There are few directors I can think of who are more synonymous with the Golden Age Hollywood studio system than Vincente Minnelli. He worked with all the big stars of the era, and was as deft with melodramas as he was with comedies, but his most memorable projects were the big, spectacular MGM musicals. He worked on over a dozen, including "The Band Wagon," "Meet Me in St. Louis," and "Brigadoon." He'd be brought in just to design musical sequences for films like "Strike Up the Band" and "Ziegfeld Follies." His most beloved film, however, is the Gene Kelly musical "An American in Paris."
Initially I was a little hesitant about picking "An American in Paris" because I could never remember the plot very well. And, no wonder - the plot is probably the least important part of the film. The titular American is a painter named Jerry, played by Gene Kelly. He falls for a beautiful French girl named Lise, played by Leslie Caron in her debut role. Alas, Lise is already the girlfriend of one of Jerry's pals. Jerry tries to woo her regardless. All this is really just an excuse for dance numbers, song numbers, and beautiful flights of fancy that tend to exist in their own, beautifully discrete little sequences. There's the delightful bit where Gene Kelly leads a passel of kids in a rendition of "I've Got Rhythm." There's the scene of a pianist daydreaming that he's performing with an orchestra - and in his dream he's every member of that orchestra, the conductor, and even the audience.
And then there's the ballet. Seventeen minutes of pure, uninterrupted dancing set in highly stylized environments inspired by the work of celebrated French painters, including Renoir, Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec. The ballet is the film's grand finale, one that stops all the action dead in its tracks to cut away to a final dream sequence with no dialogue and no real narrative beyond embodying the main character's impressions of Paris and his secret yearnings for love. It's so gorgeous that it's easily the most memorable part of "An American in Paris." The set designs and art direction make it look like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron are actually dancing inside the famous paintings, and interacting with the painted figures come to life. Minnelli would later stage similar sequences in his Vincent Van Gogh biopic "Lust for Life," but nothing on the scale of the ones realized here.
The sheer spectacle for the sake of spectacle of the ballet is unmatched by anything else in that era. It's executed with so much care and craft, and involves so many complex technical elements - dozens of dancers, multiple sets, special effects, and all the different scene transitions - that probably no one but MGM at the height of its success would have had the resources to attempt such a feat of filmmaking. The whole film is very much style over substance, but it's style elevated to the point where it essentially becomes the substance. The dream Paris of Vincente Minnelli in no way resembles real life, and very little of the film was actually filmed in France. Instead, nearly everything was recreated on the MGM backlot, including the fountain in the Place de la Concorde. The preparations for the ballet sequence were so lengthy and complicated, Minnelli had time to film the Spencer Tracy comedy "Father's Little Dividend," during a break in production.
"An American in Paris" was one of the many MGM musicals produced by Arthur Freed during the studio's golden age, and represents a confluence of several major talents. It was scripted by Alan Jay Lerner. The songs were written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, and musical direction by Saul Chaplin and Johnny Geen. It has the rare distinction of being a film based on a musical composition, a Gershwin orchestral piece written in 1928 that shares the same name. Minnelli and Gene Kelly were at their career peaks, and both had significant creative control over the production - everything from conceiving the ballet sequence to picking a newcomer as the leading lady.
Minnelli would go on to make many other classic films, including "The Band Wagon" and "Gigi," and I strongly considered "The Band Wagon" for a spotlight, as it also contains a similar ballet sequence with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. I prefer the one from "An American in Paris," though, for its towering stylistic ambitions and unparalleled beauty. In my mind, it's one of the best examples of what musicals are all about.
What I've Seen - Vincente Minnelli
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
The Clock (1945)
The Pirate (1948)
Father of the Bride (1950)
An American in Paris (1951)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The Band Wagon (1953)
Brigadoon (1954)
Kismet (1955)
Lust for Life (1956)
Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Gigi (1958)
Some Came Running (1958)
Bells Are Ringing (1960)
The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963)
The Sandpiper (1965)
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