An appreciation of Singin’ in the Rain is almost redundant; the joy of watching this greatest of all classic Hollywood musicals is as self-explanatory as the joy of performance animating the film is self-evident. The onscreen joy is, of course, an illusion: The shoot was famously stressful and traumatic, from Gene Kelly running a fever shooting the iconic title sequence to Debbie Reynolds’ bleeding feet and Donald O’Connor’s acrobatic injuries. But the illusion is flawless, the actors’ commitment is absolute, and the exuberance of Don Lockwood, Kathy Selden, and Cosmo Brown is beyond question.
Like the prior year’s An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain is a so-called jukebox musical, scripted around songs written for (but not all used in) MGM musicals from 1929 to 1939—a provenance inspiring the film’s setting in Hollywood at the transition from silent film to talkies and the birth of the musical. The use of preexisting songs and a Hollywood setting also perhaps inspired screenwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden to adopt a relatively naturalistic use of the musical form: Where the characters in musicals like West Side Story or Fiddler on the Roof burst into song and dance in an overtly stagey, expressionistic way with no pretense of realism, the characters in Singin’ in the Rain are all players whose song-and-dance numbers are either actual performances—from the vaudeville staging of “Fit as a Fiddle (And Ready For Love)” and the wrap-party “All I Do Is Dream of You” act to the deployment of the “Beautiful Girl Montage” and “Broadway Melody” in musical films-within-the-film—or else informal, spontaneous improv numbers performed, variously, to cheer up a friend (“Make ’em Laugh”), woo a love interest (“You Were Meant for Me”), blow off steam (“Moses Supposes”), celebrate an inspiration (“Good Mornin’”), or simply express joy (“Singin’ in the Rain”). It’s this relative naturalism that’s responsible for the film’s reputation as a musical for people who hate musicals.
Thematically, the film is at once a slyly cynical satire of celebrity culture and the construction of public identity, with Don’s solemn “Dignity, always dignity” routine for the gossip press undermined by deflating images of less impressive reality, and a tribute to the collaborative, sometimes accidental nature of cinematic art. It’s also more than a mythologizing of a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, reaching back to the vaudeville stage and celebrating the wild and woolly days of silent spectacle, when an intrepid player could make a name for himself by taking a backward fall over a saloon bar, before poking fun of the awkward growing pains of the early sound era, when cameras lost their mobility in soundproof booths and sound recording was often uneven. Dated only by the surreal, “modern” “Broadway Melody” sequence (too long and tangential, though greatly enhanced by the magnificent Cyd Charisse) and the eventual villainous turn and comeuppance of Jean Hagen’s deliciously dim-witted, self-absorbed Lina Lamont (both echoes in a way of An American in Paris), Singin’ in the Rain isn’t just a nearly perfect musical, it is simply one of the greatest films of all time.
— Steven D. Greydanus (2022)
- Directed by: Stanley Donen; Gene Kelly
- Produced by: Roger Edens; Arthur Freed
- Written by: Betty Comden; Adolph Green
- Music by: Lennie Hayton
- Cinematography by: Harold Rosson
- Editing by: Adrienne Fazon
- Release Date: 1952
- Running Time: 103 minutes
- Language: English
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