Every time I load up my DVD of An American in Paris, I do so convinced that I really like this film, and every time I get to the ending, with its long ballet number recreating the entirety of the romance plot in dance, I have to admit that it isn’t nearly as good as Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly’s follow-up the next year. I get this impression, and yet I have to stop and seriously think about why that is because on many levels, they are the same story, just told with a different backdrop.
So what makes An American in Paris less beloved of a film, especially considering it won the Best Picture Oscar and Singin’ in the Rain wasn’t even nominated? To understand that, we would need to know the minds of the voters, and that is a bit beyond our abilities. Perhaps they saw Singin’ in the Rainas just rehashing An American in Paris, which had just come out the previous year. Perhaps they were already tired of seeing Gene Kelly play basically the same guy with the same dance moves so soon after the last time. Whatever the reason, An American in Paris has been immortalized in the annals of the Academy Awards while Singin’ in the Rain remains the crowd favorite.
An American in Paris is a good film with some pretty big flaws. It reuses a lot of old Gershwin songs such as I Got Rhythm and S’Wonderful but doesn’t do a particularly good job integrating them into the story. Instead, there are sequences where everything comes to a complete stop just to showcase the music and the dance moves of Gene Kelly, which, to be honest, are impressive. But Kelly has a dance style that, while impressive to watch, has a tendency to become repetitive if he doesn’t shake things up more. This worked better in Singin’ in the Rain and even in Anchors Aweigh, but here there is a lot of sameness to many of the numbers. Not all of them, but enough that it grew tiresome at times.
On top of that, there are comedic moments that haven’t held up well over the years. The character of Adam Cook (Oscar Levant) has basically two modes: he is either moping over his piano or acting overwhelmed when he is in on something the other two leads, Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) or Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary), are unaware of. In one scene, he figures out that both men are in love with the same woman and starts trying to light a handful of cigarettes and drink coffee at the same time. It plays like a joke that is missing an actual punchline.
The story is about an American painter living in Paris. This man, Jerry, sets up his art on a Parisian street and attracts the attention of another woman, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a wealthy woman who is more interested in Jerry than his art. But she feels that she can win him over by admiring his work and buying some of it. She offers to sponsor an art show for him, and the two start seeing each other socially.
Meanwhile, Henri is telling Adam about this young girl that he plans on marrying. This girl, Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), seems to be the perfect girl, young and beautiful, talented and smart, and Henri is madly in love with her. While out with Milo, Jerry sees Lise there and, unaware that this is the girl Henri is in love with, pretends to know her so he can get away from Milo for a bit. He takes her on the floor dancing, but she is uninterested and rebuffs him. This doesn’t deter Jerry, though, and he persists. It also angers Milo, who feels he is being overly rude for flirting with another girl in her presence.
The following day, Jerry calls Lise, and she again tells him to leave her alone. Eventually, he manages to win her over, though, and she agrees to meet him so long as they avoid any public places. Milo continues to try and win Jerry over by renting him a studio to work on his art, but his heart is with Lise. His heart is broken though when she informs him that she is to be married to Henri and that she will be leaving with him to go to America. Because this is a big-budget Hollywood musical, we know it will not end on a sad note like that, so the finale doesn’t come as a surprise. What does, though, is the elaborate musical number that is the climax of this film. This number feels pulled directly from the ballet and showcases one of the many reasons Leslie Caron was chosen for this film and features her talents well.
Speaking of Leslie Caron, this is her on-screen debut. She was a dancer prior to this, training and performing as a ballerina. She was discovered by Gene Kelly while performing in the Roland Petit company Ballet des Champs Elysées, and he cast her to appear with him in An American in Paris. Her lack of acting experience is evident here, but she had other qualities, not the least of which was her absolute beauty. She also had stage presence, which didn’t go unnoticed, and she was soon being cast in several other major films, including another Best Picture winner, Gigi. She would remain active in her acting career clear up into the early 2020s with appearances in Funny Bone and Best Picture-nominated Chocolat. As of this writing, she is still alive at 94 years old, though she is officially retired.
When we are introduced to her, it is through the eyes of Henri, and we see the many assets painted through that perspective. When we actually meet her, she is a bit more down-to-earth, but we can also see just what Henri finds so adorable about her. We also understand why Jerry is so quickly enamored by her, too. It’s a case of love at first sight on his part, and his enthusiasm just can’t be ignored. As we like both Jerry and Henri as characters it leaves us a bit conflicted about this love triangle, though we are inclined to root for her to end up with Jerry just because he is the main character.
This is a case of two intersecting love triangles involving four people. Because of that, the inclusion of Adam and his story feels like an extra, unnecessary wheel. His ambitions to be a famous pianist are there to give him character motivation but also pad out the story as well as to showcase even more music via a big fantasy musical sequence that is silly and a bit bizarre. In it, he envisions himself playing all the instruments and even conducts himself, all at the same time. It’s humorous to a degree but slows down a film that is already dealing with pacing issues.
The finale is what we call a “showstopper.” It’s grand and elaborate and it looks really impressive when seen on the big screen. It also runs on a tad too long. It translates what we’ve been seeing the entire film up to this point into dance, giving us moment by moment the emotions and the plot of the film in the form of a big ballet number. This is beautiful to look at and there are moments here that are jaw-droppingly impressive, but after nearly twenty minutes of it, it can get a bit exhaustive. Fans of ballet will undoubtably get more mileage out of it than the average viewer.
An American in Paris is not the better of the two films Gene Kelly made between 1951 and 1952. Still, it is filled with beautiful music and dance and it introduced us to the wonderful Leslie Caron. When I first saw this movie, I had a bit of a celebrity crush on her and that hasn’t changed over the years. I find her a fascinating actress to watch, even in her later work. She had a quality to her that the studios saw and they kept casting her in stuff for many years after this. It is evident on screen and is one of the real highlights of this film. I would still list this film as among the greats, but the Academy awarded the wrong Gene Kelly picture. Singin’ in the Rain has stood the test of time as one of the greatest films of all time whereas An American in Paris is merely very good.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Motion Picture: Arthur Freed (won)
Best Director: Vincente Minnelli
Best Story and Screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner (won)
Best Art Direction - Color: Cedric Gibbons, E. Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis, and F. Keogh Gleason (won)
Best Cinematography - Color: John Alton and Alfred Gilks (won)
Best Costume Design - Color: Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett, and Irene Sharaff (won)
Best Film Editing: Adrienne Fazan
Best Scoring of a Musical Picture: Saul Chaplin and Johnny Green (won)
Academy Honorary Award: Gene Kelly (won)
____________________________________________________
Release Date: November 11, 1951
Running Time: 113 minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary, and Nina Foch
Directed by: Vincente Minnelli
Comments
Post a Comment