Wednesday, September 26, 2007
I watched Singin' In The Rain again! Ebert says he watches it once a year, and because I love this movie as much as he does, but hadn't seen it in at least two, I was long overdue. My most memorable screening took place in the high mountains of Telluride at the Film Festival in 2002. It was the 50th Anniversary of the film and screenwriter Betty Comden miraculously made the flight in for a chat with Elivis Mitchell; as I recall, in her 80+ years of age, she was too weak to get up on stage post-screening by herself, so two people hoisted her to the platform while she sat in her chair. It was a complete delight. Her co-writer Adolph Green didn't make the trip that year, and about a month after the festival he died at age 88. The energy of Ms. Comden alone, however, was phenomenal; we were all sharing the same small auditorium with a living Hollywood legend, and she was vivid and articulate and witty to boot. Of the handful of celebrities I've ever been in close proximity to, her presence was the most moving--and she was fifty feet away! (Anecdote: Steven Spielberg is my next-biggest celebrity sighting who walked past me on queue outside Film Forum for a 3-D screening of Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder.)
The "Singin' in the Rain" sequence is the finest of American Musicals, and if my count is correct, there are a mere 8 cuts in the entire segment. Apparently, Gene Kelly was sick as a dog with a cold when the shot it, but you wouldn't know it. His dance is seamless, mesmerizing, lovely, jolly, a feat of human mobility and coordination that comes so smoothly as to be mere intuition. Kelly is indeed an innate genius in jazz shoes.
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