Singin’ in the Rain is a 1952 American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds and featuring Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charisse. It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to “talkies”.
The film was only a modest hit when it was first released. O’Connor won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America Award for their screenplay, while Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. However, it has since been accorded legendary status by contemporary critics, and is often regarded as the greatest musical film ever made, and one of the greatest films ever made, as well as the greatest film made in the “Freed Unit” at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It topped the AFI’s Greatest Movie Musicals list and is ranked as the fifth-greatest American motion picture of all time in its updated list of the greatest American films in 2007.
In 1989, Singin’ in the Rain was one of the first 25 films selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2005, the British Film Institute included it in its list of the 50 films to be seen by the age of 14. In 2008, Empire magazine ranked it as the eighth-best film of all time. In Sight & Sound magazine’s 2012 list of the 50 greatest films of all time, Singin’ in the Rain placed 20th.
These beautiful photos captured portraits of Debbie Reynolds during the filming of Singin’ in the Rain in 1952.
Gene Kelly was a great dancer but also a real bastard to work with.
ReplyDeleteThe 4 minute scene of Reynolds, Kelly, and O'Connor took over 15 HOURS to shoot.
And afterwards Miss Reynolds feet were bleeding and she was unable to walk for two days.
And after all that Kelly, as co-director, ended up using the first take.
Because of the huge success of "Singin' in the Rain" the producers wanted them to team up for several more movies but she absolutely refused to ever work with him again. Carrie Fisher talked about it and there's real bitterness in her tone when she mentions him.