So Used to Rain Its Almost an Art Form
When sound came to the motion-pic industry, the rush to create musicals was by and large motivated by straightforward thinking: Allow'southward become some songs and dances up there on the screen. But equally picture artists began to remember more and more almost musicals, and innovators stepped up to make them, the want to create a musical that was about being musical emerged and took concord. They wanted to push the boundaries of the musical genre, exam the form, take it autonomously and find out what made it work best.
The producer Arthur Freed, the directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and the writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green succeeded with this challenge in Singin' in the Rain. Information technology's the musical for people who don't like musicals. Kelly stars as a silent-movie idol who is making his first talking picture; he falls for a chorus girl, played by Debbie Reynolds, who'southward tasked with dubbing the strident-voiced leading lady's lines. Love it or hate it (and few detest it), overrate it or underrate information technology, the 1952 picture makes a perfect musical yardstick. For people who don't like musicals, it's still a very funny comedy. For people who don't want comedy, there's a mannerly romance. For people who recollect romance is sappy, there'south the humorously treated history of the transition to sound in film. And for those who do want a musical, there are one-time tunes and new tunes and great performers to nowadays them. In the most unpretentious mode possible, Singin' in the Rain gives an audience the elements necessary for a good musical: carefully established reality and unreality, with polish transitions between them.
Iii important questions use to the structure of musical films, and musical films are all about construction: When does a viewer first become aware that the globe of the movie presents characters who sing and trip the light fantastic as they live? How closely integrated are the songs and the story? How oft do musical numbers occur? Because an audience starts living in a picture show'due south universe as soon as the opening credits are rolling, the establishment of that universe every bit musical needs to be well-nigh immediate. If the forwards move of the plot is disrupted as well completely in society to accommodate a musical number, the functioning tends to detach viewers from their story experience. And the spacing of numbers within the plot is crucial to success—if there'south 40 minutes between numbers, the audition forgets it's watching a musical, while back-to-back numbers can spoil the fun.
These structural issues are successfully addressed and resolved in Singin' in the Rain. It tells a story about people who are in the business of moviemaking, opening on a glamorous Hollywood moving picture premiere in the mid-to-tardily 1920s. A dandy star, Don Lockwood (played past Kelly), tells an interviewer his "life story," describing music lessons, civilization, serious dramatic goals, and "dignity, e'er dignity." As he talks, the audience is shown something totally different. He was a tough piffling poor child. He and his pal (Donald O'Connor) snuck into theaters and bars, grew up to play cheap vaudeville shows, and started in movies by doing slapstick and Western stunts.
This combination of pompous narration and undercutting visuals is a big joke in the very first sequence. It's a truth-revealing flashback that includes a musical number showing O'Connor and Kelly doing a fabulous tap routine to "Fit equally a Fiddle" wearing cheap dark-green-plaid suits. The scene presents two levels, an outer truth that is revealed to be simulated by the inner one. Even every bit it takes away that outer truth, withal, it gives something back: musical functioning. When Kelly and O'Connor do the fast-paced, comedic "Fit equally a Dabble," they ain the screen and the story and the music. Viewers forgive Kelly for his hypocrisy—and it's the dance that makes them do it.
The integration between the story and the music is impeccable. Singin' in the Rain is a satire in which musical numbers not only are wedded smoothly to the plot but also further the theme: the mishaps of the transition to sound for both actors and technicians. It's a film about film history, and its musical numbers comply. "Brand 'Em Laugh," with O'Connor doing an astonishing tour de strength of slapstick dancing, is virtually the violence of American silent comedy. "Moses Supposes" is like a Marx Brothers routine set to music. "You Were Meant for Me" is a gentle self-parody of typical love duets in movies, showing all the props used and how audiences are manipulated by them. "Beautiful Girl" is a tribute to a 1930s Busby Berkeley number, and "Good Morning" uses an one-time song as a setting for an imaginatively choreographed tap routine that displays several different types of pic dancing (including a little musical shoutout to An American in Paris, at the time a recent blockbuster hit). All the numbers are about movies except "All I Do Is Dream of You lot" (when Reynolds, playing the young extra Kathy, jumps out of a block) and the championship melody.
That championship number, "Singin' in the Rain," illustrates the fine art of the movie musical—the way the genre must be lifted off the page of the screenplay. It's possible that Kelly's puddle splash may be the most widely recognized of any Hollywood musical performance. All you have to do is hum a trivial "doo do do exercise, practice practise do do practice" and everyone smiles, recognizing the familiar intro refrain. The script for this scene says:
Don brings Kathy domicile in a taxi, they osculation, she tells him to be careful non to get too moisture, he's a big star at present …
As Kathy goes in Don looks up at the rain, motions the cab to drive off, closes his umbrella, starts strolling and singing. Don dances in the wet street. Then he notices a policeman eyeing him with suspicion, collects himself and strolls off.
The key words in the script are: "Don dances in the wet street." On-screen, these six words get four minutes of song and dance that ascertain Gene Kelly and are oft used to ascertain the whole genre of original Hollywood musicals. The pelting trip the light fantastic: so easy, so relaxed, so happy and emotional, so simple. Only a carefree little moment on pic.
But what did it take to put it up there? Experts in many areas had to work together to design, plan, compose, shoot, edit, perform, stitch, light, choreograph, and brand rain. And in the end, in a dandy coordination of performance and technology, what might seem to be just a fiddling trip the light fantastic toe is cleverly created to nowadays a man in love, interim empty-headed because he's happy, playing in puddles like a kid, rushing out into the street. The scene, gear up at night in a chilly pelting, is grounded in greyness and blackness, just the frame is also filled with touches of brightness: Don's reddish shoes, the carmine burn down hydrant, the shop windows, lit with yellow lights, the red alert box. The decor in each carefully designed shop window is also colorful. All these details suggest the warmth and happiness of Don'south inner land.
The camera moves with him, around him, toward him, away from him, and the viewer finds Kelly's exhilaration in that moment and shares in it. When he turns a corner and jumps upwardly onto a lamppost, information technology's just a little leap—we've seen Kelly go higher—just with the music lifting and the camera watching, information technology'due south as if he soared into the air. The motion-picture show, with all its technology, only specially with its music, lifts a viewer up there, too. That's what musicals do, and that's why they're hard to make.
This article has been adapted from Jeanine Basinger's new volume, The Movie Musical!
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/11/singin-rain-jeanine-basinger-movie-musical-excerpt/601363/
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