An American in Paris

The favorites for the 1951 Best Picture Oscar were A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place in the Sun. Therefore the gathered at the ceremony were stunned when the winner was revealed as An American in Paris, a lavish technicolor MGM musical directed by Vincent Minelli, choreographed by and starring Gene Kelly. Earlier in the evening Kelly had been given an honorary award as a supposed consolation prize.

I am a hard sell on films like this. I'm fairly immune to the sparkle of the Hollywood musical (in a bit of heresy, I'm not terribly fond of Singin' in the Rain). Usually this is because the dialogue and acting seems so amateurish, and An American in Paris has that in spades. I had tried to watch it years ago on television but couldn't make it past the fifteen-minute mark, but last night I bit the bullet and watched the whole thing. While it didn't awe me, I must admit it kind of grabbed me by the end.

Kelly plays an ex-G.I. who has stayed in Paris after the war to pursue a career as a painter. He lives in a garret and is warmly loved by his neighbors. His best friend is an acerbically witty pianist, Oscar Levant. Kelly shows his paintings on a street-corner, and catches the eye of an American dilettante, Nina Foch. Though it isn't spoken as plainly as it would be today, Foch is interested in more than Kelly's paintings. She may be the original cougar. Kelly, though, falls for a young French girl, Leslie Caron, but she's engaged to Levant's friend, a music-hall performer who helped her survive during the war.

Most of this pretty frothy. Levant, who was not an actor (later he would be most famous as a guest on late-night talk shows) is the comic relief, but his mordant humor seems out of place. Kelly, of course, is a performer nonpareil, but his acting is that kind of gee whiz stuff of musicals that is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. All of the dialogue seems like set-ups to musical numbers, which of course they are. And of course this movie wasn't shot in Paris, it was done on Hollywood sound stages, which means that it represents the Paris of the imagination rather than anything realistic.

But there is much to like here. The colors are wonderful (it was the second color film to win Best Picture following Gone With the Wind) and the music of George Gershwin is bliss. Several of he and his brother Ira's songs are on hand, such as Embraceable You, Our Love Is Here to Stay, 'S Wonderful, and I Got Rhythm. The end of the picture features an 18-minute ballet set to the title music, a jazz-influenced orchestral piece. And of course there is Kelly's dancing. He was an athletic dancer, and it's easy to recall that his original dream was to play shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So if all this is just so much fluff, it's terribly easy on the eyes and ears. While the magic of the Hollywood musical eludes me, I can see the appeal of An American in Paris.