Star Of The Silent Movies example essay topic

! inging in the Rain!" There is no movie musical more fun than! inging in the Rain, !" set in the period of transition from silent movies to movies with sound. Transitions are never smooth, and it is shown here quite hilariously. The film is above all lighthearted and happy. In performance, the three stars -- Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) and Kathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds)!

V are giddy with joy. No one who loves movies can afford to miss it. This restored version of the 1952 classic musical will have the viewer dancing in the seat and whistling along. Don Lockwood and his buddy Cosmo Brown get jobs at Imperial Studios and soon Don becomes a star of the silent movies. His co-star of the silent movies, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), is a snob whose voice doesn! |t match her looks.

She believes all the gossip rags and thinks she and Don are really in love and are engaged to be married. But Don's true love is the no-nonsense singer / dancer Kathy Seldon. The musical is not only about romance, but is also about the film industry in a period of dangerous transition, and the fallacy of movie stars. The movie simplifies the changeover from silence to sound. Cameras were housed in soundproof booths, and microphones were hidden! SS on the shoulders.

!" After the popularity of! SSThe Jazz Singer!" , Imperial Studios decided to make! SSThe Dueling Cavalier!" into a talking picture in competition with other studios, but Lina's voice was hard to take. Cosmo gets the idea to turn the movie into a musical and dub Kathy's voice over Lina's. Kathy isn't satisfies to be just a voice, but because she wanted to help Don and Cosmo, she agreed, but stated she is only going to do it once.

After a preview audience cheers Lina's new film (her voice dubbed by Kathy), she trapped herself into singing onstage. Kathy reluctantly agrees with tears to sing into a backstage mike while Lina mouths the words. Then her two friends join the studio boss in raising the curtain so the audience sees the trick. Kathy flees down the aisle, and in one of the great romantic moments in the movies, she was held in foreground close-up while Lockwood, onstage, cried, 'Ladies and gentlemen, stop that girl!

That girl running up the aisle! That's the girl whose voice you heard and loved tonight! She's the real star of the picture -- Kathy Selden!' ' The climax of the movie is when Don performs the dance! inging in the Rain!" when he realized he and Kathy were in love. The dance takes place in the gloomiest setting, with pouring rain and a gray sky with not a ray of sunlight. He doesn't mind getting wet though, because he is besotted with romance. He dances with the umbrella, swings from a lamppost, has one foot on the curb and the other in the gutter, and most interestingly, simply jumps up and down in a rain puddle like a five year old kid.

Kelly's soaking-wet! inging in the Rain!" dance number is the most memorable dance number on film, together with Donald O'Connor's breathtaking 'Make Them Laugh' number, in which he manhandles himself like a cartoon character. He wrestles with a dummy, runs up walls and does back flips, tosses his body around like a rag doll, runs into a brick wall and a lumber plank, and crashes through a backdrop. The comedy still works, the cheerful enthusiasm of the stars is contagious. The choreography makes great use of props in numbers like "Good Morning", "Moses Supposes", and "Make Them Laugh".

Gene Kelly and Donald O! |Connor make magic together.