Singin’ in the Rain (1952) - film review

In 1927, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are the toast of Hollywood.  Their numerous films together have made them a national phenomenon and rumour has it that they are engaged to be married.  In truth, whilst Lina may have a crush on him, Don can barely tolerate his overbearing co-star.  When Warner Brothers’ first sound picture, The Jazz Singer, proves to be a roaring success, studio boss R.F. Simpson decides that Don and Lina’s next picture will be a talkie.  Unfortunately, Lina’s shrill voice does not record well and the film is clearly heading for disaster.  Don’s friend and former vaudeville partner Cosmo Brown has the bright idea of converting the film, a bland historical drama, into a musical, with Lina’s lines dubbed by another woman.  Chorus girl Kathy Selden jumps at the chance to dub for Lina, since she believes that this will launch her own career in Hollywood.  All they have to do now is convince Lina to go along with this...

When MGM producer Arthur Freed commissioned writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green to script a film featuring his back catalogue of musical numbers from the 1920s and ’30s, he could not have imagined that the result would be one of the most popular and most highly regarded musicals of all time.  Fifty years on, that film still delights with its exuberant mix of comedy and song and dance routines, with many of the numbers (such as Gene Kelly’s rendition of the title song) becoming legends in their own right.  No musical is more enjoyable or better choreographed than the timeless classic that is Singin’ in the Rain.

The man who is most responsible for the success of this film is its charismatic star Gene Kelly, who co-directed the film and choreographed its superb dance sequences, including the stunning Broadway Melody Ballet featuring a guest appearance from the leggy Cyd Charisse.  This latter sequence took two weeks to shoot and consumed a fifth of the film’s 2.5 million dollar budget.  Charisse’s 25-foot long veil was kept afloat by three aeroplane engines whirring away out of camera shot.

Judy Holliday was originally considered for the part of Lina Lamont but she declined and, at her suggestion, it went to Jean Hagen, her understudy on the Broadway production of Born Yesterday.  Hagen based her portrayal of the feather-headed Lina on Holliday’s Billie Dawn character in this play.   In the scenes where Debbie Reynolds appears to dub her, it is actually Hagen who is speaking, in her own voice.  Ironically, most of Reynolds’ songs were dubbed by the singer Betty Noyes.

The film’s highpoint is of course the unforgettable sequence in which Gene Kelly sings and dances the title number in a rain-drenched street.  Remarkably, this entire scene was recorded in a single take and is both an artistic and technical achievement.  Kelly was sick with a fever at the time he shot this sequence.  The actor Malcolm McDowell transformed this sprightly number into something much darker when he incorporated it into the rape scene in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971).  

Intended as a satire of the panic that beset Hollywood when the movie industry made the fraught transition from the silent to the sound era, the film also works as an effective parody of stardom and celebrity culture, one that continues to resonate.  How many of today’s overpaid, over-hyped starlets resemble the bitchy self-obsessed Lina Lamont?  One of the reasons for the longevity of this great film is that what it has to say about showbusiness is still true, although its nostalgia element is another key factor in the film’s continuing popularity.  The music of the 1920s and ’30s has an appeal that never seems to fade, evoking a less cynical and more carefree age than the ones that successive generations have had to live through.  For anyone who is in desperate need of a pick-me-up and an instant escape from the grind of daily life, Singin’ in the Rain is just the ticket.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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