Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly, Donen, 1952) was produced at a time when Hollywood was going through a plateau phase, with the hyper-productive era of the 20s and 30s echoing from a distant glorified past, while neorealism and French New Wave were steadily growing in Europe. Add the political turmoil to the equation and the persecution of communists and leftists, and one can imagine how challenging must have been to be an artist, let alone create masterpieces. The scene enter Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, who take advantage of the satirical and stealthy character of comedy and musical, and create unarguably one the most iconic musicals of all times, by ironically mocking and celebrating Hollywood at the same time.

The film opens at – what else if not – the premiere of Don Lockwood’s and Lina Lamont’s latest movie “The Royal Rascal”, with what the red carpet has always entailed: glamour, flashes, hysteria and gossip. At Don’s attempt to deflect the “journalist’s” inquiries about their relationship, he commences the narration of his path to success, a fairy-tale of “dignity”. His voice-over is comically contrasted by the visual story; the finest schools and high society become pool rooms, Shaw and Moliere are substituted by blockbusters like “The Dangers of Drucilla”, the Conservatory of Fine Arts turns into a saloon-bar, the finest symphonic halls in the country where audiences adore them transform to cheap slapstick comedy acts in front of a booing crowd, and the offers pouring down from the studios in sunny California break into pouring rain down Don and Cosmo stranded in front of the Employment Office. Don’s story is not presented here as a success story of the “’American Dream”, but it rather serves as a parallelism for Hollywood’s deceitful, manipulative and hypocritical realm; what is on-screen is a façade for what is happening behind the scenes, and as Ewing accurately describes “the gap between its clean-cut image of itself is so wide that it is no surprise that eventually someone would point a finger at it, and that someone was Gene Kelly” (2006: 16). As sarcastically Don is exclaiming his moto “Dignity, always dignity!”, studios will keep on continuing selling the image of the young, beautiful, glamourous, pure and fair Americans to this day.  

 After Cosmo and Don start working at Monumental Pictures, Don initiates a genre reference rollercoaster that will run through the entire film, or as Kelly puts it a “conglomeration of bits of movie lore” (Chumo, 1996: 40). Through Don’s roles in the movies, from musician, dancer, comedian, stuntman, and finally actor, the required flexibility and adaptability of a Hollywood artist is being emphasized. Along goes the variety of film genres and the versatility demanded by an actor to be able to adjust to the respective conventions; westerns, historical dramas, comedies, musicals, romances and melodramas. As Don, Cosmo and Kathy are dancing their musical numbers compiling every bit of film genre history, and the repetitive phrase “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all!” echoes in the film, it seems as if Kelly and Donen are questioning whether “Hollywood has reached a point of exhaustion” (Chumo, 1996: 39). And here lies the paradox of classical Hollywood: how an institution as rigid and corrupt as Hollywood can often be so radical and revolutionary at the same time?

Filmography

Kelly, Gene & Donen, Stanley, Singin’ in the Rain. 1952, Film. USA: MGM

Bibliography

Chumo, P.N. (1996) ‘Dance, Flexibility, and the Renewal of Genre in “Singin’’ in the Rain"”’, Cinema Journal, 36(1), pp. 39–54.

Ewing, M.M. (2006) ‘“Gotta Dance!” Structure, Corruption, and Syphilis in Singin’ in the Rain’, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 1, p. 12.