Tired from a whole movie’s worth of out-prettying each other. My very favorite moment is when he gives her the fur and she likes it and he sort of smiles and then immediately frowns harder than before. Would overall give the thing a mixed grade but.
It’s just that often I’m not fit to judge a movie like this, my gut likes the genre too much. Big dirty serious gangster conspiracy fake-history epic fedora things. Like that Matt Damon CIA movie. Things that if you like them generally you do so only while in the theater. Then you forget or decide you actually hate them because of how they screwed up reality and took up two and a half hours of your time. Well, not me. I like them. Like popsicles.
Is it appropriate, when crossing the quadrangle of an Ivy League University that You Did Not Attend, and when doing so and when seeing a boy cross in front of you wearing a t-shirt in support of a band, a t-shirt that you yourself own that is in fact a little ugly and you can’t remember why you bought it but you love the band even more than ever regardless of this shirt, and when that boy has flip-flops that match the shirt in color, is it appropriate to whisper, you are my soulmate you goddamn are? Or is that more something to shout. Answer quickly because I am holding him hostage in a time-and-space-ray.
Donald O’Connor of the Day #2: Moses Supposes (with a Mr. Gene…Kelly? Am I pronouncing that correctly?)
There are only two things wrong with this scene.
The bad edit at 1:11. UGH it’s like they don’t even CARE where they LAND on the AFI TOP 100.
Mr. O’Connor’s creepy blond mustache. Sorry. But.
This is my absolute favorite number in Singin in the Rain’. Controversial, I know. It’s also the number that I, a young girl with no dance ability or training, repeatedly tried to duplicate in the rec room. Pause. Rewind. Pause. Rewind. Attempt to jump on chair. Get rug burn on feet.
Plus you get the super-fun of seeing whether or not these guys out-dance each other. Watch the arms, in particular. O’Connor uses his like a showman—fancy move and your eyes belong HERE but always oh so CASUAL—while Kelly alternates between pretty, trained lines and oh it’s just another fun day with my fun friend in the fun speech therapist’s office.
“I Love A Mystery”: Donald O’Connor of the Day #1.
Bits of the “Make ‘Em Laugh” routine—the face, the couch, the fight—but this is 1947, five years before Singin’ in the Rain and dare I, but say it, he’s that much more nimble.
I love how strangely graceful he looks, trampling all over the furniture, each pratfall looking easier and more lovely(!) than the one before. I want to say it’s all in his posture, how straight he holds his back. Makes everything else look wiggly. Love him.
