Fear of Musicals

Of all the praise that has been heaped upon the movie Chicago, the strangest is something I’ve heard a dozen times now. “I loved it!” someone will enthuse. Their eyes gleam, and a song bubbles on their lips, then comes the inevitable kicker: “And I usually hate musicals.”

The funny thing is, most everyone who claims to hate musicals has an exception, a song-and-dance spectacular they adore. Maybe it’s West Side Story, maybe it’s Purple Rain. Usually, these movies have either the trappings of realism (like the locations in West Side Story) or a stage setting that keeps music separate from “life” (as in Purple Rain). Chicago has both, and that seems to be part of its appeal; to people who can’t abide sugar-sweet sing-a-thons, its tart cynicism doesn’t taste like corn.

By contrast, 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, now touring the country in an eye-popping 50th-anniversary print, has little of either. When people say they dislike musicals—the lovestruck duets, the splashy production numbers, the characters who burst into song because that’s how they feel—Singin’ in the Rain is apparently the movie they mean. And yet Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s evergreen crowd-pleaser subverts those pet-peeves as shrewdly as Chicago, if not more so. Where Chicago draws a clear line between its musical numbers and actual life—too clear—Singin’ in the Rain sneaks its stylization past the viewer intact.

It does so by whisking us behind the scenes in Hollywood, masking one kind of illusion by unmasking another. Singin’ in the Rain opens with Tinseltown in turmoil as the talkies hit. For heartthrob Don Lockwood (Kelly), who sings and dances, leaving the silents is no big deal. For his leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen)—whose voice sounds like a balloon deflating—it’s curtains. The solution is to dub Lina’s voice with fresh-faced ingenue Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), who loves Don. But bitchy Lina insists on keeping Kathy hidden, lest her own career burst. Ironically, it’s the illusion of Hollywood—of how movies are made, and how stars behave—that Singin’ in the Rain punctures to construct another fantasy: a world where people sing as if saying good morning, and nobody blinks.

The common gripe against musicals is something like, “People don’t just go around singing and dancing all the time.” Exactly. So to get an audience to play ball, the form depends on one of two approaches: Either expressing oneself through song is a natural part of the movie’s universe—in other words, people do just go around singing and dancing—or it’s an aberration that has to be confined somehow.

In the intermittently dazzling Chicago, it’s the latter. Musical numbers are initially restricted to the nightclub stage, then to the imagination of the baby-faced murderess Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger); they’re intercut with a grubby “real world” of courtrooms and prison cells. It’s a softening of the corrosive sensibility that the late Bob Fosse brought to the stage version of Chicago, where showbiz, crime and corruption are indivisible. By making the numbers imaginary, the movie’s framing device dampens some of the play’s tawdry sizzle.

This is a trick Singin’ in the Rain finesses. As Don and Lina film their first talkie, the movie throws in great gags about the shift to sound and the perils of hidden microphones: The tools of moviemaking are out in the open, lying on the workbench, but the characters still break into song as casually as conversation. The fake realism of exposed mics and lights is the anchor that allows the illusion to float. By the time Kelly takes his famous stroll in the rain, only a literal-minded chump would scoff at a world that permits such soaring release of pent-up feeling.

And that’s exactly what makes musicals so wonderful: They don’t have to cling to tethers of realism. If anything, it’s our world that could use a dose of their exuberant conventions. One of my fondest moviegoing memories was about 20 years ago, when a midnight screening of Singin’ in the Rain emptied into an unexpected downpour. A passerby would have seen 30 people splashing through puddles, singing and twirling umbrellas. With any luck, when Singin’ in the Rain opens this weekend at the Belcourt, we’ll have stormy weather.