NFR Project: 'Singin' in the Rain' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “Singin’ in the Rain”

Dir: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

Scr: Betty Comden, Adolph Green

Pho: Harold Rosson

Ed: Adrienne Fazan

Premiere: March 27, 1952

103 min.

It’s a perfect picture.

The stars aligned for this project, but a key element in the success of the film was the presence of Stanley Donen as co-director.

Donen started his career as a dancer, and moved on to the role of a choreographer. He paired up with Gene Kelly, and helped to choreograph many of Kelly’s dance numbers in pictures from 1943 on. He worked on Cover Girl, Anchors Aweigh, Living in a Big Way, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Finally, in 1949 he and Kelly co-directed On the Town.

Now that his reputation was established, Donen was able to helm other movies. He directed Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951) – and then came Singin’ in the Rain.

The brilliant team of Betty Comden and Adolf Green, lyricists and screenwriters, conjured up a hilarious scenario. The movie is set in Hollywood, during the period of transition from silent film to sound. Its hero is Don Lockwood (Kelly), a silent matinee idol, who has been paired with the squeaky-voiced, egomaniacal actress Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen).

As Don and Lina attend the opening of their new film, The Royal Rascal, Don describes his rise in show business to a radio audience. As he goes on and on about the dignity of the profession, we see in flashback him starting out as a baggy-pants comic, then as a vaudeville hoofer with his pal Cosmo (Donald O’Connor). Eventually, Don breaks in to on-screen work as a humble stuntman and graduates to leading roles. The contrast between Hollywood hype and the real facts of the case are emphasized here.

While all of this happens, Don meets the lovely young singer and dancer, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) who at first spurns him but then falls for him as he pursues her passionately.

Sound comes in, and the entire industry is turned upside down. Suddenly, actors must be able to speak well. Voice coaches are called in, but nobody can do anything with Lina’s shrill Brooklynese. Lockwood and Lamont’s new costume drama, The Dueling Cavalier, is revamped as a sound film. But the preview of the film is disastrous. Stumped, Don, Cosmo, and Kathy try to think of some way to save the picture. Finally, they decide – let’s change the movie into a musical!

But what to do about Lina’s voice? Cosmo comes up with the answer – have Kathy dub Lina’s lines and songs. However, Lina is displeased. She hates Kathy, and demands that her role in covering Lina’s voice be covered up.

The movie is a huge hit. Lina declares that she will never let Kathy get credit, and even dismisses Don as unnecessary to her success. She goes out to take a bow after the premiere. She tries to speak, but is laughed at by the crowd. They urge her to sing instead. Don, Cosmo, and producer R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) force Kathy to set up behind the curtain and sing so that Lina can lip-sync along. Then they haul up the curtain, exposing the fraud. Lina flees and Don identifies Kathy as the beautiful voice behind Lina. At film’s end, Don and Kathy kiss in afront of a billboard advertising their new film together – Singin’ in the Rain.

The dialogue sparkles, and the comedy is perfectly pitched. The art direction is flawless – the settings are bright, candy-colored, and extravagantly beautiful. Donen uses the crane extensively, swooping effortlessly in and out of the action.

However, it’s the musical numbers that are truly extraordinary. The songs are all taken from the period, most of them written by the film’s producer Arthur Freed, and Nacio Herb Brown. “All I Do Is Dream of You,” “Make ‘em Laugh,” “I’ve Got a Feeling You’re Fooling,” “Beautiful Girl,” “You Were Meant for Me,” “Good Morning,” and the title song are all sure-fire hit material. The one song not by them, “Moses Supposes,” features lyrics by Comden and Green.

All of the resources of MGM were put into play to create this vibrant film. Costumes, sets, and lighting are impeccable. They serve as a backdrop for the superior clowning of Donald O’Connor, the dash and dynamic verve of Gene Kelly – and the winsomeness of Debbie Reynolds, only 19 at the time of filming.

O'Connor's comic dance, "Make 'em Laugh," is a whirlwind of fun. Another top sequence is the unfailingly funny scene of Don and Lina trying to deal with the vagaries of early sound filming. The spectacular heart of the film is Kelly singing and dancing in the rain outside Kathy’s apartment. This has become the representative number that symbolizes the film musical. It deserves it!

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: This Is Cinerama.

NFR Project: 'The Quiet Man' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “The Quiet Man”

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Frank S. Nugent

Pho: Winton C. Hoch

Ed: Jack Murray

Premiere: Aug. 21, 1952

129 min.

In contrast to the tough guy director John Ford portrayed himself as, he was really a big softie. And, though born in Maine, he was an Irishman who had a deep reverence for his Irish homeland and the traditions of its people. In fact, Ford’s Ireland is a dreamland, an idealized, fabulous emerald-green countryside, photographed expertly here in living Technicolor by Winton C. Hoch and represented by a fine set of character actors, members of Ford’s “stock company.”

Into this picturesque, enchanted territory drops John Wayne (as Sean Thonton), who shows he can play the lead in a romantic comedy. His opposite number is the beautiful and talented Maureen O’Hara (as Mary Kate Danaher), who had grippingly played Angharad in Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. Here, she’s a fiery redhead, full of sass, who will not take no for an answer. The two fall in love at first sight.

Sean is a man who has returned from America to purchase his boyhood home (how he gained his money we do not at first know). He does so, to the consternation of Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), who is the brother of Mary Kate and the man responsible for giving her away in marriage. He refuses to sanction her engagement – which the two promptly ignore. Danaher then refuses to give Mary Kate her “treasures” – her dowry of goods and money.

Everyone is spoiling for a fight except Sean. In a flashback, and later in confession to a minister, Sean reveals that he killed a man in the ring and swore never to fight again. (Presumably his financial resources are a result of his boxing career.) Mary Kate gets a tongue-lashing in Gaelic from the local priest (the always-fabulous Ward Bond). Sean and Mary Kate reconcile, and finally sleep together.

In the morning, Mary Kate stomps off to the train station, leaving Sean a note stating she doesn’t want to live with a man she’s ashamed of. Sean tracks her down, pulls her off the train, and in an epic sequence drags her in front of an admiring and ever-swelling crowd across the landscape, the five miles back to her brother’s estate.

He throws her at her brother’s feet. “No fortune, no marriage!” he cries. Danaher relents, angrily throwing down the money. Sean picks it up; Mary Kate opens the boiler of a nearby steam engine, and Sean chucks the money into its fire. Satisfied, she goes home. Now, at last, Sean can overcome his fear of fighting. He and Danaher now duke it out, conducting an epic throw-down that travels up and down the streets of the town, punctuated with frequent dashings of buckets of water. The low-comedy hijinks of the humorous donnybrook bring the film to a smashing conclusion.

Now, it has been bandied about that this is a chauvinist film – and it is. But it is Wayne who, as the male lead in a typical romantic comedy, forced to come to terms with the daft world he finds himself in. Tradition is tops here; the “old ways” are honored – as is fist-fighting, drinking, singing loudly, and betting. It’s a man’s world, an Irish world, Ford’s world is.

But he paints his female characters with loving strokes. Both O’Hara, and Mildred Natwick as the Widow Tillane, are given scope, depth, and wit. Ford brings us Ireland personified as Barry Fitzgerald playing the stereotypical son o’ the sod, Michaeleen Og Flynn. The little man wanders through scenes, tipsy and eloquent. He sees a bed he thinks wrecked by marital passion and exclaims, “Impetuous! Homeric!” Here too is a young Jack MacGowran who perfectly delivers the drunken line, “God bless all here.” And there is even Ford’s long-time associate, his brother Francis, as the comic old man of the village. (It was Francis who succeeded first in Hollywood, and who brought John out West to work in the film industry, back in the silent days.)

But yes, it is sexist. A woman eagerly proffers a stick to Sean, “to beat the lovely lady.” There is no feminism present, save perhaps for in O’Hara’s scrappy characterization. Still, she is shown as being pleased that her husband fought for her, and is more than happy to tend to the menfolk after they’ve had their little row. She really wants to be a good wife. In those times, that was perceived as the height of female ambition.

So all ends well, as it does in all comedies. Sean and Mary Kate are together, complete. Danaher and the widow begin to court – even the local minister is given support from the Catholics in town to keep his tiny parish open. Ford’s dream world is restored to a state of equilibrium; everyone fits into their new roles in life. Time marches on, and human beings, those curious creatures, progress and change.

Ford gives us life as it is really lived – with the boring parts cut out.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Singin’ in the Rain.

NFR Project: 'High Noon' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “High Noon”

Dir: Fred Zinneman

Scr: Carl Foreman

Pho: Floyd Crosby

Ed: Elmo Williams

Premiere: July 24, 1952

85 min.

It’s funny. This film, the plot of which is now so familiar as to be a cliché, was once controversial.

In the old American frontier town of Hadleyville (a nod to Twain’s 1899 story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyville”) veteran Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is getting married to the young Amy (Grace Kelly). He is all set to retire and move to another town. A new marshal is coming to replace him the next day. Word comes that Frank Miller, a killer Will sent to prison, has gotten out and is coming to town to gun him down in revenge. He arrives on the train at high noon.

Kane doesn’t run, for fear that Miller will just track him and kill him anyway. His new wife Amy is a pacifist and doesn’t believe he should fight. Kane determines that he will, and seeks others to deputize to join him in fighting the criminal and his gang. Everyone turns him down.

Kane had cleaned up the town, which had been in terror of Miller for years. Everyone praises him, but they all wish he would go away, taking the problem with him. Wife Amy determines to leave him, but she also confronts Kane’s former mistress Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), thinking he is staying for her sake. She states that she is leaving town, too, and that Amy should stand by her man.

Miller comes to town, and he and his men come gunning for Kane. The streets of the town are empty; everyone is waiting to see the outcome of the fight. By hook and crook Kane kills two of the four men up against him. His wife Amy tosses aside her pacifism, pulls out a gun and kills another one. Finally, Kane shoots Miller dead. Kane throws his badge contemptuously in the dust, and he and Amy leave town.

During the production of this film, the film’s writer, Carl Foreman, was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee due to his suspected Communist activities. He refused to name names, so he was blacklisted and kicked off this picture. (He moved to England). John Wayne refused starring in this movie, seeing it as a thinly disguised allegory about the blacklist. Howard Hawks hated this film too. They also couldn’t stand the idea of a marshal asking for help, nor could they countenance his wife saving him.

In fact, many disliked the film. It was subversive for a Western to paint a bunch of frontier townsfolk as rotten cowards, happy to be delivered from evil but unwilling to face up to it themselves. The idea of a lawman standing up to protect an ungrateful populace was a new one. It called into question the whole concept of the struggle to civilize the Wild West. Was it worth the effort? Does the taming of the lawless lead to the creation of just another community full of the flawed?

Foreman’s script examines the myth of the rugged individual as well. Is it noble for a man to still act in the right, although all may be against him? It would seem so. Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the desperate, conflicted Kane. Now we routinely see a protagonist acting despite those around him, not because of them. Such was not the case in 1952.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Quiet Man.