his death, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS has a freshness and charm rare in the musical genre, and it was the film that forever identified MGM as the studio for musicals.
 Synopsis
A simple story   The simple story is pure Hollywood, but it works beautifully. Gene Kelly, who created the spellbinding choreography for the entire production, stars as a young GI, Jerry Mulligan, who has stayed on in Paris to paint. Though he is unsuccessful, he is happy living and working in his cramped Montparnasse garret.
His one friend Adam Cook (Oscar Levant) is a piano player in a nearby cafe, a sarcastic and morose individual who offers nothing but discouragement to Mulligan (Oscar Levant in character and as he was). However, another friend Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary), a successful revue singer, is more encouraging. Baurel informs his pals that he is going to marry a wonderful girl, an eighteen-year-old dancer whom he rescued from the Nazis during the war.
Mulligan, meanwhile, is discovered by a rich widow, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who buys his paintings and encourages her rich friends to do the same. Innocently enjoying this newfound success, Mulligan visits a nightclub and meets a young girl (Caron), falling for her immediately. She fends off his advances but later agrees to a date, then tells him that she is engaged to Guetary.
Though they are in love, but do the noble thing and decide not to meet again. Mulligan pays a further price for his honor when he refuses to be Milo's gigolo, losing access to her fortune and connections. All looks bleak, but Baurel is also noble; realizing Lise Bouvier (Caron) is in love with his friend, he gives her up. The lovers fly into each other's arms for the happy ending.
 Background
Meticulously authentic   No one could argue the authentic look of this marvelous musical; even the French government, highly critical of any film profile of its beloved Paris, agreed that the production was genuine down to the last cobblestone. Yet only a few of the opening scenes were live shots of Paris, the rest of the film having been photographed on MGM's creative back lot, where a Parisian neighborhood was reproduced with meticulous care by Edwin P. Willis and Keogh Gleason.
Classic song and dance   Everything about the film is superb, from Vincente Minnelli's direction to the lushly orchestrated Gershwin brothers standards. In all, twenty-two Gershwin greats are included, including "Embraceable You," "Nice Work If You Can Get It," and "Our Love Is Here to Stay." Kelly's dance numbers are spectacular and unforgettable, reflecting his genius as a choreographer and as a dancer of grace and joie de vivre, a unique talent equalled only by Fred Astaire.
The songs and dances blend perfectly with the story. One of the most delightful of the sequences features Kelly dancing with children in the street, the urchins matching his typically acrobatic jumps and leaps. Guetary's tenor is wonderfully suited to belting out the great "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and "'S Wonderful," the latter a top-hatted review number in which they harmonize, singing about the same girl, though neither realizes it.
The highlight of the film is Kelly's fantasy ballet, a terrific seventeen-minute sequence not equaled in musicals before or after this film. The ballet cost MGM $450,000 to mount, and brought "culture" of a higher sort to a public that loved it.
This sequence was done after the film was finished, with art director Preston Ames (himself an art student in Paris in the late 1920s) painting magnificent forty-foot-high backdrops around a re-created Place de la Concorde, all done in the style of French artist Raoul Dufy. (Kelly showed the elderly, wheelchair-bound Dufy the sequence at a special screening. Dufy wept when he saw it, and then asked to see it again.)
Kelly himself was also a fine judge of talent—it was he who spotted Leslie Caron in the Ballets des Champs Elysees and made the marvelous dancer an overnight star.
 Awards
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS won six Oscars: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography (color), Best Art Direction (color), Best Musical Scoring and Best Costume Design (color). Minnelli was nominated for Best Direction and Adrienne Fazan was nominated for Best Editing.
The film also garnered a special Academy Award for Kelly "in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and especially for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film."

It's a Big Country
US (1951): Drama
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

89 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Dore Schary's plug for America uses several pointless episodes about the variety of people and places in U.S. Other segments make up for it in very uneven film. Narrated by Louis Calhern.

The Devil Makes Three
US (1952): Drama
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4

96 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Kelly (none too convincing in one of his rare non-musicals) plays a soldier returning to Munich to thank family who helped him during WWII; he becomes involved with daughter Angeli and black market gangs.

Love Is Better Than Ever
US (1952): Romance/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

81 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette
 
 

Forgettable froth involving talent agent Parks and dance teacher Taylor. Mild MGM musical, but Liz looks terrific. Gene Kelly has an unbilled cameo.

Singin' in the Rain
US (1952): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Perhaps the greatest movie musical of all time, fashioned by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from a catalogue of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown songs. The setting is Hollywood during the transition to talkies, with Hagen giving the performance of a lifetime as Kelly's silent screen costar, whose voice could shatter glass. Kelly's title number, O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh," are just two highlights in a film packed with gems. Later a Broadway musical.

Singin' in the Rain
US (1952): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

This exuberant satire of Hollywood in the late 20s, at the time of the transition from silents to talkies, is probably the most enjoyable of all American movie musicals. The teamwork of the stars, Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds, is joyful and the material is first-rate--ranging from parodies of the Busby Berkeley style of choreography to the Charleston and Black Bottom performed straight. The film falters during a too-long love song on a deserted studio stage (later cut from some of the prints) and during a lavish oversize Broadway ballet, but these sequences don't seriously affect one's enjoyment. With Jean Hagen as an imbecile movie-queen, Millard Mitchell as a producer, Cyd Charisse as a dancer, Rita Moreno as a flapper actress, Madge Blake as a syrupy columnist, Douglas Fowley as a distraught director. Directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen from the witty, affectionate script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The songs by Nacio Herb Brown with lyrics by Arthur Freed include "All I Do Is Dream of You," "Make 'Em Laugh," "I've Got a Feeling You're Fooling," "Wedding of the Painted Doll," "Fit as a Fiddle," "Should I?," "You Were Meant for Me," "Good Mornin'," "You Are My Lucky Star," and, of course, "Singin' in the Rain." The song "Moses" is by Comden and Green and Roger Edens. Cinematography by Harold Rosson. Produced by Freed. MGM.

Singin' in the Rain
US (1952): Musical/Dance
Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The image that everyone remembers from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has Gene Kelly hanging from a lamppost and swinging his umbrella in the wild joy of new love. The scene builds to a gloriously saturated ecstasy as Kelly stomps through the puddles of water in the gutters, making big wet splashes.
The entire sequence, from the moment Kelly begins to dance until the moment the cop looks at him strangely, is probably the most joyous musical sequence ever filmed. It celebrates a man who has just fallen in love and has given himself over to heedless celebration. And the rainwater provides the dancer with a tactile medium that reflects his joy in its own noisy way.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has been voted one of the greatest films of all time in international critics' polls, and is routinely called the greatest of all the Hollywood musicals. I don't think there's any doubt about that. There are other contenders—TOP HAT, SWING TIME, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, THE BAND WAGON, OKLAHOMA!, WEST SIDE STORY—but SINGIN' IN THE RAIN comes first because it is not only from Hollywood, it is about Hollywood. It is set at the moment in the late 1920s when the movies first started to talk, and many of its best gags involve technical details.
A restored print of the movie, made from the original three-strip Technicolor process with its brilliant reds and yellows, went into national release to celebrate RAIN's fortieth anniversary in 1992. It is also available in video, including high-quality laserdiscs from MGM and Criterion. Looking at it again proves that the movie still has every ounce of its original charm, but then that didn't come as a surprise to me since I've seen it at least once a year since the first time I saw it at Chicago's late, lamented repertory house, the Clark Theatre.
Unlike most of the movie musicals of recent years, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN was not based on a Broadway stage production; it worked the other way around, with a London and Broadway musical in the 1980s being based on the movie. The original screenplay held up so well that the Tommy Steele stage version in London followed the film even in small details.
The movie was cobbled together fairly quickly in 1952 to capitalize on the success of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS—which won the Academy Award as the best picture of 1951 and also starred Gene Kelly. The new movie had an original screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and new songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. But some of the songs, including the famous title tune, were anything but new. The Criterion Collection laserdisc includes old film clips of a version of "Singin' in the Rain" from HOLLYWOOD REVIEW OF 1929, "You Were Meant for Me" from BROADWAY MELODY of 1929, and "Beautiful Girl" from the Bing Crosby musical GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933).
Film historian Ron Haver, who does the scene-by-scene commentary on an alternate sound track of the laserdisc, points out that SINGIN' IN THE RAIN was not immediately hailed for its greatness. It did well at the box office, but won no Academy Awards and was on no critics' year-end lists of best films. Only after it went into repertory in 1958, as part of a package of MGM classics, did audiences begin to realize how special it was.
The influential critic Pauline Kael was managing a repertory theater in Berkeley then, and her program notes, calling the movie "just about the best Hollywood musical of all time," helped establish the movie's eventual reputation.
Maybe because the movie was made quickly and with a certain freedom (and because it was not based on an expensive stage property), it has a wonderfully free and improvisational feeling. We know that sequences like Donald O'Connor's neck-breaking "Make 'Em Laugh" number had to be painstakingly rehearsed, but it feels like it was made up on the spot. So does "Moses Supposes," with O'Connor and Kelly dancing on tabletops.
Debbie Reynolds was still a teenager when she starred in the movie, and there is a light in her eyes to mirror the delight of her character, who is discovered leaping out of a cake at a party and soon becomes the onscreen voice of Lena Lamont (Jean Hagen), a silent star whose voice is not suited to talkies, to say the least. The movie's climax, as Reynolds flees from a theater while Kelly shouts out "Stop that girl!" and tells everyone who she is, and that he loves her, is one of those bravura romantic scenes that make you tingle no matter how often you see it.
There's great humor in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, too, especially in the scenes that deal with the technical difficulties of the early days of talkies. Lena Lamont can never seem to remember which flower arrangement holds the concealed microphone, and so her voice booms and whispers as she turns her head back and forth. This was not an imaginary problem for early actors in the talkies; Chicago bandleader Stanley Paul collects early sound movies with scenes that reflect that very problem.
Although SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has been on video in various versions for a decade and is often seen on TV, a big-screen viewing will reveal a richness of color that your tube may not suggest. The film was photographed in bold basic colors—the yellow raincoats are an emblem—and director Stanley Donen and his cast have an energy level that's also bold, basic and playful. But is this really the greatest Hollywood musical ever made? In a word, yes.

Singin' in the Rain
US (1952): Musical/Dance
CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review: 5.0 stars out of 5

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Arguably the greatest musical MGM or anyone else ever produced, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN has everything—great songs, great dances, a wonderful, nostalgic story, and a superb cast, all directed at a dazzling pace that matches the speed-crazy era it profiles, the Roaring Twenties. The film works on several levels, presenting a great musical but also commenting—often unfavorably but always accurately—on the wild personalities and studio machinations that characterized the colorful period.
 Synopsis
Hollywood premiere   It opens in 1927 on a movie ritual of pomp and circumstance, a Hollywood premiere, with floodlights bathing the Los Angeles theater where a new swashbuckling movie is being shown. Crowds of screaming teenagers are held back by police, and long limousines arrive in front of the theater that is about to introduce a film starring Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and his blonde bombshell leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen).
Stars' arrival   A Louella Parsons-like gossip columnist, Dora Bailey (Madge Blake), greets the arriving stars, describing the wonderful event to radio listeners across the country. All the familiar Hollywood types are present, including cigar-smoking producers, sex queens, and screen lotharios. Song-and-dance man Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) arrives but gets a lukewarm response when the spectators realize he's no one of importance. Then the big names appear: Don, dressed in a long white polo coat and white hat, and Lina, wrapped in expensive furs, both smiling so widely their faces appear ready to crack, and waving frantically to their swooning fans.
Monopolizing the interview   They march up the long red carpet to the microphone, where Dora begins asking inane questions of the grinning pair. Because Lina possesses one of the world's worst voices—its shrieking quality reminiscent of a rusty saw striking nails—Don is terrified of allowing her to answer any of Dora's fatuous questions and prevents her from talking by monopolizing the conversation. This, of course, is the peak of the silent movie era, so Lina's voice has never been heard on-screen, and by dictate of R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), head of Monumental Pictures, she has never spoken in public either. R.F. has concluded that if Lina's voice were to be heard, the public would stay away from her films, and he would lose a fortune.
Fictional past   To fill Dora's gushy interview, Don recounts his career, fabricating tales of the hard work he and his friend Cosmo put in at ballet classes and music conservatories. In flashback, however, the viewer is shown how Don and Cosmo really came up the ladder: first playing in burlesque houses as comic musicians, wearing loud clothes and doing frenetic dance numbers like "Fit as a Fiddle and Ready for Love" (a song that originally appeared in COLLEGE COACH, 1933).
As Don continues to narrate his fictional past, we see him and Cosmo arriving in Hollywood, where Don becomes a daredevil stuntman, taking punches in westerns, being blown out of airplanes, and even doing stunts around already-established silent-film star Lina. She is portrayed as an egomaniacal, empty-headed sexpot, fond of quoting a reviewer who called her "the brightest star in the firmament."
Star's "discovery."   Director Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley)—stereotyped with riding boots, jodhpurs, and beret—"discovers" Don while he is performing impossible stunts and makes him a leading man, teaming him with Lina, who expects Don to woo her now that he has joined her in the "firmament." Although Don cannot hide the fact that he despises her, it becomes clear as we flash-forward to the premiere that he makes a point of adoring his leading lady in public. Don then ends the brief recital of his laborious rise to the top of the Hollywood heap by stating that he has been guided by his motto, "Dignity, always dignity."
Actress's brush-off   Later, to escape the clutches of the cloying Lina, Don walks down a street only to be attacked by a bevy of rabid teenage fans, who tear his clothes and cause him to run for his life. He jumps into a car driven by Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who recognizes him but doesn't seem impressed. She drives him to a safe place and, en route, tells him that films have nothing to do with real art, that they are just cheap entertainment, and that she is a real actress.
Hollywood party   Don gets the brush-off from the pretty young woman but is later startled to see her pop out of a cake at a Hollywood party and then dance as part of a bumping and grinding chorus line. He approaches her after she does her number and points out that what she has just done is not what he would call high art. Kathy, furious at having her pretensions exposed, picks up a cake and throws it at Don, but he ducks and it hits Lina square in the face, right in the middle of one of her screeching monologues (a scene that pays tribute to the pie-throwing antics of the silent comedians). Don races after Kathy, while Lina explodes in a histrionic temper tantrum.
Introduction of "talkies."   Yet there is an even greater uproar at the party when mogul R. F. shows a talking picture, a revolutionary new technical development that all present pooh-pooh as a novelty item worthy of little discussion. R. F. agrees, saying, "The Warner Brothers are making a whole talking picture with this gadget—`The Jazz Singer.' They'll lose their shirts." R. F. soon changes his thinking when THE JAZZ SINGER (1927) becomes an overnight sensation, realizing that talking pictures are "here to stay."
Musical talkie   He stops production on the studio's most recent opus, The Dueling Cavalier, and, after conferring with Don and Cosmo, decides to make the film into a musical talkie, to be retitled The Dancing Cavalier. There is one terrible snag, however: Lina's miserable voice. In time, Don learns that Kathy has a job at Monumental, and the two fall in love as Don croons "You Were Meant for Me" (originally performed in BROADWAY MELODY, 1929) on a soundstage, but their relationship must be kept secret from the possessive Lina, who mistakenly believes that Don is her fiancé.
Technically disastrous film   Meanwhile, The Dancing Cavalier is completed, but the primitive sound equipment causes it to be a technical disaster. Upon its release, audiences howl with laughter at the distorted voices, the out-of-synchronization sound, and the wires on which the players trip. R. F. quickly pulls the film out of distribution, trying to figure out a way to doctor it and save his studio, aware that the chief problem is Lina's voice. He engages a stuffy diction coach (Bobby Watson) to work with the actors, and Cosmo and Don poke fun at the coach's exaggerated elocution lessons, dancing about the perplexed instructor, singing "Moses Supposes."
Dubbing solution   Later that night, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy try desperately to think of a way to save The Dancing Cavalier, staying up all night and, at dawn, singing "Good Morning" (originally done in BABES IN ARMS, 1939). By then they have come up with the perfect solution (or, at least, Cosmo has): Kathy's voice can be dubbed for Lina's.
At first Kathy resists, but Don persuades her that this is a way to begin her film career, that on-screen roles will follow. Finally, she agrees, and the film is released with Kathy dubbing both Lina's speaking and singing voice (ironically, Kathy's singing was actually dubbed by Betty Royce).
"Broadway Ballet."   Don further enhances the revised version of the film with a spectacular song-and-dance number, "Broadway Ballet," a story within a story about a young dancer who arrives in New York and, through hard work and talent, becomes a big name on Broadway. A long, near-adagio dance is performed by the aspiring hoofer and a tall, sultry gangster's moll (Cyd Charisse) who captivates him at a nightclub. (With short hair and bangs, the dancer is made up to look like silent screen star Louise Brooks and is terrific as she struts her famous long legs in some dazzling movements with Don, who had to arrange some tricky steps so that he would not appear shorter than his taller partner.)
The revamped Dancing Cavalier is a great success, and Don plans to reveal that the sweet-voiced singer is not Lina, but his own true love, Kathy. But at the premiere of the film, Lina viciously stipulates that the aspiring actress must go on singing and talking for her, that Kathy is to remain forever behind the scenes, making the blonde bombshell look good to the public.
Star's evil plan   The audience at the film's opening cheers loudly for the stars and shouts for Lina to sing to them from the stage. A tearful Kathy, knowing she will never have a career of her own, is ordered to go behind a curtain and sing while Lina appears before the crowd and lip-syncs.
But Lina is not to triumph in her evil plan. Don, Cosmo, and studio boss R. F., who has had enough of Lina's high-handed ways, step up to a rope and begin to pull it so that the curtain behind Lina goes up, and Kathy is seen standing behind the posturing star, singing for her. This reduces the audience to howls of laughter, ending Lina's ridiculous career on the spot. She storms off the stage. Embarrassed, Kathy is about to run off when Don stops her and introduces her to the audience as "the real star of The Dancing Cavalier."
New celluloid duo   At the film's end, Don and Kathy, united in real life, are shown on a billboard that advertises their new film together; they have become a successful celluloid love team. The camera pulls back to show Don and Kathy standing before the billboard, embracing at the fadeout.
 Background
Musical pastiche   This superb musical was really a pastiche of numbers taken from the best of MGM's total musical output since the talkies began, all but a few written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Just as Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen looted the studio of every great tune it had presented in earlier musicals, especially those that captured the flavor of the 1920s, the codirectors also used every prop and vehicle in the MGM warehouses. Debbie Reynolds, for instance, at the beginning of the film, is driving Andy Hardy's old jalopy when she rescues Kelly from his "adoring" fans. Moreover, the mansion in which Kelly lives is decorated with tables, chairs, carpets, and chandeliers left over from the sets of a John Gilbert and Greta Garbo silent classic, FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1927). But then everything about the film harkens back to the colorful Hollywood past.
Writers' brilliant concept   Betty Comden and Adolph Green, whose names are forever linked to this masterpiece, were assigned to write a musical that would employ all the Freed-Brown numbers. Their research revealed that most of these excellent tunes were presented in films made during the transition from the silent era to the talkie period.
The writers then brilliantly conceived of showing that era in the musical, with all its confusion about the new sound equipment and new stars replacing old ones, a time when bright, shiny faces took the places of heavily mascaraed vamps and mustache-twisting villains. They first thought about remaking BOMBSHELL (1933), a Jean Harlow vehicle, and the front office pushed Howard Keel, then one of the leading baritones on the screen, to star. But this notion was later abandoned, and Kelly was brought in.
Kelly's contribution   The gifted dancer was almost single-handedly responsible for the brilliant ambiance of the movie, choreographing and dancing through the marvelous "Broadway Ballet" sequence with its imaginative sets and wonderful guest appearance by Cyd Charisse, whose "crazy veil," a 25-foot long piece of white China silk, streamed about her, kept aloft by three airplane motors whirring off camera. The sequence took a month to rehearse, two weeks to shoot, and cost $600,000, almost a fifth of the overall budget.
Dancin' in the rain   Of course, the film's tour-de- force dance number is Kelly's spectacular solo rendition of the title song, as he taps and leaps through a rain-drenched street, swinging around a lamppost, splashing, and jumping in joy over having fallen in love with Reynolds. Skirting about the upside-down umbrella, letting water from a gushing drainpipe cascade onto his smiling face, skipping and dancing along the sidewalk and gutter in the downpour, and displaying acrobatic moves no other dancer but Fred Astaire could hope to achieve, Kelly brought a lasting image of utter joy to the screen. This dance number alone is worth the whole film.
"Make 'Em Laugh."   Nearly as entertaining is the magnificent comic dance Donald O'Connor (who never topped his work in this film) performs with props and sets on a soundstage in the wild number "Make `Em Laugh" (a Freed-Brown tune that unabashedly appropriates Cole Porter's "Be a Clown"). O'Connor is so frenetic in this piece that he appears to be a puppet manipulated by unseen hands. He leaps against fake walls, jumps over couches, twirls with a cloth dummy like a dervish, and lands on the floor, where he performs a sort of running movement but is really turning himself on his side, before jumping up and crashing through a wall for a frantic finale. If O'Connor, a dancer since childhood and a great one, had never made another film after SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, his reputation would have been secure with this single number.
Female leads   Reynolds's inexperience (she was only nineteen when she got this, her first big break) concerned the front office, but Kelly and Donen convinced the executives that the pert young starlet could hold her own in the film, and she did. Probably the most astounding dramatic performance in this film is rendered by Hagen, who distorts her normal, pleasant voice into a piercing whine throughout the film as she projects a vain, unscrupulous character that epitomizes some of the actresses of the silent era. Her performance (which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) is but another gem in this shining musical.
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN had a price tag of $2,540,800, of which $157,000 went for Walter Plunkett's fabulous costumes. Although this figure exceeded the pre-production budget by $665,000, MGM quickly realized the worth of their investment when the initial release of the film earned $7,665,000. For many, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is the finest musical ever made, anytime, anywhere.
 Awards
In addition to Hagen's Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress, Hayton's musical direction earned a nomination.
 Music
The tune Reynolds and the chorus girls dance wildly to at the Hollywood party, "All I Do Is Dream of You," first appeared in SADIE MCKEE (1934); "Should I?" appeared in LORD BYRON OF BROADWAY (1930); and the classic "Singin' in the Rain" (sung and danced to by Kelly, Reynolds, and O'Connor at the beginning of the film behind credits and, later, in one of the greatest dance numbers ever done for the screen, by Kelly) appeared in THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929 (1929). "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" and "Broadway Melody" are from BROADWAY MELODY (1929); "Would You" is from SAN FRANCISCO (1936); "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'," "You Are My Lucky Star" and "Broadway Rhythm" are from BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936 (1935); and "Beautiful Girl" (sung with panache by Jimmie Thompson) was originally crooned by Bing Crosby in GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933).

Brigadoon
US (1954): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

108 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Americans Kelly and Johnson discover magical Scottish village in this entertaining filmization of Alan Jay Lerner & Loewe Broadway hit. Overlooked among 1950s musicals, it may lack innovations but has its own quiet charm, and lovely score, including songs "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean," "The Heather on the Hill," and title tune. CinemaScope.

Brigadoon
US (1954): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

108 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

MGM was having an economy drive, and this adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's Broadway hit musical fantasy, which was scheduled to be shot on location in Scotland, was instead done in the studio. Also by executive decree, the director, Vincente Minnelli, had to do it in CinemaScope—which, for dance in studio settings, was disastrous. Gene Kelly and Van Johnson play the two Americans hunting in the Scottish Highlands who stumble into Brigadoon, a magical village that went to sleep in 1754 and wakes for a day each century. Kelly falls in love with a local girl (Cyd Charisse), while Johnson maintains a cynical attitude. Probably the material was too precious and fake-lyrical to have worked in natural surroundings, either, but the way it has been done it's hopelessly stagey. The movie has one sensational sequence, when the action gets away from that damned idyllic village and Kelly and Johnson go to a jangly, noisy Manhattan nightclub with Elaine Stewart; you can feel Minnelli's relief at being able to do something funny and bitchy after staging all those wholesome scenes with grinning men in tartans. Arthur Freed produced; Lerner wrote the script; Kelly choreographed. With Hugh Laing, Barry Jones, Eddie Quillan.

Crest of the Wave
UK (1954): War
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

90 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Static account of navy officer Kelly joining British research group to supervise demolition experiments.

Deep in My Heart
US (1954): Musical/Dance/Biography
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

132 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The life of composer Sigmund Romberg is not the stuff of high drama, but the film comes to life in various production numbers with MGM guest stars. Highlights include Kelly brothers' only appearance on film together, Charisse's exquisite and sensual dance number with James Mitchell, and an incredible number featuring Ferrer performing an entire show himself.

It's Always Fair Weather
US (1955): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Three WWII buddies meet ten years after their discharge and find they have nothing in common. Pungent Comden and Green script falls short of perfection but still has wonderful moments, and some first-rate musical numbers (like Cyd's "Baby, You Knock Me Out" and Dolores' "Thanks a Lot But No Thanks"). Best: the ash-can dance, although clever use of wide-screen is lost on TV. CinemaScope.

It's Always Fair Weather
US (1955): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

102 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The title is a misnomer. Comden and Green's tart follow-up to ON THE TOWN, and directed by the same team (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen), is like a delayed hangover. The three buddies are now Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd; at war's end they swear eternal friendship and promise to meet in ten years. At their reunion, they discover that they hate each other and themselves, and go looking for the hopes they abandoned. The film's mixture of parody, cynicism, and song and dance is perhaps a little sour; though the numbers are exhilarating and the movie is really much more fun than the wildly overrated ON THE TOWN, it doesn't sell exuberance in that big, toothy way, and it was a box-office failure. As the sickened advertising man, Dan Dailey has the best routine in the film—a Chaplinesque, drunken satire of "advertising-wise" jargon. (To a great extent this is Dailey's movie.) Dolores Gray's role (as a TV star) is too broadly written, but her smooth, glib style is refreshingly brassy and she has a dazzling number—"Thanks a lot but no thanks;" Cyd Charisse is beautiful and benumbed until she unhinges her legs in the Stillman's Gym number. Produced by Arthur Freed, for MGM. CinemaScope.

The Happy Road
US (1957): Drama/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

80 min, No rating, Black & White
 
 

Two single parents—American Kelly and Frenchwoman Laage—are drawn together when their children run away from school together. Pleasant but minor family fare, enhanced by location filming in French countryside.

Invitation to the Dance
US (1957): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

93 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Kelly's ambitious film tells three stories entirely in dance. Earnest but uninspired, until final "Sinbad" segment with Kelly in Hanna-Barbera cartoon world. Music by Jacques Ibert, Andre Previn, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Filmed in 1952.

Invitation to the Dance
US (1957): Musical/Dance
Pauline Kael Review

93 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

This picture bollixed the career of Gene Kelly, who directed and choreographed it, and probably broke his heart as well: practically nobody saw it. The film consists of three ballets, with some pantomime and also some animated-cartoon work. "Circus," set to Jacques Ibert music, features Igor Youskevitch as a high-wire artist, Claire Sombert as a bareback rider in love with him, and Kelly as a clown in love with her; "Ring Around the Rosy," about a bracelet that goes through various hands, has an André Previn score, and the dancers include Youskevitch, Tamara Toumanova, Tommy Rall, and Kelly; "Sinbad the Sailor" features Carol Haney as Scheherazade and Kelly as Sinbad. The film was beset by difficulties. It had to be made in England because that's where MGM had frozen funds, and, with interruptions for Kelly to do other jobs, the work spread over three years. He was further hampered by front-office directives—for example, the second ballet was danced to a score that the MGM brass didn't like, so Previn had to write a new score to the already filmed dancing. Then the studio put the film on the shelf for another year. There should be an ironic kicker: the picture should be a neglected marvel. But it isn't. Kelly's choreography had always seemed weakest when he became balletic; this picture is set right in his area of least originality. Produced by Arthur Freed.

Les Girls
US (1957): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

114 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Charming, sprightly musical involving three show girls who (via flashback) reveal their relationship to hoofer Kelly; chicly handled in all departments, with Cole Porter tunes and Oscar-winning Orry-Kelly costumes. John Patrick adapted Vera Caspary's novel. CinemaScope.

Les Girls
US (1957): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

114 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

George Cukor directed this backstage-story musical (it's about a lawsuit over a former showgirl's memoirs), and the color consultant, George Hoyningen-Huené, gave it a classy look, but, with one exception, nobody connected with it was really at his best—not Gene Kelly, who was the star, or the scenarist, John Patrick, and certainly not the choreographer, Jack Cole. (He hit rock bottom, with horrible quasi-cultured numbers.) Even the Cole Porter score is weak, and the whole picture is overproduced. The exception is the tall, blithe, and beautiful comedienne Kay Kendall, who does a funny, drunk "La Habanera" and has a number with Kelly in which she seems to be outdancing him and having an easy, amused time of it. Her role isn't large enough, though. The cast includes Henry Daniell, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac, Patrick Macnee, Leslie Phillips, and a bane of 50s movie musicals—the movie executives' idea of "adorable"—Mitzi Gaynor. From a story by Vera Caspary. MGM.

Marjorie Morningstar
US (1958): Drama/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

123 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Wood is only adequate as Herman Wouk's heroine in tale of NYC girl aspiring to greatness but ending up a suburban housewife, with Kelly her summer romance.

The Tunnel of Love
US (1958): Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

98 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Bright comedy of married couple Widmark and Day enduring endless red tape to adopt a child. Good cast spices adaptation of Joseph Fields-Peter de Vries play.

Inherit the Wind
US (1960): Drama
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

127 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Absorbing adaptation of Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee play based on notorious Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, when Clarence Darrow defended and William Jennings Bryan prosecuted a schoolteacher arrested for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Names are changed (Kelly's character is based on acid-tongued H.L. Mencken), but the issue is real and still relevant. An acting tour de force, with solid support from Morgan as the judge, Reid as a lawyer, Eldridge as March's devoted wife. Only offbeat casting of Kelly doesn't quite come off. Screenplay by Nathan E. Douglas (Nedrick Young) and Harold Jacob Smith. Remade as a TV Movie.

Inherit the Wind
US (1960): Drama
Pauline Kael Review

127 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

In 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, a young high-school biology teacher named John T. Scopes instructed his class in Darwin's theory of evolution in order to test a state law forbidding the teaching of anything that "denies the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible." At his trial—the famous Monkey Trial—the great orator William Jennings Bryan, a Bible-thumping fundamentalist who had three times been a candidate for the U.S. Presidency, served as prosecutor; the famous criminal lawyer and agnostic, Clarence Darrow, represented the defense; H.L. Mencken reported the case. This semi-fictionalized version of the events was adapted from the Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, for United Artists release. Padded and heavily made up, Fredric March does an embarrassingly hollow imitation of the portly Bryan. Spencer Tracy, whose girth made him the more likely candidate for the role, is cast instead as the lean Darrow, and he plays the part in his patented wise, humane, meant-to-be-irresistible manner. Scopes (Dick York) is portrayed as a man torn between his principles and his love for the local preacher's daughter (Donna Anderson). The movie presents the fundamentalists as foolish bigots, then turns around and tries to make peace with them by coming out against Mencken's satirical outlook (which is equated with cynicism). This Mencken (Gene Kelly) is a brash, hollow, lip-curling villain and Bryan and Darrow join forces to denounce him—"Where will your loneliness lead you? No one will come to your funeral!" The case itself had so many dramatic elements that the movie can't help holding our attention, but it's a very crude piece of work, totally lacking in subtlety; what is meant to be a courtroom drama of ideas comes out as a caricature of a drama of ideas, and, maddeningly, while watching we can't be sure what is based on historical fact and what is invention. With Florence Eldridge, Harry Morgan, and Norman Fell.

Inherit the Wind
US (1960): Drama
CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review: 5.0 stars out of 5

127 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

In the summer of 1925 the state of Tennessee played host to one of the most spectacular and ludicrous court trials in the history of American jurisprudence. A teacher named John T. Scopes had been arrested for teaching Darwin's theories of evolution in a public school, thus violating a state law. Prosecuting Scopes was the Rock of Ages fundamentalist, William Jennings Bryan, and defending him was the champion of liberal thinking, Clarence Darrow. The trial was truly a battle of the titans. Producer-director Stanley Kramer used this high-voltage historical "Monkey Trial," as it came to be known, as the basis for one of his best filmic efforts.
 Synopsis
The trial begins   The names of these historical figures were all changed for the film, but their characters remain clearly recognizable. A meek teacher Bertram T. Cates (Dick York) is imprisoned for daring to teach Darwin in tiny Hillsboro (supplanting the real town, Dayton, Tennessee). His girlfriend is the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher Rev. Brown (Claude Akins) who agonizes over his daughter's affection for the religious infidel. It is Rev. Brown as leader of the outraged religious community who sends for the lawyer Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) to prosecute the young teacher. When Matthew arrives there are bands playing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and hordes of citizens on hand to pay homage to the man who ran for the American presidency three times (as did Bryan, losing each time).
The defense attorney Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) arrives in town with much less of a welcome, as does a cynical journalist E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly). Colorful skirmishes precede the opening of the trial, with Henry objecting to the banners festooning the town's buildings which condemn Bertram and exalt Matthew. His objections are ignored and the trial begins in earnest.
With the trial commencing during the summer, the heat is intense, matched by the intensity of the trial. Henry is wily and skilled in the ways of the law, but Matthew is in his element and brilliantly manipulates the feelings of the people in the courtroom. Matthew takes his after-court bows before an adoring population and leads torchbearing fundamentalists in prayer during outdoor nighttime services. Henry spends most of his off-hours listening to E. K. Hornbeck sneeringly deride "the rubes" of the town, mocking their religious beliefs.
Prejudicial surroundings   The real battle begins when Henry engineers Matthew onto the witness stand and then backs him into an untenable fundamentalist position, getting Matthew to state that the earth was literally created in seven days. Henry pounces, demanding to know if each day of creation was 24 hours and when Matthew says he does not know, Henry tells him each day of creation could have been as long as thousands of years. "I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks," Matthew quips. But Henry relentlessly pounds home his Darwinian points and wins almost every round. At one point he corners Matthew, who refuses to concede an evolutionary point, smugly adding: "I don't think about things I don't think about." Retorts Henry: "Yes, but do you think about the things you do think about?"
In the highly prejudicial surroundings, with Matthew's followers packing the courtroom and yelling out fundamentalist slogans, Bertram has no chance at all and neither does his hard-pressed, brilliant lawyer. Bertram is found guilty, but the judge (Harry Morgan) realizes that the fundamentalist prosecution has been ridiculous and he fines Bertram a token $100, much to the chagrin of Matthew and his followers.
Closing arguments   Matthew, who is ignored when he attempts to read a lengthy speech, becomes apoplectic, then topples to the floor with a seizure and dies. E. K. Hornbeck gives Henry a victory smirk, but the valiant lawyer quickly defends his fallen foe by telling the cynical newsman: "A giant once lived in that body!" He is then upbraided by E. K. Hornbeck who watches Henry pick up two books, Darwin's Theory of Evolution and The Bible, holding them tightly together and carrying them off. E. K. Hornbeck calls him a fraud, who really does believe in the Good Book. Henry tells E. K. Hornbeck he is sorry for him, that he has no beliefs whatsoever and has no friends, that he is a lonely man who needs a friend.
 Critique
Spellbinding    INHERIT THE WIND acutely captures the farcical Monkey Trial and offers the awesome talents of two double-Oscar winners, Tracy and March, in their only film together. The success of the film is due largely to the casting of these giants; in their scenes together they are nothing less than spellbinding, working off each other and holding their own—two of the most forceful images to grace the screen. Though Tracy had the more sympathetic role, that of Darrow (a man more crude and coarse than the actor portrayed him), March made up for his cold character by epitomizing the stunning orator Bryan, duplicating his real-life counterpart by donning a bald pate, adding girth, and employing mannerisms he learned from watching newsreel footage of Bryan. Tracy was seldom upstaged, but March's histrionics were often overwhelming.
Directing such giants proved a bit of a chore for Kramer. At one point he couldn't hear a line Tracy was delivering and told the actor: "Spence, it's taken me six months to write that line and I couldn't understand what you said." Tracy replied: "It's taken me 25 years to learn how to read a line like that and now you want me to recite it." Kelly is surprisingly good as the sarcastic newsman, handpicked for the role by Kramer, and so too is Morgan as the thoughtful southern judge. The dialogue is witty and literate, much of it kept intact from the successful Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee and first starring Paul Muni and Ed Begley.
 Awards
Tracy was nominated for Best Actor, losing out to Burt Lancaster in ELMER GANTRY. The film also received nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing.

Let's Make Love
US (1960): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

118 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Billionaire Montand hears of show spoofing him, wants to stop it, then meets the show's star, Monroe. To charm her, he hires Bing Crosby to teach him to sing, Milton Berle to coach on comedy, Gene Kelly to make him dance. Bubbly cast, snappy musical numbers. CinemaScope.

Gigot
US (1962): Drama/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

104 min, No rating, Color
 
 

Sentimental, well-acted tale of a deaf mute (Gleason) and a young girl in Paris. Simple film, well done; Gleason is excellent.

What a Way to Go!
US (1964): Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

111 min, No rating, Color
 
 

Lavish, episodic black comedy by Betty Comden and Adolph Green stars MacLaine as jinx who marries succession of men, each of whom promptly dies, leaving her even wealthier than before. Series of movie parodies is amusing, and performances are uniformly charming, especially Newman as obsessed painter and Kelly as egotistical film star. Based on a story by Gwen Davis. One of the dancers on boat deck is Teri Garr. CinemaScope.

A Guide for the Married Man
US (1967): Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

89 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Consistently funny, imaginative adult comedy of Morse trying to teach faithful husband Matthau the ABC's of adultery, with the aid of many guest stars who demonstrate Morse's theories. Joke of it all is that Matthau is married to gorgeous Inger Stevens! Panavision.

A Guide for the Married Man
US (1967): Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

89 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

A series of dumb skits on how to cheat on your wife. It's hard to know what's more tiresome about this picture: the camera's fixation on bottoms (and on bosoms that look like bottoms), or the this-movie-is-moral-after-all finish, with the common man at the higher income level (Walter Matthau) deciding he loves his wife too much to be unfaithful after all. There are a few pleasant pantomime bits by Art Carney and Ben Blue. Directed by Gene Kelly, from a script by Frank Tarloff. The cast includes Robert Morse, Lucille Ball, Phil Silvers, Carl Reiner, Jack Benny, Inger Stevens, Sid Caesar, Terry-Thomas, Wally Cox, Jayne Mansfield, Sue Ane Langdon, and many others; what they do is no more memorable than the plugs for brand-name products that are scattered throughout. 20th Century-Fox.

The Young Girls of Rochefort
France (1968): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.0 stars out of 4

124 min, Rated G, Color
 
 

Director Demy's follow-up to THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is a homage to the Hollywood musical, but what it has in style it lacks in substance; contrived story and repetitive Michel Legrand music score surely wear thin, and even Gene Kelly can't save it.

Hello, Dolly!
US (1969): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

146 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Splashy cinema treatment of smash Broadway play with Jerry Herman's popular score. Dolly Levi insists on playing matchmaker, even when it's she herself who gets matched. Overblown and unmemorable, but colorful diversion. Based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (previously filmed in 1958). Some prints run 118 minutes. Todd-AO.

Hello, Dolly!
US (1969): Musical/Dance/Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

146 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The whole archaic big-musical circus here surrounds a Happening—Barbra Streisand—and it's all worth seeing in order to see her. Directed by Gene Kelly. 20th Century-Fox.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Deeper into Movies.

The Cheyenne Social Club
US (1970): Western/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

103 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Jimmy inherits and runs a bawdy house in the Old West. Lots of laughs, but clichés run throughout. Panavision.

40 Carats
US (1973): Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

110 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

Bright Broadway comedy adapted from French farce suffers in transference to screen, mainly from miscasting of Ullmann as 40-ish New York divorcee, pursued by 20-ish Albert. Glossy, mildly amusing; pepped up by Barnes and Kelly.

40 Carats
US (1973): Comedy
Pauline Kael Review

110 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

The sort of strained, wisecracking frivolity that can be a hit on Broadway but all too often congeals on the screen. The affair of the 40-year-old Liv Ullmann and the 22-year-old Edward Albert is meant to be romantic and slightly daring, but the miscast Ullmann doesn't have the dryness for comedy. She's much too touching and anxious for her superficial role, and she and the wet-lipped young Albert are a dismaying pair. At this point Ullmann's English was heavily accented, and she articulates her colloquial lines with considerable difficulty. You sympathize with her instead of laughing. Directed by Milton Katselas, from Leonard Gershe's adaptation of the Broadway play by Jay Presson Allen, based on a Parisian success by Pierre Barillet and J.C. Gredy. With Gene Kelly, who looks too old to be Ullmann's ex-husband but has a few likable bits and one inventive moment when he kicks an imaginary child, and Binnie Barnes, Deborah Raffin, Nancy Walker, Rosemary Murphy, Natalie Schaefer, Billy Green Bush, and Don Porter. Columbia.

That's Entertainment!
US (1974): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

132 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Stars host nostalgia bash with scenes from nearly 100 MGM musicals. There are many cherished moments with the above-named stars plus unexpectedly delightful numbers with Esther Williams, Clark Gable (singing and dancing!), Jimmy Durante, and Eleanor Powell, whose challenge dance with Astaire is unforgettable. Only complaint: why shorten the final AMERICAN IN PARIS ballet? Followed by a sequel. Part Wide-screen.

That's Entertainment!
US (1974): Musical/Dance
Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

132 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

It used to be said that the trickiest thing about a musical was to figure out a way for the characters to break gracefully into song. Maybe that was all wrong. Maybe the hardest thing was for them to stop, once the singing had started. That's my notion after seeing THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!, a magical tour through the greatest musicals produced by the king of Hollywood studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
This isn't just a compilation film, with lots of highlights strung together. Those kinds of movies quickly repeat themselves. THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! is more of a documentary and a eulogy. A documentary of a time that began in 1929 and seemed to end only yesterday, and a eulogy for an art form that will never be again.
Hollywood will continue to make musicals, of course (although, curiously enough, the form never has been very popular overseas). But there will never be musicals like this again, because there won't be the budgets, there won't be the sense of joyous abandon, there won't be so many stars in the same place all at once, and--most of all--there won't be the notion that a musical has to be "important." The various segments of the film are introduced and narrated by MGM stars of the past (Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly), superstars like Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, offspring like Liza Minnelli, and even a ringer like Bing Crosby (he was a Paramount star, but never mind). They seem to share a real feeling of nostalgia for MGM, which, in its heyday, was not only a studio, but also a benevolent and protective organization ruled by the paternal Louis B. Mayer. Liza Minnelli sounds at times as if she's narrating a visit to her mother's old high school. The movie avoids the trap of being too worshipful in the face of all this greatness. It's not afraid to kid; we see Clark Gable looking ill at ease as he pretends to enjoy singing and dancing, and we see a hilarious montage of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney ringing endless changes to the theme, "I know--we'll fix up the old barn and put on a show!" And then there are the glorious, unforgettable moments from the great musicals. My favorite musical has always been SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the 1952 comedy about Hollywood's traumatic switch to talkies. THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! opens with a montage of musicals (neatly surveying three decades of film progress), and later returns to the two most unforgettable numbers in the film: Gene Kelly sloshing through puddles while singing the title song, and Donald O'Connor in his amazing "Make 'em Laugh," in which he leaps up walls, takes pratfalls, and dives through a set.
There are other great moments: The closing ballet from AN AMERICAN IN PARIS; Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald being hilariously serious in ROSE MARIE; Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so light-footed they seem to float; Gene Kelly's incredible acrobatics as he does his own stunts, swinging from rooftop to rooftop; William Warfield singing "Old Man River" in SHOW BOAT; Judy Garland singing "You Made Me Love You" to a montage of stills of Clark Gable; Garland, again, with "Get Happy" (and a vignette of little Liza's first movie appearance, aged about three); the acrobatic woodchopper's scene from SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS; and even Esther Williams rising from the deep.
The movie's fun from beginning to end. It's not camp, and it's not nostalgia: It's a celebration of a time and place in American movie history when everything came together to make a new art form.

It's Showtime
US (1976): Documentary
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

86 min, No rating, Color and Black & White
 
 

Enjoyable compilation of animal sequences from movies, reaching back to Rin Tin Tin's silent films. Maximum footage from NATIONAL VELVET and LASSIE COME HOME, but everything—from canine version of "Singin' in the Rain" to Bonzo the Chimp being bottle-fed by Ronald Reagan—is great fun.

That's Entertainment, Part 2
US (1976): Musical/Drama/Dance/Comedy
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

133 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly host this inevitable sequel and do some engaging song-and-dance work. Film hasn't cohesion or momentum of its predecessor, but the material is irresistible. This time, comedy and drama are included along with musical numbers—Tracy and Hepburn, Marx Brothers, etc. Most imaginative segment of all is title sequence by Saul Bass. Cut to 126 minutes after initial showings. Part Widescreen.

Viva Knievel!
US (1977): Adventure
Leonard Maltin Review: 1.0 stars out of 4

106 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette
 
 

The senses reel at this hilariously inept attempt to turn the infamous stunt driver into a movie hero. The Bad Guys plan to have Evel "accidentally" killed in Mexico, so they can use his truck to smuggle drugs back into the U.S.! Don't miss opening scene, in which Our Hero sneaks into orphanage at midnight to distribute Evel Knievel plastic model kits—whereupon one little boy miraculously throws away his crutches! Panavision.

Xanadu
US (1980): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 1.5 stars out of 4

88 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Flashy but empty-headed remake of DOWN TO EARTH, with Olivia as muse who pops in to inspire young roller-boogie artist. Designed as a showcase for the singer, but the only thing it showcases is her total lack of screen charisma. Kelly (using his character name from COVER GIRL) tries his best to perk things up; even a brief animated sequence by Don Bluth doesn't help. Newton-John's future husband, Matt Lattanzi, plays Kelly as a young man. Songs include "Magic," by John Farrar and title tune by Electric Light Orchestra. Cable-TV version runs 96 minutes.

Xanadu
US (1980): Musical/Dance
Roger Ebert Review: 2.0 stars out of 4

88 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

XANADU is a mushy and limp musical fantasy, so insubstantial it evaporates before our eyes. It's one of those rare movies in which every scene seems to be the final scene; it's all ends and no beginnings, right up to its actual end, which is a cheat. There are, however, a few—a very few—reasons to see XANADU, which I list herewith: (1) Olivia Newton-John is a great-looking woman, brimming with high spirits, (2) Gene Kelly has a few good moments, (3) the sound track includes "Magic," and (4) it's not as bad as CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC.
It is pretty bad, though. And yet it begins with an inspiration that I found appealing. It gives us a young man (Michael Beck) who falls in love with the dazzling fantasy figure (Newton-John) who keeps popping up in his life. Beck works as a commercial artist, designing record album covers, and when he tries to include Olivia in one of his paintings he gets into trouble at work.
That's okay, because he's met this nice older guy (Gene Kelly) who's very rich and wants to open a nightclub like the one he had back in New York in the 1940s. Kelly used to be a sideman in the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and in a quietly charming fantasy scene, he sings a duet with his old flame, the girl singer in the old Miller band—who, lo and behold, is Olivia Newton-John.
That means both men are in love with the same dream girl, who, we discover, is not of this earth. They team up to convert a rundown old wrestling amphitheater into Xanadu, a nightclub that will combine the music of the 1940s and 1980s. And that is the whole weight of the movie's ideas, except for a scene where Michael Beck visits Olivia in heaven, which looks like a computer-generated disco light show.
Musicals have been made with thinner plot lines than this one, but rarely with less style. The movie is muddy, it's underlit, characters are constantly disappearing into shadows, there's no zest to the movie's look. Even worse, I'm afraid, is the choreography by Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent, especially as it's viewed by Victor Kemper's camera. The dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film.
For example: When Beck and Kelly visit the empty amphitheater, Kelly envisions a forties band in one corner and an eighties rock group in another. The movie gives us one of each: The Andrews Sisters clones in close harmony, and the Electric Light Orchestra in full explosion. Then the two bandstands are moved together so that they blend and everyone is on one bandstand, singing one song. It's a great idea, but the way this movie handles it, it's an incomprehensible traffic jam with dozens of superfluous performers milling about.
The Ortega-Trent choreography of some of the other numbers is just as bad. They keep giving us five lines of dancers and then shooting at eye level, so that instead of seeing patterns we see confusing cattle calls. The dancers in the background muddy the movements of the foreground. It's a free-for-all.
The movie approaches desperation at times in its attempt to be all things to all audiences. Not only do we get the 1940s swing era, but a contemporary sequence starts with disco, goes to hard rock, provides an especially ludicrous country and western sequence, and moves on into prefabricated New Wave. There are times when XANADU doesn't even feel like a movie fantasy, but like a shopping list of marketable pop images. Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed the poem Xanadu but woke up before it was over, a possibility overlooked by the makers of this film.

That's Dancing!
US (1985): Musical/Dance
Leonard Maltin Review: 2.5 stars out of 4

105 min, Rated G, Color and Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Too many mediocre selections, flat introductions by five guest hosts … but there's still much to enjoy in this dance compilation, from Fred and Ginger's "Pick Yourself Up" to WEST SIDE STORY. Added curio: a Bolger number cut from THE WIZARD OF OZ. 1980s selections that end the film seem lumbering and ludicrous compared to the marvels of movement that precede them. Part Widescreen.

That's Dancing!
US (1985): Musical/Dance
Roger Ebert Review: 3.0 stars out of 4

105 min, Rated G, Color and Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

There is a sense in which it is impossible to dislike THAT'S DANCING! and another sense in which movies like this--made by splicing together all the "good parts" --are irritating and sort of unfair to the original films. Given the choice of seeing SINGIN' IN THE RAIN again or spending the same amount of time looking at scenes from SINGIN' and maybe sixty other films, I'd rather see the real movie all the way through. But THAT'S DANCING! is not setting an either-or test for us; what it basically wants to do is entertain us with a lot of good dance scenes from a lot of good, and bad, movies, and that is such a harmless ambition that I guess we can accept it.
The movie has been put together by Jack Haley, Jr., and David Niven, Jr., and it recycles Haley's formula in THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! (1974), the original slice-and-dice anthology from Hollywood's golden ages. There also has been a THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT, PART 2 (or "too," I seem to recall), and the law of diminishing returns is beginning to apply. Sooner or later, we'll get THAT'S ALL, FOLKS! In the first movie, for example, we got Gene Kelly's immortal title dance number from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN; in the first movie, we got Donald O'Connor's equally immortal "Make 'em Laugh" sequence; and that leaves Kelly and O'Connor's only somewhat immortal "Moses Supposes" number for this film. Pretty soon we're going to be getting THAT'S WHAT'S LEFT OF ENTERTAINMENT!
THAT'S DANCING! shares with the earlier movies an irritating compulsion to masquerade as a documentary, which it isn't. The tone is set by Kelly's opening generalizations about the universality of dance, etc., while we see National Geographic outtakes of dancing around the world: tribes in Africa, hula skirts in Hawaii, polkas, geisha girls, and so on. Kelly is later spelled by such other dance analysts as Liza Minnelli, Ray Bolger, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Sammy Davis, Jr., all of whom can dance with a great deal more ease than they can recite pseudo-profundities.
There is, however, a lot of good dancing in this movie, including rare silent footage of Isadora Duncan. We see Busby Berkeley's meticulously choreographed dance geometries, the infinite style of Fred Astaire, the brassy joy of Ginger Rogers, the pizazz of Cyd Charisse and Eleanor Powell, a charming duet between Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Shirley Temple, and a dazzling display by the Nicholas Brothers, who were the inspiration for the dance team played by the Hines brothers in THE COTTON CLUB. The movie is up-to-date, with John Travolta from SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and footage from break-dance movies, FLASHDANCE, and Michael Jackson's THRILLER. But perhaps its most pleasing single moment is a little soft-shoe by Jimmy Cagney, who was perhaps not the technical equal of Astaire, but was certainly on the same sublime plane when it came to communicating sheer joy.
One of the insights offered in the narration of THAT'S DANCING! is that Astaire was responsible for the theory that you should see the entire body of the dancer in most of the shots in a dance scene, and that the scene should be shown in unbroken shots, as much as possible, to preserve the continuity of the dancer's relationship with space and time. That's the kind of seemingly obvious statement that contains a lot of half-baked conclusions. True, you have to see the dancer's whole body to appreciate what he's doing (look at the disastrous choreography in Travolta's STAYING ALIVE, which inspired Ginger Rogers to call it a dance film--"from the waist up"). But you also need the cutaways to show the faces of the dancers, and the chemistry between them, as when Astaire and Rogers have their enchanted dancing lesson in SWING TIME. True, shooting the whole thing in one unbroken take preserves the integrity of the visual record--but what about the sensational dance sequences in FLASHDANCE that were achieved by literally cutting between different dancers, all doing their own specialty? All that really matters is the end result.
What conclusions can be drawn from the movie's survey of sixty years of dancing on screen? I can think of one, sort of obvious and sort of depressing: Style has gone out of style. New dancers in recent dance movies are in superb physical shape and do amazing things on the screen, but they do not have the magical personal style of an Astaire or a Kelly. They're technicians. And there's another thing: They don't really dance together. A lot of them are soloists, or two soloists sharing the same floor. When Astaire and Rogers danced together, they danced together. And that is maybe what dancing is finally all about.

That's Entertainment! III
US (1994): Documentary
Leonard Maltin Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

108 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

Yet another collection of marvelous musical moments from the MGM library, spiked by some never-before-seen footage eliminated from the finished films, including a discarded Fred Astaire dance routine (shown in split-screen with its retake), Judy Garland singing Irving Berlin's "Mr. Monotony," Cyd Charisse and Joan Crawford singing and dancing to the same prerecorded number, Lena Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" from CABIN IN THE SKY, and much, much more. Video release has expanded versions of some numbers cut for the theatrical print. Part widescreen.

That's Entertainment! III
US (1994): Documentary
Roger Ebert Review: 3.5 stars out of 4

108 min, Rated G, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
 
 

The first two THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! movies pretty well plundered the MGM vaults of classic moments from the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals—an age that ran from the 1930s until the 1950s and was more or less synonymous with MGM's own ascendency as the lion king of Hollywood studios. Settling down for a screening of THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! III, I expected to watch the archivists scraping the bottom of the barrel. Instead, they've discarded the barrel altogether, so to speak; most of the scenes in this film never found their way into movie theaters, and have languished for years, unseen, in the studio's vaults.
The result is a genuinely fascinating film, one that may tell more about MGM musicals, and aspects of American society, than a film devoted to still more highlights from musical numbers that DID make their way into films. The reasons why many of the sequences in III were cut from films are many, having to do with commerce, taste, race, sex and running time. They are interesting today because, in many cases, they are brilliant; in other cases, because they are awful; in some cases, because they are revealing; and in all cases because if it were not for this film we would never have seen them. This is like permission to rummage all by ourselves in MGM's cellar.
The clips are introduced and sometimes commented on by stars who still survive from those legendary days, none more ageless and poignant than Lena Horne, who shows a scene from CABIN IN THE SKY (1943) in which she sang in a bubble bath. The scene was cut, she says quietly, because in those days it was thought too "risque" to show a black woman in a bubble bath.
We also hear her wonderful performance of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY (1946), and then see a scene from SHOW BOAT (1951), in which the song is performed by Ava Gardner. Horne was originally considered for the character played by Gardner, but rejected because of her race. The difference between the two song versions is a hint of what MGM lost with that decision.
On other occasions, the studio played fast and loose with musical numbers, snipping them out and recycling them later. A split-screen technique is used to show Cyd Charisse and Joan Crawford, both performing TWO-FACED WOMAN. Charisse's version was cut from THE BAND WAGON (1953). It's slinky and sexy. The same year, the song was re-used in Crawford's TORCH SONG, where she performs it in an odd costume and "tropical" makeup. This version—the one that was used—is grotesque. (The crowning detail is that neither actress actually sang the song; it was dubbed for both movies by a singer named India Adams.)
By using earlier versions of scenes that later made it into films, the movie allows us to compare performances. Usually that means noticing the differences. With Fred Astaire, it means noting the incredible similarities. Astaire filmed the song-and-dance number "I Wanna Be a Dancin' Man" for THE BELLE OF NEW YORK (1952), wearing sport clothes. The studio decided he would look better in formal clothes, and re-shot the scene. Watching the two numbers side by side, we realize that Astaire was so perfectly rehearsed and so disciplined that he was able to reproduce the earlier dance routine down to the smallest detail—while seeming effortlessly improvisational, of course.
Other stuff you will see here and nowhere else: scenes shot by Judy Garland for ANNIE GET YOUR GUN before she was fired for personal problems and replaced by Betty Hutton. Garland singing "Mr. Monotony," later cut from EASTER PARADE. The "March of the Doagies" production number from THE HARVEY GIRLS (1946). A Debbie Reynolds solo of "You Are My Lucky Star," cut from SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. A fabulous dance duet between Astaire and Charisse, cut from BRIGADOON. And, from an MGM experiment with "novelty acts," a musical scene involving a trio of female acrobats who did double-jointed contortions while singing. (We don't need an explanation to figure out why that one was cut.)
One of the most sparkling presences in the film is Esther Williams, the swimming champion who starred in a series of incredibly successful musicals shot on, and under, the water. She narrates documentary footage to show how she and her co-stars were apparently able to do choreographed swimming for entire musical numbers without ever taking a breath. It's another co-host, Mickey Rooney, who most successfully evokes the atmosphere at MGM's Culver City lot in those days. MGM, it was said had "more stars than are in the heavens," and a talent-laden roster of producers and directors to keep them busy. What is most remarkable, watching this time, is to reflect that the studio was so rich in talent and imagination, even its outtakes are worth seeing, half a century later.

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