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Singin' In The Rain
There's a lot of rain here in Scarborough at the moment so I thought I'd review the musical classic Singin' In The Rain. The film was so successful that it spawned a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and many stage versions of the story - including a 1983 West End production starring Tommy Steele and Roy Castle. Singin' In The Rain is one of those films that still stands up today, proven by the fact that a Broadway musical is set to open across the pond in America by this autumn.
The movie follows 1920s silent film star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), who finds himself at the forefront of many rumours that he and his co-star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are in a relationship. In actuality he can't stand her. Lina on the other hand is in love with Don. In an attempt to escape his fans at the premiere of his new film, Don jumps into the passing car of Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who claims to be an actor. However at a party where Don's boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) shows off a demonstration of the 'talkie' Kathy pops out of a cake and reveals herself to be a chorus girl. Don teases her over the job and Kathy retaliates by throwing a cake at him. The next day Lina ensures Kathy is fired from her job, however Kathy soon finds herself working for the same film studio company as Don - Monumental Pictures. Don and Lina complete their first talkie - The Duelling Cavalier - but it performs terribly in front of its first test audience. In order to save the picture, Don, Kathy and Don's best friend Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) decide to turn it into a musical - The Dancing Cavalier. Of course, Dom and Kathy also end up falling in love.
I'm going to start by saying Singin' In the Rain is possibly one of the most perfectly cast movies of all time. The three main leads Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor have unbelievable amounts of chemistry - the Good Morning sequence is the perfect demonstration of that. They feel like a package rather than separate actors forced to work together. Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor have the comedic chemistry of Morecambe and Wise and Debbie with Gene is one of the most convincing romantic partnerships of all time. Every one of the actors in this movie deliver hilarious performances and it's hard to imagine a Singin' In The Rain film with a different cast. Hopefully this is a film that will never be remade, although with Hollywood's current tendency to produce remakes I wouldn't be surprised to see a new version sooner rather than later.
As for Jean Hagen's Lina, she makes for a very effective antagonist. Lina is repulsive, self-centered and has a very irritating voice so it's not hard to wish for her downfall (which, of course, she gets at the end of the movie in the iconic 'live lip-synching' comedy scene). Jean Hagen helps to make Lina one of those characters you really can't stand; she's like an annoying chipmunk placed in a film with lots of singing (in other words, Lina Lamont would be a perfect protagonist for the awful Alvin and the Chipmunks movies). You just want to drag your arms through the screen and strangle her. I would go as far as to say Lina Lamont is one of cinema's best comedy antagonists and again, as with the other actors it is hard to imagine her played in a film by someone else.
The songs are also perfect. There isn't one duff musical number among them. My favourites are probably the titular song 'Singin' In The Rain' and the hugely entertaining comedy number 'Make 'em Laugh'. The way that Singin' In The Rain takes something with negative connotations such as rain and twists it into a positive is very clever and helps considerably to progress the narrative of Don's love for Kathy. As for Make 'em Laugh, it is one of the movie's best choreographed moments superbly directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen and featuring a number of memorable slapstick jokes such as Cosmo running head-first into a plank of wood. Arguably the best part of the song's routine however is when he manages to run up the wall with the painted background. How Donald O'Connor managed to scale the wall and land feet-first is anybody's guess (I believed he did it without a stunt double) but Roy Castle famously injured himself whilst attempting the routine during the performance of a touring version of the West End Singin' In The Rain production.
The film isn't just a comedy though, it also features an interesting take on the transition of silent movies to talkies. Whilst we take films with sound now, back in the late 1920s it was a very new thing and subsequently many companies didn't understand how to utilise the technology. In Singin' In The Rain we see how the studio struggle to match picture and audio together, showing the problems of microphone placement. At one point a microphone placed in a bush proves problematic in how it picks up Lina's voice. Another problem they encounter is that as Lina hadn't been heard speaking in a film before (her previous films being silent)and having been banned by the studio from speaking for herself in public, audiences had yet to hear her irritating voice. The new-found technology poses a concern in that audiences can now hear the actors speak. So what do the characters do? They utilise the technology to replace Lina's awful voice with Kathy's much sweeter one.This is such a clever concept and is utilised to perfection in the film, offering probably the strongest climax of any musical ever when the audience of the Dancing Cavaliers demand to hear Lina sing a number and the curtain is drawn to reveal an unsuspecting Kathy singing on her behalf. The climax is quite rightly considered one of the greatest comedy scenes cinema has to offer and offers a satisfying comeuppance for the character of Lina when Don announces Kathy to be the real star of the film.
Overall, Singin' In The Rain is without a doubt a comedy and musical masterpiece. It offers one of comedy's strongest climaxes in the iconic curtain scene and provides a humorous take on Hollywood's transition from silent movies to talkies. Singin' In The Rain is one of those films that is simply perfectly cast; it's hard to imagine anyone else as Don Lockwood, Lina Lamont, Cosmo or Kathy. They simply are the characters and I hope this is one movie that will never be remade. You cannot improve on perfection, no matter how hard they like to try. Psycho's shot-for-shot remake didn't work because it was already a masterpiece - and same goes for Tim Burton's lame attempt to remake the late Gene Wilder's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. When you have a perfect cast, a perfect song list and a perfect climax then there is nowhere a remake can go. Nothing to improve on. Nothing that could be better than what we already have. Singin' In The Rain already makes us laugh without having to do it in a feature-length movie again.
There's a lot of rain here in Scarborough at the moment so I thought I'd review the musical classic Singin' In The Rain. The film was so successful that it spawned a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and many stage versions of the story - including a 1983 West End production starring Tommy Steele and Roy Castle. Singin' In The Rain is one of those films that still stands up today, proven by the fact that a Broadway musical is set to open across the pond in America by this autumn.
The movie follows 1920s silent film star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), who finds himself at the forefront of many rumours that he and his co-star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are in a relationship. In actuality he can't stand her. Lina on the other hand is in love with Don. In an attempt to escape his fans at the premiere of his new film, Don jumps into the passing car of Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who claims to be an actor. However at a party where Don's boss R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) shows off a demonstration of the 'talkie' Kathy pops out of a cake and reveals herself to be a chorus girl. Don teases her over the job and Kathy retaliates by throwing a cake at him. The next day Lina ensures Kathy is fired from her job, however Kathy soon finds herself working for the same film studio company as Don - Monumental Pictures. Don and Lina complete their first talkie - The Duelling Cavalier - but it performs terribly in front of its first test audience. In order to save the picture, Don, Kathy and Don's best friend Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) decide to turn it into a musical - The Dancing Cavalier. Of course, Dom and Kathy also end up falling in love.
I'm going to start by saying Singin' In the Rain is possibly one of the most perfectly cast movies of all time. The three main leads Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor have unbelievable amounts of chemistry - the Good Morning sequence is the perfect demonstration of that. They feel like a package rather than separate actors forced to work together. Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor have the comedic chemistry of Morecambe and Wise and Debbie with Gene is one of the most convincing romantic partnerships of all time. Every one of the actors in this movie deliver hilarious performances and it's hard to imagine a Singin' In The Rain film with a different cast. Hopefully this is a film that will never be remade, although with Hollywood's current tendency to produce remakes I wouldn't be surprised to see a new version sooner rather than later.
As for Jean Hagen's Lina, she makes for a very effective antagonist. Lina is repulsive, self-centered and has a very irritating voice so it's not hard to wish for her downfall (which, of course, she gets at the end of the movie in the iconic 'live lip-synching' comedy scene). Jean Hagen helps to make Lina one of those characters you really can't stand; she's like an annoying chipmunk placed in a film with lots of singing (in other words, Lina Lamont would be a perfect protagonist for the awful Alvin and the Chipmunks movies). You just want to drag your arms through the screen and strangle her. I would go as far as to say Lina Lamont is one of cinema's best comedy antagonists and again, as with the other actors it is hard to imagine her played in a film by someone else.
The songs are also perfect. There isn't one duff musical number among them. My favourites are probably the titular song 'Singin' In The Rain' and the hugely entertaining comedy number 'Make 'em Laugh'. The way that Singin' In The Rain takes something with negative connotations such as rain and twists it into a positive is very clever and helps considerably to progress the narrative of Don's love for Kathy. As for Make 'em Laugh, it is one of the movie's best choreographed moments superbly directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen and featuring a number of memorable slapstick jokes such as Cosmo running head-first into a plank of wood. Arguably the best part of the song's routine however is when he manages to run up the wall with the painted background. How Donald O'Connor managed to scale the wall and land feet-first is anybody's guess (I believed he did it without a stunt double) but Roy Castle famously injured himself whilst attempting the routine during the performance of a touring version of the West End Singin' In The Rain production.
The film isn't just a comedy though, it also features an interesting take on the transition of silent movies to talkies. Whilst we take films with sound now, back in the late 1920s it was a very new thing and subsequently many companies didn't understand how to utilise the technology. In Singin' In The Rain we see how the studio struggle to match picture and audio together, showing the problems of microphone placement. At one point a microphone placed in a bush proves problematic in how it picks up Lina's voice. Another problem they encounter is that as Lina hadn't been heard speaking in a film before (her previous films being silent)and having been banned by the studio from speaking for herself in public, audiences had yet to hear her irritating voice. The new-found technology poses a concern in that audiences can now hear the actors speak. So what do the characters do? They utilise the technology to replace Lina's awful voice with Kathy's much sweeter one.This is such a clever concept and is utilised to perfection in the film, offering probably the strongest climax of any musical ever when the audience of the Dancing Cavaliers demand to hear Lina sing a number and the curtain is drawn to reveal an unsuspecting Kathy singing on her behalf. The climax is quite rightly considered one of the greatest comedy scenes cinema has to offer and offers a satisfying comeuppance for the character of Lina when Don announces Kathy to be the real star of the film.
Overall, Singin' In The Rain is without a doubt a comedy and musical masterpiece. It offers one of comedy's strongest climaxes in the iconic curtain scene and provides a humorous take on Hollywood's transition from silent movies to talkies. Singin' In The Rain is one of those films that is simply perfectly cast; it's hard to imagine anyone else as Don Lockwood, Lina Lamont, Cosmo or Kathy. They simply are the characters and I hope this is one movie that will never be remade. You cannot improve on perfection, no matter how hard they like to try. Psycho's shot-for-shot remake didn't work because it was already a masterpiece - and same goes for Tim Burton's lame attempt to remake the late Gene Wilder's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. When you have a perfect cast, a perfect song list and a perfect climax then there is nowhere a remake can go. Nothing to improve on. Nothing that could be better than what we already have. Singin' In The Rain already makes us laugh without having to do it in a feature-length movie again.