May 5, 2012

Musical Saturday: An American in Paris[1951]


I saw An American in Paris at the British Film Institute on a cold end-of-October day and it brighten up my day! It was such a pleasure seeing it, after endless dramas at the London Film Festival before (which I enjoyed also, but in a different way).

The movie tells the story of Jerry Mulligan, a struggling American painter in Paris and his relationship with two wonderful women: Lisa(played by Leslie Caron) and Lilo(played by Nina Foch).

There were many beautiful aspects that I loved about this movie. The first scene, introducing the characters, which is rather atipical and simple; the description of Lisa by Henri, featuring the amazing Leslie Caron dancing in all of her splendor- she is very graceful; all of the costumes and the sets; the piano scene of Oscar Levant, showing us his talent in a dream sequence and many others.

Gene Kelly is probably one of the most charming men I have ever seen on screen. That, plus his dancing skills and the way he makes it seem so easy and enjoyable, you've got yourself an A start actor. He has believeable chemistry with both Leslie and Nina and smoothly switches from actor to dancer in each scene. The musical numbers were sweet, but not very memorable (like the ones in West Side Story, for example), and the final dancing scene stretches a bit too long, but all is forgiven just for that shot of him and Leslie on the yellow, glowing background and the intro/outro editing. Beautiful!

I found myself smiling my way through the movie and it was, like I said, very enjoyable! It's a classic and you should see it!

8 comments:

  1. I need more musicals in my life - this sounds just lovely. It's always nice to find a film that can make you smile :)

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  2. @Ruth: Yes, you do need more musicals- they are so good when you need a sweet, nice, easy movie to end your day with! check it out!

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  4. It's tough to explain how I feel about this movie. I say that because it was the height of Gene Kelly's career and I just think that since An American in Paris won best film, Singin in the Rain wasn't going to win. SITR is the better film, but there's a lot to love and fantastic dance sequences in An American in Paris.

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  5. I quite like musicals but haven't seen this one yet, I definitely should check this out soon!

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  6. @Max: Yeah, I heard it won Best Film, which is quite interesting. I agree, Singin in the rain is better, but there so many things to love in this movie, too!
    @ruth m: You should, it's very sweet and light!

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  7. I like musicals, but this one didn't greatly entertain me. A big part of this is definitely due to the very long ballet sequence at the end. After about 8-10 minutes I was more than ready for it to come to an end.

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  8. @Chip: I do agree on that, it is a very long scene, maybe a little bit too much!

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