Links: IMDb * Wikipedia * All Movie Guide
Premise: A musical that serves as both a love story and a telling of the advent of "talkies" and its effect on the silent motion picture industry.
Stars: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen
Review: Watch it just for the musical numbers and you'll miss a good film. It probably could've been made without the songs, and would serve as a good movie about the struggles studios went through when The Jazz Singer appeared - jobs were lost or changed due to the nature of people's voices as well as the musical direction of film - instead of having an individual playing music at certain spots during film, or intermission, an entire score could be added to film and projected through speakers. Actors with distinct accents were no longer acceptable for every role - major stars in Hollywood had their careers destroyed by the advent of sound.
The film focuses on Lockwood and Lamont, a leading actor and actress pair that dominates a studio's film library. However, with the appearance of sound, Lina Lamont (Hagen) and her grating accent (played mostly for laughs in the film) may undermine the latest picture the studio is financing. Lockwood (Kelly) and his partner Cosmo (O'Connor) figure out a way around this; they have an up-and-coming actress (Reynolds) that Lockwood is romantically interested in do voice-over work for Lina. This leads to a power struggle between Lina and the rest of the studio, until she is exposed as a fraud before a film audience.
The musical numbers themselves are memorable - the "Broadway Melody", the eponymous "Singin in the Rain", "Good Morning to You" are delightful. Especially attention-grabbing is Cyd Charisse's appearance in the "Broadway Melody" where her long legs halt Gene Kelly in his tracks.
Overall: Good
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