Movie Review: An American in Paris ***

"Show Boat" was the musical that changed the structure of musicals by incorporating the plot and the songs closely. In contrast to the old-style musicals with very thin plot lines providing a bridge from one performance number to another, "Show Boat" used the songs to advance the plot and founded a new style for musicals. Periodically, musicals of both stripes will come round, but the style that uses the songs to help tell the story has proven the most successful by far. In 1951, the Academy gave its top prize as well as five other Oscars to “An American in Paris,” the prototypical old-style musical. Understand that term to mean a musical with plenty of singing and dancing but a plot as deep as the water in a drained sink. Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in her debut lit up the screen-shaped stage in a movie written by Allen Jay Lerner and using all Gershwin songs. As the orchestra at a restaurant plays, you can pick out tunes like "Someone to Watch Over Me" if you are a Gershwin fan, which I am. "An American In Paris" is the portrait of a painter who tap-dances very well, aided by his pianist friend (Oscar Levant) in post-WWII Paris. His dance with the children while singing "I Got Rhythm" is the highlight, I think, although I enjoy "’Swonderful" thoroughly as a song and the irony of the scene is charming. (The two performers do not realize that they are singing about the same girl, but the pianist knows.)
Plot: boy falls for girl, she belongs to her fiance whom she doesn't love but he sheltered her during WWII, boy finds out about the fiance, fiance finds out about him, she starts to leave but comes back and boy and girl go off into the sunset. I figure the Academy gave "An American in Paris" its top award because the members figured it was about time to give the prize to a musical. The following year, "Singin' in the Rain," which was better than "American" in every possible way, received extremely sparse nominations and no awards, not even for Jean Hagen's brilliant Supporting Actress-nominated performance as the actress with the shrill voice. No actors or actresses received nominations for "An American in Paris," which is not surprising because very little acting went on. It is still a fun movie to watch if you want to see several dance numbers including the last one that seems to go on forever. I am glad that this musical was written directly for the screen, so Gene Kelly did not ruin any good stage musicals, as he would later do with "Hello, Dolly." If you like Gene Kelly's and Leslie Caron's dancing, then "An American in Paris" may be for you. ***