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Insomnia Cinema: Singing In the Rain (1952) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-05 15:13:28
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, Rita Moreno, Millard Mitchell

Files

Previews only

SingingInTheRain

Comments

Toc

Ok, you guys are killing me! I still haven't watched Eraserhead or Talented Mr. Ripley yet....and you drop Singin' In The Rain???!!!! Ok, well, I'm changing my plans for today because 1.) it's frickin' cold in NYC right now and 2.) Singin' In The Rain is the single most entertaining movie I have ever seen! There is no way you don't love this movie. Maybe I'm wrong! We'll see! THANK YOU!!!!! As I say ad infinitum: I'm a VERY satisfied customer! (Don't mean to be overly effusive all the time!) PS If Joe hasn't seen this one, I'd watch it all over again with him at some point! Just sayin'!

Sly_Budlong

Love this movie! It was my mother's and my favorite movie for a long time!!

Just Lily

Such a good choice, especially after Sunset Boulevard

Skinny_Obelix

Every time I watch this I'm surprised how well it holds up

Pam Nail

My favorite movie musical ever! The title number is iconic, but there are so many great moments. Donald O'Connor doing "Make 'em Laugh" is incredible. And Jean Hagen taking elocution lessons ("I caaaaaaan't stan'im!") never doesn't crack me up.

Pam Nail

- They did usually record the taps in post for musical numbers. Gene Kelly's taps for the "Singin' in the Rain" number were done by none other than Gwen Verdon (along with Carol Haney, who also served as a choreography assistant with Verdon). - Kelly and O'Connor did most of their own stunts. According to Kelly, they had a stunt man that was supposed to do stuff that would be too dangerous, but he kept getting hurt, so "90 times out of 100" he and O'Connor ended up doing the stunt anyway.

Toc

Fantastic reaction - So much of the movie was true: for instance: sound ended many actors’ careers. Clara Bow, for instance, was revealed to have a thick Brooklyn accent. Diction coaches DID take over Hollywood for a while. Cameras made so much noise they had to be kept in booths (suddenly limiting camera movement); microphones were hidden everywhere and in some early sound films, it's exactly as you see in this movie; early sound films were TERRIBLE for the most part….and lastly, for a couple of years they made (or tried to make) everything into musicals. Sound actually killed the movie biz for a couple of years as they figured out how to make good ones. Also silent movies and sound overlapped for a few years, it wasn't like silents were just suddenly wiped out. In fact, silents hit their artistic zenith during the last years of 1927-1929: "Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans", "The Man Who Laughs", "The Passion Of Joan Of Ark", "Metropolis", and "It" immediately come to mind. PS: My avatar is the great Mary Pickford! Incredible groundbreaking actress and film pioneer. Every movie lover owes her a great debt! - Technicolor has been around since 1922 (Down The Sea With Ships) and Douglas Fairbanks really put it on the map in 1926 with “The Black Pirate” (great movie, amazing stunts; Gene Kelly’s hero, that’s who he’s emulating in his swashbuckling scenes) Starting in the 30s there were lots of color movies, and by the fifties it was about half and half. Black and white was used as artistic choices as well as for budget reasons. But by the time of “Singin’ In The Rain” there had been loads of color movies. - -Love silent films. There are so many. Douglas Fairbanks films are AMAZING: The Mark Of Zorro. Great one to start with. You won’t believe how fresh it is. I saw a screening for it with an audience, they were blown away, gasping and literally cheering and applauding the stunts. Also: the inspiration for the Batman character! You’ll totally see it! The action movie hero BEGINS with “The Mark Of Zorro”. But there are so many great silent movies of every genre (with GREAT acting, I might add). It's way more than just the comedies and the German expressionism! - Love how you knew who Ziegfeld was! - I’m worried about your insomnia! I didn’t realize you literally had insomnia! Hope you're ok! I'm on a night schedule myself. P

Youtalkingtome
>>163720871

Thanks for that, Toc! I should have realized color films had been around longer (Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, etc.) I will chalk that one up to insomnia. I knew Flo Ziegfeld because I was in a production of The WIll Rogers Follies in college. :)

Youtalkingtome
>>163719387

Thank you! That really makes a lot of sense. The tap numbers were SO precise I felt like post was the only way to make a long musical one-shot number work so well. The stunt work by the two actors was absolutely spectacular!

Youtalkingtome
>>163704557

While the talent of the 3 leads is undeniable, I cannot express how much fun Jean Hagen was in this role. The "Cahn't" and "dahnce" sprinkled in with her own speech was killing me!

Youtalkingtome
>>163696442

You're not kidding! This was absolutely delightful, and I can't say enough about the incredible talent of the cast leads on display!

Youtalkingtome
>>163694131

For sure! The tie-in with how talking movies really changed the industry and the affect it had on career performers was really important in both. Two different studios, so it feels like this was really an important issue facing artists.

Youtalkingtome
>>163679577

It was absolutely wonderful! I have watched "Fit as a Fiddle" and "Good Morning" again today. So much talent on display!

Youtalkingtome
>>163679541

Thank you! I hope I didn't disappoint on your much-deserved day off! Yes, I LOVED this movie. A beautiful Old Hollywood musical in which the talents of the cast are really on display. Joe has already seen Singing In the Rain, so this was a great opportunity for me to watch.

Toc
>>163679541

Oh you did not disappoint! EXCELLENT commentary. Loved everything you noticed, from the way the actors moved, to the editing, to the costuming....the whole bird! It was a great day!!! I wept tears of joy through the whole thing! Good times! :D

Jonathan

Jean Hagen was fantastic with that voice acting. After this she was cast in a popular sitcom “Make Room for Daddy” and it didn’t work out for multiple reasons so after a few seasons they made the historic decision to kill off the mother in the sitcom to get her off the show. After a bit, of course they had the dad get remarried, but that became an issue for reruns so the Jean Hagen years are rarely seen.

Jonathan

This was a musical, that I only got around to watching a few years ago and this is by far the best reaction I’ve seen to it.

Cosmic Slice

This is one of my favourite movies of all time. I was totally in love with Donald O'Connor even as a kid. I've seen everything he, Gene Kelly have done as well as all the other musicals of the time. The "temptress" in the modern dance scene was the legendary Cyd Charisse. A few things about the movie. Donald O'Connor was a heavy smokers and after the "Make 'em Laugh" number, he was hospitalized for several days. Debbie Reynolds hated her hair in the movie and when her daughter, Carrie Fisher got cast in Star Wars she said, "make sure they don't give you a stupid hairdo". Gene Kelly was sick during the rain number and had a fever of 103. That number took 2 and a half days to film. I'm hoping one day you do Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire!

Allison O

There’s a classic story about the making of this film that Gene Kelly was such a perfectionist taskmaster that Debbie Reynolds, who was very young and early in her career and not so much of a trained dancer, ended up like crying under a piano and Fred Astaire happened to find her there and offered to help with her dancing. Gene Kelly actually mostly got his start on Broadway after having some pretty classic dance studio training as a kid and his family even running a studio. He was also an athlete and kept at it even while starring in movies; he needed to be replaced by Fred Astaire in I think Easter Parade because he broke his ankle playing recreational sports. If you compare them, Fred is such a pulled-up, light dancer and Gene is really into the floor - literally, he tends to dance with a deep knee bend that makes him look more athletic and down to earth. More lore: ironically, the speaking voice used for when Kathy is dubbing Lina in the film isn’t Debbie Reynolds - it’s Jean Hagen. Debbie’s voice wasn’t as refined as they wanted, so that’s Jean’s real speaking voice, playing Kathy playing Lina 🤣. Another singer also dubbed some of Kathy’s singing when she was meant to be Lina. As a kid who grew up in dance studios myself I lived for all these movies.

Allison O
>>163748018

Cyd Charisse and Cyd Charisse’s legs which frankly deserve their own credit line. Probably my favorite film of hers is The Band Wagon with Fred Astaire where they do the famous Dancing in the Dark (not the Springsteen song) number that Steve Martin and Gilda Radner parodied on SNL. Or Brigadoon, with her and Gene Kelly.

ScarlettMi

Colour filmmaking wasn't really an all-at-once thing in the way you think of it. This movie was definitely not an early colour film, as colour had been around in various ways for decades. From 1939 to 1966, the Academy Award for Best Cinematography was actually two awards: one for colour films and one for black-and-white films. While there had been earlier uses of colour in the 1900s-1920s, the late 1930s is when colour filmmaking really started taking off and becoming a regular feature of the big screen. You had movies like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Neither of those were the first, but they were definitely big memorable colour films. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had also come out in '37. The technology had gotten to the point where it was practical by 1940 to be able to film colour movies, but there were still issues of price and style choices. Some films didn't feel like they needed colour and it was a mix of motivations as to why some films were in black-and-white and some were in colour. It wasn't until the late 1960s that Hollywood started releasing more colour films than it released black-and-white ones. And even then there were still a lot of B&W movies coming out. It took a while for it to make sense economically to spend the money on colour for films that didn't seem to need it. You'd see more animated films, musicals, big epics in colour early on; but dramas and romances held onto B&W for longer.

Toc
>>163704557

I LOVED how you appreciated Jean Hagen in this!!! And by the way: when you see the scenes where Debbie Reynolds is supposedly dubbing Lena's singing and talking......they're actually using Jean Hagen's real voice! (Other than the end, when Debbie sings "Singin' In The Rain".) So Jean Hagen is dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen! 😂

Youtalkingtome
>>163764503

Thank you! I assumed it was a thing that happened relatively quickly once the technology was available and cost-effective, but it appears it was a gradual process. I appreciate the info!

Youtalkingtome
>>163748240

Thank you for sharing that! It is so wild to me that Jean Hagan did her own "proper" voice-over in the film. What a talent!

Cactus

Legends. You're now ready for a viewing (or rewatch for a full appreciation) of Damien Chazelle's Babylon. I suppose it's divisive and I agree that it's a bit too long, but... it rules.

DelGuy03
>>163704557

Jean Hagen was in fact the only actor from the movie nominated for an Academy Award (and the only nomination it received besides Scoring -- i.e., instrumental arrangements). It was a decent success at the time, but nobody thought of it then as an all-time classic; that status has built up gradually over the decades, and it certainly holds an exalted position now.

DelGuy03
>>163719387

Yes, if one thinks about it, during musical numbers in movies we're not hearing "live" sound -- all the music is pre-recorded -- so the taps would have to be added afterward as well. Even a purist like Fred Astaire (in his B&W series with Ginger Rogers he insisted on theatrical honesty -- takes as long as possible, and head-to-foot framing to preserve the integrity of what a dancer does) would have to post-dub the tap sounds after editing was completed.

DelGuy03

ALL the songs in the movie except two ("Make 'Em Laugh" and "Moses Supposes") are old songs previously performed in movies, by the team of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Even transitional bits like the montage are their songs. One of the best things about the DVD edition of the movie is that as extras it includes the original film renditions of all the songs, from a great variety of early talkies.

DelGuy03

Singin' in the Rain has in recent years been adapted as a stage musical. One of the big challenge for performers is doing all those exhausting tap number in real time with no retakes. And probably "Make 'Em Laugh," with its pratfalls etc., most of all. One of the more remarkable renditions of the song was done by Joseph Gordon-Levitt on SNL, complete with the "impossible" staging. Because the show didn't get music clearance for it, it's not in any of the archives or on YouTube (though it was there briefly). But various fans have made it available on other online media. It's worth a look: https://www.tiktok.com/@spenceralthouse/video/7235796299940007214?lang=en