Sin­gin’ in the Rain (1952)

Hol­ly­wood is always in a state of duress. Before our cur­rent anx­i­eties about the industry’s death at the hands of stream­ing, it was 3D. Before that, tele­vi­sion, 3D again, and the Dad­dy of them all: sound. It’s hard to believe that what takes up half of our sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence with film could be seen as its death knell, but that anx­i­ety is exact­ly what Sin­gin’ in the Rain pokes fun at, bril­liant­ly as ever on this re-release.

Stan­ley Donen and Gene Kelly’s musi­cal – wor­shipped by lovers of the genre, lionised by great­est film polls, ref­er­enced so often in pop cul­ture that it’s as famil­iar as our heart­beat – still pos­sess­es the pow­er to impress. Kel­ly plays Don Lock­wood, a swash­buck­ling Dou­glas Fair­banks type, who falls for Deb­bie Reynolds’ aspir­ing thes­pi­an Cathy, avoids his ven­omous co-star Lina Lam­ont, and hangs out with his best friend Cos­mo Brown (Don­ald O’Connor). They deal with the chal­lenges of the tran­si­tion to sound in a num­ber of com­ic set pieces cen­tred on elo­cu­tion, mic place­ment, and mimicry.

The toy­ing with sound makes the view­er con­stant­ly aware of sound sources, from tap danc­ing shoes to mega­phones and rustling leaves, to who gets to speak and when. Donen and Kel­ly bury their sound style deep with­in the film’s mech­a­nism so that the theme is more than a plot diver­sion to take us to the next song. Those tunes, most­ly cribbed from the ear­ly sound era, were the gen­e­sis of the film. Mega-pro­duc­er Arthur Freed want­ed a way to keep the MGM cat­a­logue in use, and ordered a script from writ­ing duo behind On The Town, Bet­ty Com­den and Adolph Green. It’s a pre­cur­sor to the Juke­box Musical.

In the Musi­cal genre, songs either dri­ve the plot for­ward, or pause on a feel­ing. Here, it’s the lat­ter, music burst­ing from nowhere. With songs like ​‘Moses Sup­pos­es’ and ​‘Good Morn­ing’, Kel­ly and Donan cel­e­brate the sen­sa­tion of feel­ing gassed. Gassed about liv­ing your dreams. Gassed about spend­ing time with your best friends. When Don and Cos­mo play human bucka­roo by pil­ing assort­ed pieces of fur­ni­ture on an elo­cu­tion spe­cial­ist, while they tap dance in per­fect syn­chro­ni­sa­tion, it’s a Looney Tunes moment that would defy the laws of physics if not cap­tured in a sin­gle mas­ter shot. No won­der Kel­ly and Jer­ry mouse made such good dance part­ners in Anchors Aweigh.

Their joy presents an inter­est­ing con­trast with the char­ac­ters on the fringes. Someone’s always exclud­ed from Hol­ly­wood, and that’s what makes petu­lant, squeaky-voiced Lina Lam­ont so much more than the one-note gag that she ini­tial­ly seems to be. The humour increas­ing­ly comes at her expense, for her dar­ing to hold back Don and Kathy from their OTP. When Don teams up with the Stu­dio Boss to bring her down, the butt of the joke is the inse­cure actress. Sin­gin’ in the Rain is the quin­tes­sen­tial primer on the way Hol­ly­wood was, even in the way that it gloss­es over the less for­tu­nate. We don’t get access to oth­er side of tin­sel­town, Peg Ent­whis­tle throw­ing her­self off the Hol­ly­wood sign when she didn’t ​‘make it’.

These ques­tions add anoth­er dimen­sion to the already dense film­mak­ing. The ​‘Beau­ti­ful Girl’ mon­tage fea­tures some of the most gen­uine­ly avant-garde visu­als you’ll ever see in a Hol­ly­wood film. It takes the kalei­do­scop­ic pat­terns of Bus­by Berke­ley musi­cals and ani­mates them with cut-out body parts and plas­tic colours. And then there’s Don Lockwood’s goose­bump-induc­ing con­cep­tion of a can­dy coloured ​‘Broad­way Melody’ fea­tur­ing plen­ty of flap­per dancers and an extra­or­di­nary, Cyd Cherisse fea­tur­ing dream with­in a dream. This effer­ves­cent, life-affirm­ing cin­e­ma remains an anti­dote to any ail­ment, ill­ness, or woes about the state of Hollywood.