A classic 1952 film from Metro Goldwyn Mayer, considered by many to be the greatest Hollywood musical ever made — certainly, containing one of the most iconic production numbers in live-action cinema history.In a nutshell, what happened when legendary screenwriters Comden And Green were given the keys to the MGM music vaults and told to pound out script based on what they found inside. (The only totally original song in the film is the novelty number "Moses Supposes". "Make 'em Laugh" is generally considered a rip-off of Cole Porter's "Be a Clown", though he never complained.)The result is a light but sledgehammer-accurate comedy set during the transition from silent film to talkies in the twenties — a period of major upheaval in the movie industry, as stars learned to cope with the novel concept of 'talking' and all its attendant requirements. Chief among them being, of course, that now they had to act.Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is an Errol Flynn expy in silent Hollywood, one-half of the A-list team "Lockwood & Lamont." His partner is Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), a bottle-blonde, bubble-brained diva who has long since turned Don off any idea of carrying the romance offscreen, despite studio pressure. Lina, however, is undaunted.On the whole, though, Don's got not much to complain about. He's the George Clooney of his day: rich, debonair, enjoying the celebrity life to the hilt. Then, fleeing a mob of fans one night, Don's rescued by self-described "serious actress" Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds). She not only proves immune to his advances but accuses him of having no artistic substance. Don is incensed, but her words prove prophetic with the rise of The Jazz Singer. Don's studio abruptly (as in mid-take) decides to make the current Lockwood & Lamont picture a "talkie" too. Cue frantic — and cringe-worthy — attempts on everyone's part to come to grips with the new method. Unfortunately, no technology in the world can fix Lina's voice, a shrill Brooklyn screechcompletely at odds with her silent image as a leading lady.Faced with utter ruin when the now-wildly anachronistic The Dueling Cavalier is hooted down at a test screening, Don, Cosmo and Kathy cook up a plan so wild it just might work: convert the whole mess into a musical. Of course, his "co"-star still can't sing any better than she can speak. Thus, inspired by a synchronization accident during the screening, Cosmo also invents dubbing, and arranges for Kathy to secretly record all of Lina's songs and dialogue. Inevitably, Lina discovers the ruse and cites breach of contact, using it as leverage to ruin everyone's careers and potentially seize the studio. Maybe she's not as dumb as she looks...Will Kathy be forced to give up her dreams? Or will the power of True Love win out over studio greed? And will Cosmo ever get to "start suffering and write that symphony"?
Affectionate Parody: Of the early Hollywood musicals. And like the best affectionate parodies, it pokes fun by being a great example of an old school Hollywood musical.
Almighty Janitor: Cosmo is clearly the greatest technical genius in cinema history. Starting as a lowly pianist for sappy love scenes, Cosmo single-handedly rescues an unreleasable picture in post-production by splicing it into a different movie (paving the way for Godfrey Ho's career... but no one's perfect); comes up with the idea of using playback to dub new lines into existing scenes; invents lip-synching on the fly; and just generally saves the entire studio from going bankrupt. "Gimme a raise", indeed.
Bad Bad Acting: Cosmo and Don (Don even admits it to Kathy), both humorously and charmingly; Lina, not so much on either count. Don takes it a little too far in the original version of The Dueling Cavalier, to the point where he actually manages to give an even less convincing performance than Lina. Woof.
Badass: Don started off his Hollywood Career by being a stuntman. Stunts included driving off a cliff on a motorcycle and entering an exploding shed.
Belligerent Sexual Tension: Inverted. Arguing with Lina only makes her hot under the collar, while Don himself is a block of ice.
Lina: [after a take] Oh, Donnie...you couldn't kiss me like that and not mean it! Don: Behold the world's greatest actor. I'd rather kiss a tarantula. Lina: Oh...you don't mean that! Don: I don't...? Hey, Joe, get me a tarantula.
Big Applesauce / The Big Rotten Apple: In "Broadway Melody", a rube with aspirations of being a Broadway star (Don) arrives in Manhattan and quickly gains fame, at the expense of his innocence. The song ends on an upbeat note, with an identical nerd in glasses greeting a tuxedo-clad Don, continuing the cycle.
Captain Obvious: The man in the "talking picture" demonstration. Justified somewhat as he is trying his best to sell a totally new and unknown concept (and even then the party-goers don't quite get the idea at first), but still:
Hello. This is a demonstration of a talking picture. Notice: it is a picture of me, and I am talking. Note how my lips and the sound issuing from them are synchronized together in perfect unison."
Crowd Song: Cleverly lampshaded during both "You Were Meant For Me", in which Don deliberately uses studio effects to set up the perfect romantic backdrop; and the title song's sequence, which ends abruptly when he runs into a policeman.
Dastardly Whiplash: The villain of the original cut of The Dueling Cavalier. "Pierre is miles away, you wench!"
Deadpan Snarker: Don and Cosmo, generally in reference to Lina. Cosmo in general, really:
Don: I'm no actor. I never was. Just a bunch of dumb show. I know that now.
Cosmo: Well, at least you're taking it lying down.
Kathy has her moments, especially when she's driving Don to his home (at the corner of Camden Drive and Sunset Boulevard):
Kathy: Oh, no offense. Movies are entertaining enough for the masses but the personalities on the screen just don't impress me. I mean they don't talk, they don't act, they just make a lot of dumb show. Well, you know (she does some major leaguesilent acting ) — like that.
Disney Acid Sequence: The "Broadway Melody" and "Beautiful Girls" numbers, both of which come from waaaaaaay out in left field stylistically. Though as Roger Ebert pointed out, setpieces like Broadway Melody were pretty common in movie musicals of that era.
Doomed New Clothes: Don and Lina don new outfits for their big premiere. Before the end of the night both are ruined.
Dream Sequence: The Dancing Cavalier is retconned into an extended dream sequence by Don's character, a stagehand who gets pasted by a falling sandbag and dreams himself in 17th century France.
Driving A Desk: The scenes in Kathy's car when Don first meets her.
Eureka Moment: Cosmo realizing they can dub over Lina, after he and Kathy mock some of the sound issues at the premiere.
In "Good Morning", Don, Kathy, and Cosmo dance with their raincoats and hats.
In "Make 'Em Laugh", Cosmo dances with a wall and a dummy.
Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Or Smarter in Italian — Cosmo's "Ridi, Pagliacci, ridi!" before "Make 'Em Laugh". (Translation: "Laugh, clown, laugh!")
The Family for the Whole Family: Cyd Charisse plays the flirtatious moll of a mute, coin-flipping mobster with a scarred face, a la Al Capone. His goons flip coins, too. Ooh, scary. (Later, when Don tries his luck with the dancer again, she answers him with a coin flip. Drat.)
Fangirl: A crowd of them rip apart Don's clothing at the beginning of the movie. The fans at the red carpet are also hilariously overenthusiastic.
Film Within A Film: Both fictional and real ones (The Jazz Singer) are referenced. Played with at the end of the movie. The final shot is of a billboard advertising Don Lockwood and Kathy Seldon, in a picture called...wait for it...Singin' in the Rain.
Get Thee to a Nunnery: "Lemme guess: she's a simple girl of the people, you're a dashing aristocrat, and she won't even give you a tumbril. Hah!"
Gold Digger: Cyd Charisse loses interest in Don's character when her beau dangles a diamond necklace in front of her. His bored expression suggests that this is a nightly routine.
Groupie Brigade: Kathy rescues Don from a textbook example of one of these. Honourable mention to the audiences at the various previews: "She's so refined... I think I'll kill myself."
Have a Gay Old Time: When Lina complains of having to speak into a hidden mic during a garden scene: "I can't make love to a BUSH!"
Herr Doktor: The demo for the new sound equipment features narration by a creepy technician with an implacable accent.
Honest Corporate Executive: R.F. is actually very supportive of Don and Cosmo's plan for The Dueling Cavalier and helps however he can, plans to push Kathy into the spotlight once The Dueling Cavalier is released, and helps Don and Cosmo reveal Lina as a fraud with visible glee.
It Was All Just A Dream: The framing device used to switch The Dueling Cavalier from campy to intentionally campy.
It Will Never Catch On: What the studio executives believe about sound in films when talking about the upcoming release of The Jazz Singer. Lampshaded by Cosmo: "That's what they said about the horseless carriage."
Jukebox Musical: As was the style for original movie musicals at the time, the songs were all written before the movie was made. There are, if you listen to the score, absolutely no proper nouns in any of the songs (except for "Moses Supposes," a nonsense song and, as previously mentioned, the only one original to the film).
Love Makes You Crazy: In this case, it makes formerly cynical Hollywood stars (currently wearing expensive suits) toss their umbrellas aside to go dancing and swinging and splashing ecstatically through torrential downpours, all the while singing about how they don't care! because they're just that happy to be in love.
Narm: An in-universe example: The Dueling Cavalier is supposed to be a serious romantic drama, but the introduction of sound and the technical limitations that it imposes unintentionally turn it into a hilarious disaster. A bit of Truth in Television too, as many films did suffer artistically when sound was first introduced.
Nerd Glasses: Don's character in the "Broadway Melody" sequence.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: R.F. is an affectionate parody of producer Alan Freed, right down to his catchphrase "I can't quite visualize it..."
In the montage for the new talkies, one of the singers is a Rudy Vallee impersonator.
Olga Mara is an amalgam of Pola Negri and Theda Bara; Zelda Zanders is a cross between Clara Bow and Joan Crawford (In her early career).
No Song for the Wicked: Lina has no singing number, just a brief sound test. Justified since her voice is really awful.
Not so Above It All: Shocked at Don just leaping into her car, Kathy claims not to have heard of him. Then she later fesses up that she's seen most of his films.
Old Shame: Don would much prefer to forget his days hoofing it as a vaudevillian with Cosmo and his big break as a stuntman.
Pie in the Face: Kathy tries to whack Don with one... and gets Lina instead, unfortunately for her. Lampshaded in Kathy's comment as she does it: "Here's one thing I've learned from the movies!"
Pimped-Out Dress: Quite a few, this being the era in which this trend reached full flower. One of the dresses in the opening red carpet scene is covered in ermine tails as though it was fringe. Later, we see a montage of the very latest Jazz Age fashions as part of the "Beautiful Girls" production number. Lina's last dress has a skirt covered in feathers (and the rest of it is completely covered in silver sequins).
Not to mention Lina's dress in The Dueling Cavalier.
Plucky Comic Relief: At Don's side is his lifelong sidekick, wisecracking studio musician Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), whose tact fortunately extends at least as far as keeping quiet about their days as a failed vaudeville dance team...
Popcultural Osmosis: The titular 'Singin' in the Rain' scene is far better known than the film as whole, and many people familiar with the scene don't know the context of it (that the formerly cynical star is so crazy with being in love for the first time that he doesn't care about the downpour as he dances and sings for joy).
Pretty in Mink: Several fur wraps and capes are worn, especially in the opening scene.
Gets confusing (and funnier) when you find out that Jean Hagen (who played Lina) actually does some dubbing for Debbie Reynolds (who played Kathy). So Jean Hagen dubs Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen.
Not only that, but in the song "You Are My Lucky Star" Reynolds is actually dubbed by Betty Noyes (although not because Reynolds' voice was no good), which is ironic, considering the premise of the movie.
Second Face Smoke: In the "Broadway Ballet" sequence, done to Don's character by Cyd Charisse's vamp.
She's Got Legs: In the "Broadway Ballet" extravaganza, Cyd Charisse's entrance is marked by her slowly handing Gene Kelly his hat back after he drops it... using one of her very long, very beautiful legs to do it.
Shout Out: Don's first musical film, The Dancing Cavalier, is about a modern guy who gets knocked out and dreams of being an aristocrat in old-time France. In real life, this was the premise of the 1943 musical film DuBarry Was A Lady, which was Gene Kelly's first musical film for MGM.
The Show Must Go On: Verbatum from Cosmo, getting Don to stop thinking about Kathy.
Sidekick Song: "Make 'em Laugh", Cosmo's attempt to cheer Don up by hurling himself around a living-room set until he resembles a one-man Looney Tune — amazingly, all done with almost no camera cuts.
Smoking Is Glamorous: Lina at the release party. Cyd Charisse's nameless dancer in 'Broadway Melody' later takes it to an even higher level.
So Bad, It's Good: The audience's reaction to the sneak preview of The Dueling Cavalier. The actors and executives don't take it half so well. invoked
Star-Making Role: For Debbie Reynolds, who was 19 when this movie was made. Invoked by the studio, who felt she was ready to be pushed to the next level of stardom. As Singin lore reveals, it was a bumpy ride for her.
Traintop Battle: Film Within A Film example. During a scene where Don and Cosmo wander around the studio, one of the events going on around them is the filming of a train-top fight scene (on a train carriage that's fixed in place in front of a Wraparound Background).
The Voiceless: Implemented (briefly) at the beginning of the film: the viewer doesn't hear Lina speak for the first time until the funniest possible moment.
Waiting For A Break: Don and Cosmo in the opening narration, later mirrored in the "Broadway Melody" number. In both versions, Don ekes out a living in pool halls and Vaudeville before graduating to the big leagues.
Who Writes This Crap?!: During the disastrous screening for "The Dueling Cavalier", someone in the audience asked if someone was paid to write the dialog. (In fact, they weren't; Don found the scripted line too difficult to say and asked permission to ad-lib. Whoops.)
Woman in White: Cyd Charrise's dancer swaps her green cocktail dress for a white gown in the casino ("Broadway Melody"). Don's character enters a dream sequence where he imagines her a virginal, ballet-dancing beauty.... But she hasn't really changed.
World of Ham: From the opening reel to the end credits. The movie director, Roscoe Dexter, probably takes the cake.
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