Line #22 YMMV/SinginInTheRain


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Did Don's parents really give him the "Dignity, always dignity" motto and he doesn't want to admit that he failed to live up to it? Or was the motto just another one of his lies?
3	** Did Cosmo's father really tell him to be a comical actor, and did his grandfather really encourage him to tell jokes with "plenty of hoke"? Or was Cosmo just making those details up because he was singing a song?
4	* AwardSnub:
5	** It failed to get an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination for Best Picture when it first came out. Hell, it lost to ''Film/TheGreatestShowOnEarth''.
6	** Creator/GeneKelly and Creator/StanleyDonen weren't nominated for Best Director.
7	** Creator/JeanHagen's was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but the performances of Kelly, Creator/DebbieReynolds and Creator/DonaldOConnor were snubbed.
8	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
9	** "Beautiful Girl" seems to have one purpose and one purpose alone: So Cosmo can notice Kathy among the dancers, and tell Don, re-uniting the two (well, that and make fun of the types of musical numbers and songs that appeared in musicals back then, pre-''Film/FortySecondStreet''). The costume montage is especially BLAM-ish. In fact, the entire song was added simply because the filmmakers really liked their costume guy and they wanted to give him a chance to show off his work.
10	** "Moses Supposes" also counts. The scene starts off alright with Don being given lessons in correct enunciation but when Cosmo enters the picture, things quickly go off the rails as he and Don hijack the lesson by spontaneously creating a song-and-dance routine out of a tongue-twister and the whole thing seems to exist purely for the sake of watching Don and Cosmo mess around for five minutes. As with the other examples though, [[RuleOfCool it's so much fun to watch that it's difficult to care about its BLAM status]].
11	** "Broadway Melody" really takes the cake. Fourteen minutes of DisneyAcidSequence with no particular relevance to either the actual film ''or'' the FilmWithinAFilm it's supposedly a part of! And the part where Don dances ballet with Cyd Charisse in an abstract pink background is weird even for the sequence itself, essentially a BLAM within a BLAM. It is, however, [[RuleOfCool awesomely fun to watch]].
12	* EnsembleDarkhorse: This movie is of course a widely beloved classic, and all characters are very well liked, that said, Cosmo is still considered by many to be the best character in the movie. Lina also has her fans.
13	* EvilIsCool: Even after her FaceHeelTurn, Lina's still a fan favorite for turning out to be a NotSoHarmlessVillain who's capable of serious blackmail, and still being able to pull off a [[SoftSpokenSadist convincing innocent voice.]] Plus it's hard not to appreciate her hilarious one-liners.
14	* FranchiseOriginalSin: After the proliferation of "[[JukeboxMusical jukebox musicals]]" in the 2000s, which contrived their stories around pre-existing songs, people very quickly soured on the idea. This can make it weird to realize that this film, considered one of the greatest musicals ever, is also a jukebox musical (even if the term didn't exist at the time) because it used existing songs from the 1920s and 30s. What helps this film is that it has a structured plot -- the advent of sound in Hollywood, and how the industry deals with it -- that's complimented by and yet not dependant upon the songs; the songs themselves were mainly written during the time of this transition (and mostly by the film's producer!) so they never seem out of place in the world of the narrative; and by this point they're so old and so deeply associated with the film that watching it is likely the first time someone in the 2010s and 2020s would ever hear them, rather than having a pre-existing connection.
15	* HarsherInHindsight: Lina's scheme to ruin Kathy's career and preserve her own is quickly foiled, but in reality Hollywood would secretly adopt this method and continue dubbing actors for decades to come. It wasn't until the release of ''Film/TheKingAndI'' in 1956 and the reveal of Marni Nixon dubbing all of Creator/DeborahKerr's singing that the industry's secret was exposed. Even then the practice continued into the 1960s with ''Film/WestSideStory1961'' and ''Film/MyFairLady'', the latter of which generated such a huge controversy with Creator/JulieAndrews being passed over for Creator/AudreyHepburn, who then had 90% of her vocals dubbed, that it was perceived as having cost Hepburn an Academy Award nomination.
16	* HilariousInHindsight
17	** A character talks about taking Kathy's "credit card" out of the film they're making. At the time, this simply meant removing her name from the credits. Now, viewers might wonder why Kathy has a credit card in a film set in the 1920s.
18	** In the Japanese dub, Don is voiced by Creator/RyoHorikawa, whose most famous role is [[Manga/DragonBall Vegeta]], which in the ''Anime/DragonBallZBattleOfGods'' movie, he tries to dance and sing just to please Beerus, the God of Destruction. Needless to say, he really sucks on that.
19	** Don sarcastically predicts that Kathy will someday play Theatre/KingLear on stage. The notion of [[CrossCastRole a woman portraying King Lear]] came true in 2019, when Creator/GlendaJackson starred in a Broadway production.
20	* HoYay: Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown have a crazy and sometimes odd relationship with each other that shows signs that they're meant for each other. This is especially present during "Fit as a Fiddle" and "Moses Supposes".
21	* JerkassWoobie: [[RuleOfThree Again, Lina Lamont.]] It's understanable that she is worried about her career after talkies are introduced. However, she's selfish, vain and manipulative to Don and Kathy, she refuses to listen to Don when he plainly and nicely (at first anyway) tells her they are not in a relationship and decides to actively ruin Kathy's career purely out of spite.
22	* MemeticMutation: Don declares March 23rd his lucky day. Tumblr users have made a habit of reblogging [=GIFs=] of this scene on March 23rd every year. Some will also post on the 24th, with a GIF of Cosmo pointing out that it's actually the 24th since midnight passed.
23	* OlderThanTheyThink: Many younger viewers [[JukeboxMusical mistakenly believe the songs are original to the film]]. See FranchiseOriginalSin above.
24	* OneSceneWonder: Creator/CydCharisse in the "Broadway Melody" sequence nearly steals the film, without even a single word of dialogue. Also Julius Tannen, playing the guy appearing in the short film demonstrating the new sound technology.
25	* OneTrueThreesome: The fanfiction-writing fandom loves Don/Kathy/Cosmo, as can be evidenced on Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn.
26	* {{Padding}}: The film is only about an hour and a half long, and quite a lot of that time is taken up by musical numbers that have almost nothing to do with the plot, like "Beautiful Girl" and ''especially'' "Broadway Melody". However, those numbers are [[RuleOfCool so awesome that it's difficult to care]].
27	* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/RitaMoreno, aka [[Film/WestSideStory1961 Anita]] (and [[WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego Carmen Sandiego]]), played Zelda.
28	* RootingForTheEmpire: Lina has her fans, most of them out-of-universe, mostly because of her famous one-liners, her cunning personality which subverts the blonde stereotype at times as well as her extravagant wardrobe.
29	* SignatureScene:
30	** Gene Kelly's exuberant dance to the title song, swinging around the lamppost and splashing with his umbrella as he's, well, singing in the rain. (Made even more impressive by the fact that he had a high fever during the shoot, and ''ad libbed'' most of it.) It's iconic enough to get its own parody trope: SpoofingInTheRain.
31	** "Make 'em Laugh" is a close second, with some truly incredible slapstick from Donald O'Connor.
32	* SpecialEffectsFailure:
33	** When Don runs into the building that explodes, the characters off to the side change position with the cut.
34	** During the famous titular number, a wide-angle crane shot reveals several large water puddles in the far background which show no raindrop splashes, revealing the "rain" as occurring only in the foreground where Don is (and where the camera can pick it up).
35	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "Make 'Em Laugh," the only new song Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown are credited with writing for the film, is clearly based on Music/ColePorter's "Be a Clown" from ''Film/ThePirate'', which Freed had produced several years earlier; the tune is basically a sound-alike that is just different enough to avoid the legal definition of plagiarism. According to the creators, they told Freed that none of his earlier songs would fit Donald O'Connor's big scene, and asked him for something similar to "Be a Clown," not expecting him to come back with something ''that'' similar. Porter, who was working on other film projects with MGM, didn't make any public comments on it, though Porter's friend Music/IrvingBerlin was reportedly furious when he visited the set and heard a playback of the song, demanding that Freed tell him who stole Porter's song.
36	* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel: The titular song and dance sequence.
37	* ValuesDissonance: Don gives a completely false account of how he got into acting, mentioning having attended prestigious acting schools while he actually honed his acting skills as a street performer and in minor, lackluster roles. This would be an utterly baffling thing to do from the perspective of a modern viewer, who would be much more likely to relate to a classic "underdog" story instead of that of a person who rode his privilege all the way into glory. From TheRoaringTwenties to TheSixties, Hollywood promoted an idea of respectability, appealing to American middle-class values, so that meant hiding their past, their genuine RagsToRiches story and in some cases their origins (Irish in some cases, but Jewish especially) to make them fit the tastes of what they believed was "[[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant WASP]] middle America", so it is actually quite accurate to the values of the silent era.
38	* ValuesResonance: The reaction of the preview audience to sound being clumsily added to ''The Dueling Cavalier'' is very similar to modern reactions to films that show off the latest technological advances (e.g., CGI, 3D conversion) without backing them up with a strong script.
39	* VindicatedByHistory: The film had a disappointing box office and was generally snubbed by the Oscars, but is now seen as one of the great movie musicals of the 20th Century.

Context YMMV / SinginInTheRain