‘Twas the night before Opening Day here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and join us. We’re waiving the cover charge tonight. It’s getting crowded, but we still have a few good tables available. The show will start shortly. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last night I asked you if Michael Busch will avoid being platooned at first and start everyday against left-handers. Most of you are optimistic about Busch as 84 percent of you believe he’ll hit well enough to start against lefties.
Here’s the part where we listen to jazz and talk movies. You’re free to skip ahead if you want.
It’s a bit of a tradition around here for the last After Dark before Opening Day to feature organist Joey DeFrancesco performing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” This is from 2008.
Tonight we’re finishing up my countdown of the 2022 top ten films in the 2022 BFI Sight & Sound critics poll of the greatest film of all-time. It looks like I timed this well to finish up just before the season starts.
I hope I don’t upset too many of you with this evening’s essay.
10. Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. Starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen.
The alleged charms of Singin’ in the Rain are mostly lost on me. I just don’t get it. I even re-watched the film before writing this to make sure I wasn’t missing anything and nope, I still don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad movie. Some of the choreography, all done by Kelly, is magnificent. Magical, even. But beyond a few numbers, it’s just another assembly-line MGM musical. The plot is a combination of the tropes of boy-meets-girl and “Let’s put on a show,” just gussied up in Hollywood trappings. The songs are almost all recycled from earlier musicals or, in one case, flat-out plagiarized. The performances are strong and Donen makes the Technicolor look of the film pop. It’s a fine movie. It’s almost certainly one of the top ten movie musicals of all-time. But as one of the ten greatest films of all time? Rubbish.
Let me start with what I love about Singin’ in the Rain: the dancing. Two numbers in particular are among the greatest dance numbers ever put to film. Kelly doing the title song in the rain along the streets of the MGM lot is justifiably legendary. So is Donald O’Connor doing “Make ‘em Laugh.” It’s not easy for a performer to capture the screen like the two of them do as a solo dancer in their respective pieces. Kelly is so effortless in the rain. O’Connor turns in a terrific piece of slapstick in the form of a dance. There are other good dances as well. Kelly was the most athletic of classic Hollywood dancers (except maybe The Nicholas Brothers) and his choreography just jumps off the screen. He even got a good performance out of the non-dancer Reynolds.
The four stars are all good, at least for the material in an MGM musical, and of course this was Rita Moreno’s big break in a smaller, supporting role. I think a lot of people love the film just because they love the cast.
But the rest of the movie is just not that special. The plot is a love triangle between the characters played by Kelly, Reynolds and Hagen at the start of the sound era of Hollywood. The fact that it’s more about the myth, rather than the facts, of the transition from silent to sound bothers me more than it should. It’s a musical, not a documentary. In part that’s on me, but it also indicates that the plot is not exactly engrossing. Kelly’s Don Lockwood is a big Hollywood star of the silent screen. So is Hagen’s Lina Lamont, a shallow and egotistical star who believes she and Don are an item. Or at least she wants the public to believe that because it’s good for her career and she doesn’t want Reynolds’ Kathy Selden, a struggling wannabe actress whom Don falls in love with at first sight, getting in the way. Then there is the whole plot of trying to turn Don’s turkey of a silent movie into a successful talkie. Lina is a problem there because she has a voice like the Alvin and the Chipmunks production of The Nanny. The “solutions” to these movie problems are so obvious that all the hand wringing in the movie just makes the characters seem like idiots.
If there’s one thing movie people love the most, it’s movies about movies. Other than the dance numbers, that’s the only reason I can think of that Singin’ in the Rain is ranked so high. The color and look of the film is great, but certainly not better than the film Kelly made immediately previous to this, An American in Paris. It’s also practically drab and dull compared to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg a decade later.
The songs are almost all repurposed from Hollywood musicals of the twenties and thirties. That’s fine, but it means that the film lacks the originality needed to be a truly great movie. The only exceptions are “Moses Supposes,” which is forgettable, and “Make ‘Em Laugh.” Except that “Make ‘Em Laugh” isn’t really original, it’s flat-out plagiarized from the Cole Porter tune “Be A Clown,” which was featured in Kelly’s 1948 film, The Pirate. Yes, O’Connor’s performance is magic and far outshines the song and dance that Kelly and Judy Garland did to that song in The Pirate. It’s still lazy.
Roger Ebert made the point that after Singin’ in the Rain, Hollywood stopped making original musicals. Instead, they just adapted hit Broadway musicals and that’s not the same thing. Fair. Studio head Louis B. Mayer got canned at MGM in late 1951, and musicals were his thing. Something like Oklahoma or The Sound of Music got made for the same reason that Disney keeps doing live-action versions of their animated features—they came pre-sold. But we’re not giving an award to the entire form of the movie musical. At least I’m not. Even if we were, there would be better examples.
Would I put it in my top ten films of all time? Singin’ in the Rain is not a bad film. At times, it even lives up to the hype. But is it a better film than The Wizard of Oz? Not in my mind. Is it a better film than West Side Story? No! Is it a better musical than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort (the last of which also starred Gene Kelly)? Absolutely not. Is it a better film than All That Jazz? No! Does it deserve to be ranked ahead of the 1954 Judy Garland/James Mason version of A Star is Born? Hell no! And that’s even about Hollywood!
Is the dancing in Singin’ in the Rain better than the RKO Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies (at least the first three)? Arguably. I could go either way on that. Is it better than Yankee Doodle Dandy? OK. You got me there. It’s better than Yankee Doodle Dandy. It’s better than The Music Man, Grease and The Sound of Music. And it’s certainly a lot better than Oklahoma!, of which the less said the better.
So if you want to put Singin’ in the Rain among your top ten movie musicals of all time, I’d agree with you. That’s high praise. But there is no way in the world that I’m putting it among the ten greatest movies of all time. The musical that I think belongs in the top ten is director Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The choreography in that film isn’t as good as Singin’ in the Rain. But the plot, the songs, the performances and just the look if The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is far and above what we got in Singin’ in the Rain.
Here’s the famous Gene Kelly number. If the rest of the film were this good, then yeah, it would belong in the top ten films of all time. But only a few moments in the rest of the film reach this height.
Welcome back everyone who skips the music and movies.
Tonight is Opening Day eve. We’re all excited about the 2026 Cubs season. At least I think we’re all excited. Maybe you aren’t.
But tonight, I’m calling on your predictions for the Cubs’ 2026 win total. How optimistic are you?
If I ask you, it’s only fair that I tell you my prediction. I’m going with 94-68 and first place in the NL Central. I’m not asking you for your playoff predictions, but in the BCB roundtable earlier today I said that anything less than the National League Championship Series would be a disappointment. I think this team is a championship candidate, even if they definitely aren’t the favorite. But I firmly believe this is one of the five-best teams in the majors and if your team in that category, they’ve definitely got a chance to win it all.
So enough of my thoughts. Let’s hear from you.
Thanks for stopping by tonight and all off-season. We hope we made the long cold spell of no Cubs baseball a little more palatable. You made the winter better for us. Please get home safely. You want to be up and alert at 1:20pm tomorrow. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.