11-20-2006, 01:27 AM
We saw this on PBS last night (Saturday).
I had never seen the whole thing before. I'd seen Kelly dancing in the rain because, well, everyone on this f***ing planet has seen it a gazillion times.
Yes, the movie is brilliant. I kept thinking of Jackie Chan, who has always wanted to break out of action films into legit acting. That was Gene Kelly's role in this movie. Ironies inside ironies, because Gene Kelly can act, and Jackie Chan has always worshipped Astaire and Kelly, and I imagine Jackie watching this movie over and over, wishing he could be Kelly.
Donald O'Conner was a surprise. I keep forgetting how brilliant he was as well, always right there with Kelly in the dancing, with a couple solos of his own (in one of which he runs up two walls and does backflips, then tries a third wall which turns out to be a stage prop).
Cyd Charisse smolders. She just absolutely smolders in her small parts.
Debbie Reynolds did a wonderful job playing the good wholesome girl, but she's never clicked for me. Same with Doris Day. I guess my generation just missed the wholesome-girl enfatuation.
Jean Hagen plays the squeaky-voiced lead actress (Lady Cranefly can do her to perfection) heading for her doom in the age of Talkies. It's a spectacular performance, absolutely brilliant, and I was blown away to discover later that she played Danny Thomas's wife on Make Room for Daddy. I mean, all that talent, and she ends up playing an ultra-conservative all-American mom on a TV serial.
I dunno. Maybe we should switch to the classics. Doom gettogethers for Ingmar Bergman movies. Truffaut, too. Sophisticated discussions of My Dinner with Andre. If we try, we could become a class act.
Anyway, gotta go now.
Gotta dance.
--cranefly
I had never seen the whole thing before. I'd seen Kelly dancing in the rain because, well, everyone on this f***ing planet has seen it a gazillion times.
Yes, the movie is brilliant. I kept thinking of Jackie Chan, who has always wanted to break out of action films into legit acting. That was Gene Kelly's role in this movie. Ironies inside ironies, because Gene Kelly can act, and Jackie Chan has always worshipped Astaire and Kelly, and I imagine Jackie watching this movie over and over, wishing he could be Kelly.
Donald O'Conner was a surprise. I keep forgetting how brilliant he was as well, always right there with Kelly in the dancing, with a couple solos of his own (in one of which he runs up two walls and does backflips, then tries a third wall which turns out to be a stage prop).
Cyd Charisse smolders. She just absolutely smolders in her small parts.
Debbie Reynolds did a wonderful job playing the good wholesome girl, but she's never clicked for me. Same with Doris Day. I guess my generation just missed the wholesome-girl enfatuation.
Jean Hagen plays the squeaky-voiced lead actress (Lady Cranefly can do her to perfection) heading for her doom in the age of Talkies. It's a spectacular performance, absolutely brilliant, and I was blown away to discover later that she played Danny Thomas's wife on Make Room for Daddy. I mean, all that talent, and she ends up playing an ultra-conservative all-American mom on a TV serial.
I dunno. Maybe we should switch to the classics. Doom gettogethers for Ingmar Bergman movies. Truffaut, too. Sophisticated discussions of My Dinner with Andre. If we try, we could become a class act.
Anyway, gotta go now.
Gotta dance.
--cranefly
