Film of the Week: An American in Paris

I would like to start this article off by talking about another film – La La land. A fantastic classic musical that I’ve talked extensively about its ending and how I believe it’s perfect based upon the events that happened throughout.

After Sebastian and Mia had their talk about their relationship, and after the five years have flown by, Mia’s sitting in Sebastian’s self-built club and sees the person who she once loved for another time. It then fades into an instrumental routine that shows what could have happened. No words needed to be said, just an amazing visual representation of alternate events. That whole routine was inspired by An American in Paris. Not a word of dialogue is spoken for the entirety of the last 20 minutes of the film. The ending was one huge dance routine.

Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) an American World War 2 veteran moves and restarts his life in Paris where he aspires to make a living and a reputation as a painter. His energetic, friendly, personality does help build up a solid friendship among the locals. His friend and neighbour, Adam Cook (Osca Levant), who is, a struggling concert pianist, who does frequently play with French Singer, Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary). It’s through Henri that Jerry meets and falls in love with Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron). Henri and Jerry are unaware they are in love with the same person until the end, as Henri is hoping to Marry Lise.

Jerry has to accept that Lise is to marry and move to America. After their final farewell, it slowly fades from Jerry standing on a balcony to in the middle of the road, with music fading in. This sets off the 17 minute dance routine. It cost the studio $450,000 (adjusted for inflation, that would be around $4.2million in today’s money) to produce, and there were talks of cutting it from the final project, but director Vincente Minnelli insisted it to be left in. A dream sequence that shows what could have happened.

The film is 66 years old this year, and whilst I wasn’t around to watch it back then, I can only imagine how epic and massive that sequence was. I was drawn; the music was divine and the choreographed dance routine throughout really captured what should have been right down to a single emotion. No words needed to be said, because everything was already being said.

The film’s runtime is just under 2 hours, but it certainly didn’t feel that long. The dance routine does take up a large chunk of the film, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away from it. It’s not as if the story has to be rushed to fit in the gap between beginning and the dance routine, it was told at a good pace that allowed me to know exactly what was going on, and the much smaller song and dance routines throughout were done brilliantly as well.

We don’t see many films like this nowadays. La La Land has proved we do still like them, but they are a rare breed. But, as I have said before, if they weren’t a rare breed, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy them as much when they do come out. With all the comic book films, animation films, it’s nice to have that break away with a well-made musical.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)