Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: And that’s the thing that’s more than a little unnerving to me, because I loved this a very great deal. Maybe I’ve always been just slightly allergic to the big technicolor musicals, because I—despite all of my bluster to be one of those quintessential movie fanatics—am fundamentally an idiot.
The film is a bubbly journey through the transition from silent to synchronized sound, and makes it an exciting new adventure for the characters involved, not the insurmountable collision with obsolescence that it was for pretty much everybody other than Charlie Chaplin. Every character draws a guileless laugh from me. Every song—not just the one that got completely coopted by A Clockwork Orange (1971)—I found myself humming as I left the screening, and am still doing so as I type this review nearly a week later.
I should have been spending decades loving this movie and bothering everyone around me about how great it is. What else have I been missing? It boggles the mind, but I don’t feel shamed by the realization that I’ve been missing out. At worst, I feel sorry for the rash of people on social media as of late who bemoan what they see as movie snobbery, for they may never get to stumble across a movie that elicits this kind of response. It’s more a feeling of excitement that the very realization that this movie exists implies that there are any number of movies that have existing long before I was ever born and are just sitting there waiting for me to discover them.
I’m quietly, but insistently thrilled that I have so much more to see and experience. Good morning, indeed.