The best Hollywood musical ever made. Gene Kelly, an umbrella, a lamppost, and a sequence in the rain that defined what cinema could do with joy.
Hollywood, 1927. Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are the silent-era romantic pair starring opposite each other in Monumental Pictures' biggest hits. Don's voice and physical grace transfer well to sound; Lina's screeching New York accent does not. The studio decides to dub Lina's voice using Kathy Selden, a chorus girl Don has fallen for. The complications follow.
The film unfolds across roughly six months, from the premiere of The Dueling Cavalier (the silent film that becomes the studio's first sound film, with disastrous early results) to its successful reinvention as a musical, The Dancing Cavalier. The closing sequence reveals Lina's voice was Kathy's; Don and Kathy end up together; the camera pulls back on the studio billboard for their next collaboration.
Singin' in the Rain is, by general critical consensus, the greatest Hollywood musical ever made. The American Film Institute's 2007 100 Years…100 Movies survey ranked it the fifth-greatest American film of all time across all genres. The Sight & Sound critics' poll has placed it in the top twenty in multiple iterations. There is no serious contemporary survey that excludes the film from its first tier.
What makes the film hold up is the synthesis. The musical numbers are integrated into the plot rather than imposed on it. The choreography is built around character rather than abstract dance. The Hollywood-on-Hollywood story has genuine dramatic stakes — the studio's transition to sound was, in 1952, recent enough that the audience understood the references. The film is, by any honest reading, the form's high-water mark.
The famous Gene Kelly title sequence — Don walking home from Kathy's apartment in a downpour, dancing through puddles and splashing water at a beat cop — runs roughly four minutes. The sequence has been parodied, quoted, and homaged so many times that its specific qualities are sometimes overlooked.
Kelly performed the sequence with a 103-degree fever. The 'rain' was a mixture of water and milk to make it visible to the camera. The sequence was shot on the MGM backlot's New York Street set, with the buildings retrofitted for the period. The choreography is built around incidental street architecture — the lamppost, the kerb, the awning, the puddle — rather than around an abstract dance space. The sequence is, in some sense, a small lesson in how cinematic choreography differs from stage choreography. Stage dance owns the floor; cinematic dance owns the location.
The film's other most-discussed number is Donald O'Connor's Make 'Em Laugh sequence, performed solo by O'Connor across roughly three minutes of athletic physical comedy. The routine includes a backflip up a wall, multiple pratfalls, a chase through wooden boards, and a final tumbling sequence that reportedly required O'Connor to spend several days in bed afterwards.
O'Connor performed the entire routine in approximately three takes. The original take was lost when the film negative was damaged in processing; O'Connor was asked to redo it, performed it again at the same level of athletic commitment, and reportedly told Donen he refused to do it a third time. The sequence is, by survey of working choreographers, one of the most physically demanding pieces of solo dance ever filmed in mainstream American cinema.