By Peter Wollen

40 Years after it first seemed, Singin' within the Rain is still the most effective enjoyed movies ever made. but regardless of marvelous good fortune with the general public, it by no means acquired its fair proportion of compliment from the critics. Gene Kelly's genius as a performer is there for all to work out. what's much less said is his innovatory contribution as director. Peter Wollen has ultimately performed justice to this landmark movie. In a super shot-by-shot research of the well-known identify quantity, illustrated by way of particularly produced body stills, he exhibits how skillfully Kelly binds the dance and musical components into the narrative, and the way he effectively combines specified traditions inside American Dance, faucet and ballet.
Scriptwriters Betty Comden and Adolph eco-friendly, and certainly Kelly himself, have been all below possibility from the McCarthyism which menaced Hollywood at the present. The ethos within which the movie was once conceived couldn't lengthy live on within the period of blacklisting. Wollen argues convincingly that Singin' within the Rain was once the excessive element within the careers of these who labored on it.