This sublime 1952 movie musical, in cinemas again, puts the artistry of Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and co on full, joyful display
You can charm the critics but have nothing to eat! That’s the shrewd warning from Donald O’Connor’s character Cosmo Brown in his legendary song Make ’Em Laugh, in the equally legendary 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain, written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and now being rereleased. Forget about the hoity-toity critics and the clueless highbrows, Cosmo proclaims: the real duty – and real artistry – lies in entertaining people. (Jack Buchanan’s song That’s Entertainment in The Band Wagon, directed at Fred Astaire, has a similar moral: be it
comedy or tragedy, if it works on stage or screen, then it is entertaining and therefore artistic.)
To some extent, cinema’s crisis of self-doubt is part of what drives this incredible film. Kathy Selden, played by Debbie Reynolds, is the wannabe actor and stern ingénue who lectures Gene Kelly’s genially complacent silent movie star Don Lockwood about the superiority of the legitimate theatre over the movies when they meet-cute. Nobody really believes that – not even Kathy, who is making ends meet jumping out of a cake at
Hollywood parties and going into a sublime song’n’dance routine to All I Do Is Dream of You. When the silent cinema is forced to accommodate sound, and Don and his co-star make their first faltering attempts to speak from the screen, for an awful moment their acting looks crass, childish and incompetent. Are the naysayers right? Are the movies just silly?