Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this is often considered the finest musical of all time. There is no offensive content -- just lots of dancing and catchy songs.
Families can talk about the characters and their motivations. Why does Kathy at first lie about liking the movies? Why does Don lie about his background? How is that different from the way that Lina behaves? Have there been any new inventions that you have seen that have changed people's jobs a lot? What inventions do you use that your parents didn't have when they were children? Your grandparents? Children might like to see some of the early silent movies to get an idea of what Hollywood was like in the days depicted in this movie. The films of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd are still wonderful, and kids will enjoy learning that a story can be told without words.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Nell Minow
Silent movie star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is paired on screen with Lina Lamont (Jean Hagan), who would like to be paired with him off screen as well. But Lina's personality is as grating as her squeaky, nasal voice. She is mean, selfish, arrogant, and stupid. Chased by fans following the opening of their latest movie, Don jumps into the car of Kathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds), who tells him she is a serious actress, and not at all interested in the movies. But later, at a party celebrating the new movie, Kathy appears again, jumping out of a cake. Don teases her about her "art" and she throws a pie at him, getting Lina right in the face by mistake. Lina, furious, has Kathy fired.
At the party, the guests are treated to an exhibition of the latest technology, "talking pictures." Everyone present dismisses it as a novelty. But when The Jazz Singer becomes a hit, Hollywood gets on the bandwagon. Production is halted on the latest Lockwood/Lamont movie, The Dueling Cavalier, while the stars are coached in vocal technique (with a delightful song mocking the exercises, "Moses Supposes"). But the movie is a disaster. Test audiences jeer and laugh.
Meanwhile, Don and Kathy have fallen in love. After an all-night brainstorming session, Don, Kathy, and Don's best friend, Cosmo (Donald O'Connor), come up with an idea. They can make their production into a musical, dubbing Kathy's voice for Lina's. Don resists at first, because it's unfair to Kathy. But they persuade him that it will just be this one time, and he goes along. However, it doesn't turn into a one-time thing and it's not long before Lina and Kathy are put on the spot and have to face the music.
This is often considered the finest musical of all time. Certainly it has it all: classic musical numbers and a witty script that's unusually sharp and satiric for a musical comedy, especially one making fun of the industry that produced it. Asked to name the top ten moments in the history of movies, most people would include the title number from this movie, in which Gene Kelly splashes and sings in the rain with what Roger Ebert called "saturated ecstasy." When Kelly swings the umbrella around and around and dances on and off the curb, his "glorious feeling" is contagious. Only in a movie containing that sequence would Donald O'Connor's sensational "Make 'Em Laugh" number be mentioned second. It is a wildly funny pastiche of every possible slapstick gag, done with energy and skill so meticulous that it appears entirely spontaneous.
Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adoph Green, asked to use some of the classic songs by Arthur Freed (later producer of most of the great MGM musicals) and Nacio Herb Brown, decided to set the movie in the era in which they first appeared, the early talkies. This gave them a chance to use some of the Hollywood folklore of that era, when careers like John Gilbert's were destroyed overnight, as audiences found out that their voices didn't match their faces. One especially funny scene has the technicians trying to find a way to record Lina's dialogue. When they put the microphone on her dress, all you hear is the sound of her pearls as she rubs them. When they put it lower down, you hear her heartbeat. When they put it near her, her voice fades in and out as she tosses her head.
The transition from silent movies to talkies was also lampooned in the first play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Once in a Lifetime. A silent star who has become deranged is the centerpiece of Sunset Boulevard. When told "You used to be big in pictures," she says, "I'm still big -- it's the pictures that got small."
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