Singin' in the Rain

Theatrical Release Date: 1952 04 11 (USA) / 2012 07 12 (USA - Rerelease)

UPC: 012569562127

Studio: Warner Home Video

MPAA Rating: G   Contains:[Suitable for Children]

Summary: Hollywood, 1927: the silent-film romantic team of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is the toast of Tinseltown. While Lockwood and Lamont personify smoldering passions onscreen, in real life the down-to-earth Lockwood can't stand the egotistical, brainless Lina. He prefers the company of aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), whom he met while escaping his screaming fans. Watching these intrigues from the sidelines is Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), Don's best pal and on-set pianist. Cosmo is promoted to musical director of Monumental Pictures by studio head R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) when the talking-picture revolution commences. That's all right for Cosmo, but how will talkies affect the upcoming Lockwood-Lamont vehicle "The Dueling Cavalier"? Don, an accomplished song-and-dance man, should have no trouble adapting to the microphone. Lina, however, is another matter; put as charitably as possible, she has a voice that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. The disastrous preview of the team's first talkie has the audience howling with derisive laughter. On the strength of the plot alone, concocted by the matchless writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Singin' in the Rain is a delight. But with the addition of MGM's catalog of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown songs -- "You Were Meant for Me," "You Are My Lucky Star," "The Broadway Melody," and of course the title song -- the film becomes one of the greatest Hollywood musicals ever made. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Musical

Awards: Best Film - Any Source – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Film - Any Source – British Academy of Film and Television Arts U.S. National Film Registry – Library of Congress 100 Greatest American Movies – American Film Institute Best Director – Directors Guild of America Best Director – Directors Guild of America Best Picture - Musical or Comedy – null Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – null Best Musical Score – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Supporting Actress – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Picture – National Board of Review Film Presented – Telluride Film Festival Best Picture - Musical or Comedy – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or – Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Features: ccDisc One:
All-new 2002 digital transfer from state-of-the-art restored elements
Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1
Feature-length audio commentary by Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Kathleen Freeman, co-director Stanley Donen, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and author/film historian Rudy Behlmer
Interactive menus
Theatrical trailer
Scene access
Languages: English & Fran?ais
Subtitles: English, Fran?ais & Espa?ol
Disc Two:
2 documentaries, the all-new "What a Glorious Feeling" and "Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM"
Excerpts of Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown songs from originating movies
"You Are My Lucky Star" outtake
Scoring session music cues
Stills gallery
Interactive menus
Documentary screen access

Singin' in the Rain

Format: DVD

Release Date: 09/24/2002

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Pre-1954 Standard

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1, DD1 Dolby Digital Mono

Runtime: 103 Minutes

Sides: 2

Number of Discs: 2

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 -- Main Feature
1. Credits.
2. "The Royal Rascal" Premiere.
3. "Fit as a Fiddle."
4. Dignified Star.
5. Thanks... Acted Out.
6. Irresistible.
7. Don and Kathy.
8. Talking Picture.
9. "All I Do Is Dream of You."
10. On Don's Mind.
11. "Make 'Em Laugh."
12. Lovebirds.
13. They Talk!
14. "Beautiful Girl."
15. She's Hired.
16. "You Were Meant for Me."
17. Diction Coaches.
18. "Moses Supposes."
19. Love to a Bush.
20. Wired for Sound.
21. The Preview.
22. Make it a Musical.
23. "Good Morning."
24. Cosmo's Brilliant Idea.
25. "Singin' in the Rain."
26. Conferring With RF.
27. "Would You?"
28. "The Broadway Melody" Opening.
29. "Broadway Rhythm."
30. Shady Lady.
31. Rise to Fame.
32. Pas de Deux.
33. "The Broadway Melody" Finale.
34. Lina's Revenge.
35. Opening Night.
36. Lina's Speech.
37. "Singin' in the Rain" in A Flat.
38. "You Are My Lucky Star."

Bruce Eder

Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain is usually lumped together with the other MGM "songbook" musicals of its era, An American in Paris and The Band Wagon. In contrast to those two outstanding works of music and motion, however, Singin' in the Rain had an additional layer of importance and appeal as one of Hollywood's relatively rare feature films about itself. The Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown songbook is on one level the center of the movie, but it's also a backdrop for a humorous and delightfully stylized look back at the crisis that engulfed the movie mecca and its inhabitants once synchronized sound came to films. The musical was made in 1952, only 25 years after the beginning of the series of events depicted and satirized in the script, so recent in time that there were still plenty of old studio hands (including sound department head Douglas Shearer) who had firsthand memories of the actual events. The fit was natural for the music, too, since Freed and Brown had been on hand (and even onscreen) for the arrival of sound to MGM in 1929. The film is full of delightful in-jokes about its subject and the people who lived through the era: Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont is a burlesque of silent-movie sex symbol Clara Bow, whose decidedly urban style of diction never really fit her image or what the public wanted, while Millard Mitchell's R.F. Simpson was a gently jocular satire of Freed himself, who could never quite visualize the elaborate musical numbers whose scripts and budgets he was approving as producer. Donald O'Connor's Cosmo Brown was an onscreen stand-in for men like Franz Waxman and dozens of other musicians, who moved from writing arrangements or conducting the major theater orchestras to heading the music departments of the studios. The resulting musical, in addition to offering a brace of memorable songs and performances (with a startlingly sultry featured spot for Cyd Charisse in the "Broadway Melody" sequence, as a bonus), gave audiences a short-course pop-history lesson about how the movies learned to talk, sing, and dance. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Bobby Watson  Actor 
Don Hulbert  Actor 
Dawn Addams  Actor 
Richard Emory  Actor 
Julius Tannen  Actor 
Dan Foster  Actor 
Patricia Denise  Actor 
Joi Lansing  Actor 
David Sharpe  Actor 
Mae Clarke  Actor 
David Kasday  Actor 
King Donovan  Actor 
Dennis Ross  Actor 
Margaret Bert  Actor 
Kathleen Freeman  Actor 
Jimmy Thompson  Actor 
Bill Lewin  Actor 
John Dodsworth  Actor 
Carl Milletaire  Actor 
Elaine Stewart  Actor 
Stuart Holmes  Actor 
Dorothy Patrick  Actor 
Wilson Wood  Actor 
Jeanne Coyne  Actor 
Judy Landon  Actor 
Russell Saunders  Actor 
Charles Evans  Actor 
Jack George  Actor 
William Lester  Actor 
Lynn Bernay  Actor 
Shirley Jean Rickert  Actor 
Morgan Jones  Actor 
Nacio Herb Brown  Composer (Music Score) 
Betty Comden  Screenwriter 
Stanley Donen  Director 
Arthur Freed  Composer (Music Score) 
Arthur Freed  Producer 
Adolph Green  Screenwriter 
Lennie Hayton  Composer (Music Score) 
Gene Kelly  Director 
Gene Kelly  Actor 
Donald O'Connor  Actor 
Debbie Reynolds  Actor 
Jean Hagen  Actor 
Millard Mitchell  Actor 
Cyd Charisse  Actor 
Rita Moreno  Actor 
Douglas Fowley  Actor 
Madge Blake  Actor 

Country: USA