Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Official trailer

Singin’ in the Rain is the Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen-directed MGM musical that became the canonical American film about Hollywood’s transition from silent to sound cinema. Kelly and Donen co-directed. Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the screenplay around an existing catalog of songs by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown that MGM owned from the studio’s early sound-era productions.

Gene Kelly plays Don Lockwood, a silent-film star transitioning to sound. Debbie Reynolds plays Kathy Selden, a young chorus dancer Don falls for.

Donald O’Connor plays Cosmo Brown, Don’s longtime friend and musical collaborator. Jean Hagen plays Lina Lamont, Don’s silent-film co-star whose nasal voice makes her unsuitable for sound pictures. Millard Mitchell plays studio head R.F. Simpson. The plot follows Monumental Pictures’ attempt to convert its in-production film The Dueling Cavalier to sound and to disguise Lina’s voice issues by having Kathy dub her lines.

Singin’ in the Rain is the most purely joyful film Hollywood ever made, as far as I’m concerned. It’s funny, it’s in love with the movies, and it’s in love with its own performers, and I can’t watch it without grinning. Of all the films I rate a 10, this is the one I’d reach for on a bad day.

The film made approximately seven and a half million dollars in initial 1952 release on a two and a half million dollar budget. The commercial performance was modest. The critical reception was respectful but not exceptional. The American Film Institute’s 2006 list named Singin’ in the Rain the greatest American musical of all time. It consistently appears in the top ten of AFI’s general best-American-films lists. The film’s specific combination of musical performance, technical comedy about the sound transition, and behind-the-scenes Hollywood material has been imitated repeatedly and matched rarely.

The Sound Transition

The film’s structural premise is the actual 1927-1929 transition from silent to sound cinema. The Jazz Singer (1927) had shown synchronized sound’s commercial viability. Studios scrambled to retool. Stars whose voices didn’t match their silent-era personas were exposed. New stars emerged. Production methods, theater wiring, and audience expectations all changed within eighteen months. Singin’ in the Rain dramatizes this transition as both comedy and accurate industrial history.

The technical jokes the film deploys (microphone placement on Lina’s bodice, the sound boom catching dialogue from unintended sources, the synchronized projection failing during the first sound preview) are based on documented production problems from the actual transition.

The film’s “you can’t have any dignity” sequence in which Don, Lina, and director Roscoe Dexter struggle through their first dialogue scenes plays as broad comedy and accurate procedural reconstruction at the same time. The audience laughs at jokes that are also history. Musicals can carry educational content without sacrificing entertainment value.

The sound-transition gags are where I laugh hardest. Lina fighting the microphone planted on her bodice kills me, and I think Jean Hagen gives the funniest performance in the film. The joke works only because she commits so completely to being awful.

The Title Number

The “Singin’ in the Rain” title sequence is a much-imitated dance performance in American cinema. Gene Kelly performs the song on a Hollywood backlot street set in a sustained rainstorm. The sequence runs approximately four minutes. The choreography includes umbrella work, lamppost work, puddle splashing, and Kelly’s specific combination of tap, ballet, and acrobatic movement. The sequence is famously the result of Kelly working through a 103-degree fever during production.

The sequence’s craft achievement is the apparent effortlessness. Kelly is performing extreme physical work while the audience reads pure expression. The dance carries the romantic narrative the script has been building. Don is in love. The audience sees this through the dance instead of through dialogue. Musical performance can carry information no other film technique can deliver as economically. The four minutes of “Singin’ in the Rain” tell the audience everything they need to know about where the character has arrived emotionally.

Those four minutes are the reason the 10 isn’t even a debate for me. Kelly makes the hardest dancing look like a man who can’t contain how he feels, and knowing he did it with a fever makes me like him even more. Nothing in it looks rehearsed, even though every step obviously was.

Donald O’Connor

Donald O’Connor’s Cosmo Brown is a badly underappreciated supporting performance in 1950s American cinema. The character is Don’s longtime friend, songwriter, and musical-comedy partner. O’Connor performs the “Make ‘Em Laugh” sequence in a single take that includes running up walls, somersaulting off furniture, and crashing through a prop wall. The sequence is so physically demanding that O’Connor reportedly required several days of bedrest after filming. The footage was lost in processing. O’Connor had to perform the entire sequence again.

The performance throughout the film is the script’s structural relief. Cosmo provides the cynical observations Don and Kathy can’t offer about their own situation.

Cosmo provides the comedic engine the romantic plot doesn’t contain. Cosmo provides the third-corner perspective that prevents the love triangle from being only a love triangle. The best-friend supporting role can do structural work beyond comic relief. Cosmo is the character whose observations the audience trusts because he’s the only one who’s not in love with anyone.

“Make ‘Em Laugh” is my favorite number in the film, and I’d pick it over the title song. O’Connor throws his body at walls like it belongs to somebody else. Knowing he had to do the entire number twice after the footage was lost makes it almost painful to watch.

Does Singin’ in the Rain still hold up?

10/10. I’d put this at the top of any list of American musicals, and nothing about it has dated for me. Kelly and Donen are at their peak, the Comden and Green script is funny about real film history, O’Connor wrecks himself for laughs, Hagen screeches gloriously, and the title number still looks like pure happiness on film. It gets a 10 because every department is working at full joy at the same time, and I can’t find the weak spot.

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