Singin' in the Rain

What a glorious feeling! The gold standard by which motion picture musicals are judged, co-directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain is essentially a backstage story, set in the late 1920s when silent films were transitioning to "talkies." Jean Hagen plays Lina Lamont, a silent star with a voice that would shatter glass coupled with a personality guaranteed to set Dale Carnegie's teeth on edge. When the studio decides to convert their latest Lamont/Lockwood (Gene Kelly) film to sound mid-production, the results sit poorly with test audiences, so Kathy Selden's (Debbie Reynolds) voice is used to overdub Lamont's awful nasal honk and the film is turned into a smash musical. Veteran studio players Lockwood and his sidekick Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) do their best to shield Selden from the tyrannical Lamont, who now wants Selden to dub all her films (without taking credit, of course). Singin' in the Rain contains a potpourri of tunes from other filmed musicals, including the title song which originally appeared in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Amazingly, the film earned only two Oscar nominations--for Supporting Actress (Hagen) and Musical Score--winning neither. In a manner befitting a cinematic milestone, Warner has done a superb job on this double-disc special edition: the film's gorgeous color palette is vibrantly reproduced in the new 2002 digital transfer, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound will have you reaching for an umbrella yourself, and the extras are--to paraphrase that noted DVD critic, L. Welk--"wunnerfull, wunnerfull." To wit: a commentary track featuring Reynolds, O'Connor, Donen, and others; a new 36-minute documentary "What a Glorious Feeling"; 12 clips from earlier films presenting the songs in their original forms; 26 studio sessions of alternate audio takes, an outtake of "You Are My Lucky Star," and the 86-minute hoofer's dream doc, "Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM." Certainly one of the major DVD releases of this (or any other) year, Singin' in the Rain is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (R. Pitman)[Blu-ray Review—Aug. 14, 2012—Warner, 103 min., G, $19.98—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 1952's Singin' in the Rain sports a great transfer with DTS-HD 5.1 sound. Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by costars Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Kathleen Freeman, director Stanley Donen, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, and film historian Rudy Behlmer, a “Running on a New Generation” new retrospective documentary (51 min.), a “Jump-to-Song” jukebox feature, and trailers. Bottom line: a beloved classic makes a welcome debut on Blu-ray.]