Here's another movie that almost everyone loves, but most have their own story regarding it. For me, it was watching it almost every year on KTLA 5 in LA. And every year, even as a young child, I loved watching it. As a child and a young man, I disliked musicals. I thought they were utterly preposterous. As an adult, I have come to appreciate and even love musicals. I realized somewhere along the way that musicals, just like any genre, have their good and their bad representatives. But this film was always the one musical I loved even in the years I claimed not to like musicals. As I have grown to love this genre, this movie still holds a special place for me.
What I have come to appreciate even more as I have grown older is how smart this movie is. It is a wicked satire. I would even say that a film like "This is Spinal Tap" works in its shadow. In this movie, we have an industry going through a Copernican style revolution, and there are skeletons in said industry's closet. The film is set in Hollywood at the end of the silent movie era. Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont (Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen) have been marketed as a Hollywood couple, and the release of each of their films is an event. They are the toast of Hollywood, and things couldn't be better, so it seems. Then, a wrench is thrown into everything with the arrival of talking pictures. Lina has a horrible voice, and Don's acting skills need refining. The contrast of what is seen on screen and what is real life becomes uproarious. Enter Cathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds), a talented young actress who can act and sing. Don falls in love with her, endangering the cooked up Hollywood romance on which the studio is depending. Add Cosmo Brown (Doanld O' Connor), Don's old buddy, to the mix, and the chemistry is perfect.
Each musical number gets better, and then we reach the title number. The title number elicits goose bumps from me very time I watch it, and most of us have hummed it to ourselves at one time or another while walking in the rain. A month or so again, U2's Bono led the crowd here in Minneapolis in a sing along of this song, as all of us were caught in a summer downpour.
This movie stands as a cultural landmark. It could only have been made in America, and it shows us some of what is to be celebrated about the American culture, in spite of all the messiness of our culture. Put the film in the DVD player. Laugh out loud at the wonderful contrast between Don's spoken autobiography and the pictures telling us what actually happened. Howl watching Lina Lamont decimate the English language. Cringe watching Donald O' Connor making mince meat of his body in the "Make 'Em Laugh" number. And finally, let your heart glow as Gene Kelly twirls his umbrella and pounces on the lamp post. It just doesn't get much better than this.
