A memorable film for light, movement, music, dialogue, acting, sets, costumes, editing. Yet not awarded at the Oscars where he only got two nominations
Unlike the western, a “returning” and immortal genre par excellence (and transversal, and congenital to cinematic narration, especially overseas), any operation (even the most apparently noble: see Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) attempted on the musical genre classic from contemporary “live action” cinema (this clarification is necessary to immediately cut Disney and animated cinema out of the discussion: even if works like Frozen or Encanto indicate more or less the same impasse) is a sort of mediumistic exercise, a séance, a phantasmatic elegy that starts at a disadvantage both on the times we live in and on the now extinct harmony with the genre itself that the public (and the figures) continue to demonstrate.
Likewise, any registration operation of the musical genre in the contemporary world (even the most apparently motivated: see the very recent Annette by Léos Carax or Cyrano by Joe Wright) is not only voted from the outset to the same fate of irrelevance (especially commercial), but is immediately a loser in terms of comparison with everything that the musical of the so-called “golden times” has represented (and continues to represent, even in its most minor, forgotten and “industrial” forms) for the history of cinema. And it is no coincidence that only two diametrical but in their own way brilliant examples such as Jesus Christ Superstar or The Rocky Horror Picture Show are now permanent in the memory and in the cinephile myth, while any other postmodern attempt to reread the coordinates of the category (perhaps with a last exception: Grease) has quickly fallen into the great oblivion of forms. This long preamble, of which I apologize to the reader, is necessary to celebrate the seventy years (!) Of Singin ‘in the Rain (Singin’ in the Rain, 1951, by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly): which is instead with all odds (and despite its lesser “impact” in the sad official story of top honors: it only got two Oscar nominations, not transformed, compared to six won – out of eight nominations – by An American in Paris the previous year) the best musical of all time and the least attacked by the corrosion of time and memory.
As well as a movie (THE movie?) So, goodbye, first of all, what is defined in psychoanalysis as the “pleasure principle” without any interference with the “reality principle” is valid; a “monstrum” work which in its simplicity and in its direct and eternal usability can take on the (heavy) connotations of an epitome of sound cinema itself. Light, movement, music, dialogues, acting, sets, costumes, editing: every elemental and basic component of the seventh art finds in Cantando nel rain a natural and enchanting apex that transforms into a harmonic fusion of those emotions that are the implicit request. of every spectator to the dream factory. The story is very simple. In 1927, Hollywood star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and his partner in many films Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), considered by fans to be a couple in life but in reality “almost enemies”, have to deal with the advent of sound cinema after the success of the film The Jazz Singer.
Just like the producer RF Simpson (Millard Mitchell), boss of Monumental Pictures, who is forced by events to transform the couple’s latest silent adventure film into a dialogue product. But there is a problem: Lina’s voice, shrill and very annoying, which no one had ever heard before, and her inability to relate to modern methods of recording dialogues. And it is then that the musician Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor), best friend of Lockwood, suggests reworking the script to make a musical in which Lina would be voiced by the talented and very young actress and singer Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) of whom Don is madly in love. The decision obviously triggers the anger (and jealousy) of Lina, who in addition to trying to put “love” sticks in Don’s wheels forces the studio with blackmail that Kathy continues to secretly dub her future films as well. But when, after a triumphal premiere, she is asked to sing live, all the knots will come to a head.
If on the narrative level the screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolf Green (perhaps partly inspired by a 1946 French film with Yves Montand and Edith Piaf, Étoile sans lumière, in which a young singer lent her voice to that of a silent star unable to adapt to the sound) is both a funny optimistic pochade and a satirical reflection on the film industry, on the spectacular one the machine choreographed by Donen and Kelly is a formidable and inexhaustible source of wonders despite its “modest” primeval nature: MGM producer Arthur Freed in fact, he had initially thought of the film as an ante litteram “compilation” of songs written as a lyricist (including that of the original title, dating back to 1929) with his fellow composer Nacio Herb Brown; and the script was initially only to solve the problem of how to sew the various pieces together.
The result, however, was something unexpected and “magical”, full of numbers destined to become collective heritage: like Kelly’s epochal performance for Singin ‘in the Rain, shot in two days in which the actor was on set with a fever of forty; the Good Morning domestic trio; the Broadway Melody embellished by the physicality of the splendid Cyd Charisse; the Make ‘Em Laugh by the sensational Donald O’ Connor (one of only two pieces composed ad hoc for the film, with Moses Supposes, and the only one to have been re-performed – by the excellent Elio Pandolfi- for the Italian version of the film, in which all the other pieces have remained in the original edition with subtitles). It is an extraordinary lesson in directing (and very little aged on a purely technical level) whose responsibility lies in large part by the versatile Stanley Donen, one of the less “idealized” names in classic Hollywood, but to whom it is necessary to recognize a “crystallizing” ability. not dissimilar (heresy?) from that of a Kubrick or an Orson Welles.
March 24, 2022 (change March 24, 2022 | 08:35)
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