I don’t want to be petty, but if you dislike Singin’ in the Rain, I don’t think we can be friends. This is not a tested theory. I haven’t researched it. It’s only my gut feeling and you can’t help but trust your gut even if your gut, like mine, was wrong the last thirty-seven times that you followed it.
Still, if you hate the most charming movie musical ever made, what OTHER good things do you hate? Basic human decency? Good hygiene? Being a polite houseguest?
It makes a person wonder.
My favorite thing about Singin’ in the Rain—above even the sparkling performances, the great old songs, the beautiful Technicolor and Gene Kelly’s always fascinating choreography—is that it’s a real film buff’s movie. It’s about movies. The setting is the end of the silent era and some of the sharpest comedy here references real life stories of Hollywood’s scramble to adapt to sound after the sudden success of The Jazz Singer. The bitter tale of John Gilbert is here in exaggerated form (he was the famous romantic lead of the 1920s whose career instantly tumbled with sound movies). There’s also commentary on the stagey productions of early talkies due to the unwieldy equipment and microphones. Then there’s the opening scene, a grand old Hollywood movie premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, that presents parodies of Clara Bow and Gloria Swanson. And who doesn’t enjoy those behind-the-scenes stories where a romantic screen couple actually hate each other on the set (think Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake)? That’s here, too.
On the film buff note, this is among the most fiercely cinematic musicals ever made, using bold camera movement, special effects, clever editing tricks and tributes to old movie styles, always to colorful effect. Anyone who likes to watch the way that movies work will get an eyeful here. This was state-of-the-art Hollywood filmmaking in its day, set in the past, but made with a modern approach. Today, it’s still exciting and funny. I caught a revival screening in a theater in Dallas on a Sunday afternoon in 2015. Along with the usual film nerds, the movie also brought out families with young children. In the lobby afterwards, a lot of those kids were spinning around in circles, leaping and striking balletic poses, imitating things they’d just seen, graceful in their minds.
To a bunch of 8-year-olds, this sixty-three-year-old film had barely aged a day. And that’s the real test, isn’t it?