Fine. I’ve been missing watching movies. And not Marvel or Star Wars (although those are great too…. I’m not Scorsese), but real movies. CINEMA if you will. In order to satiate this need and also appeal to the chaos I so deeply crave, I am asking Siri to pick a number between 1 and 100. Whatever number it lands on is the movie I am going to watch from ‘IMDb’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time (The Ultimate List)’. List is here if you’d like to follow along. With that, let’s get into number 44 on the list, ‘An American in Paris’.
‘An American in Paris’ stars Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan. Jerry is, you guessed it, and American. Living in Paris. He and his buddy are struggling artists, and of course fall in love with the same girl. Let the love triangle ensue. If I sound flippant about this movie, it’s only because I saw the live touring Broadway cast a few years ago, and it was absolutely not for me. What kept going through my mind was the episode of Spongebob where Squidward is performing his interpretive dance. It had some weird contemporary ballet, and I just couldn’t do it. I love a dance number in musical theater, but ballet is a tough one. I was pleasantly surprised that this 1951 film had much more digestible dance. I’ve only seen the occasional Gene Kelly dance routine, and usually just clips, but this film made me much more interested to go back and watch everything he has been in. He really has so much “rizz” as the kids say, and his dancing would make Charli D’Amelio weep. Those references are still current, right? I can’t sing Kelly’s praises without also mentioning that he was supposedly horrible to work with. Do with that information what you will.
The supporting cast is also great. The love interest played by Leslie Caron has the perfect doe-eyed sweetness and she makes for a great foil to the swagger of Gene Kelly. This is also my first-time seeing Oscar Lavant in anything, and he is obviously an incredibly talented musician and a great actor. The biggest supporting cast member in my opinion are all of the beautiful sets and costumes. Everything is so bright and beautiful, and really makes you feel like you are watching a painting come to life.
At the end, this movie made me get over my past hatred of this musical, and it really is well done and has aged beautifully for the most part. It does take a while to get to the main meat of the story, and a few of the songs I think could be trimmed to move the story along, but overall it is a really fun and sweet film. A great start to my journey!
So far, this film is ranked #1/1!
CinemAddikted 