Singin' in the Rain Review

It was a studio assignment built out of old songs the lot already owned, a modest hit, and it turned into the film every later musical gets measured against. The craft is absurd. Gene Kelly performs the title number with a fever, Donald O'Connor throws himself through walls in 'Make 'Em Laugh' and needed days in bed afterward, and Debbie Reynolds learned to dance at nineteen well enough to hold the frame beside two professionals.

The Technicolor is candy without being cheap, and the staging keeps the camera far enough back that you see whole bodies doing whole steps, which is why the numbers still read as feats rather than as editing. What lifts it above spectacle is the script. Comden and Green write the conversion to sound as farce with teeth, from the microphone hidden in a bush to the premiere where the sound slides out of sync, and Jean Hagen plays Lina Lamont as a genuinely funny monster instead of a punching bag.

The 'Broadway Melody' ballet is the one stretch critics argue about, a long dream sequence that stops the story cold for a Cyd Charisse showcase. Everything around it moves. The profession has been close to unanimous about this one for fifty years, and the polls keep putting it near the top of the American canon.