Gene Kelly
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La La Land (2016)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
influenced by Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Visuals Themes
It pays homage to musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain” and Jacques Demy's “ The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ” without every directly mimicking them.
At the climax of Mia and Sebastian’s first dance together — perhaps the film’s finest sequence — the camera cranes up, just like it did when Gene Kelly spun around in Singin’ in the Rain.
Singin' in the Rain is saluted, An American in Paris is saluted.
It's openly aimed at cinephiles who recognize the many overt Singin' in the Rain references, and feel a little internal flutter when its characters stroll across a studio backlot, surrounded by the accoutrements of moviemaking before bursting into song and dance.
Does it reinvent or improve upon “Singin’ in the Rain”, “A Star is Born”, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and the legions of classic films and musicals it references, borrows from?
The natural comparisons will pour in for “Singin’ in the Rain,” “West Side Story” and just about any other big time movie musical you can think of.
During the intervening centuries between humanity's departure, WALL•E develops a personality and spends his days discovering small treasures among the trash, including a well-worn copy of Hello, Dolly!
Over the course of a few days and star-gazing nights, watching clips from the 1969 Hollywood musical, Hello, Dolly!, WALLE and EVE beep and squeak at one another, loll around, communicating as best they can.
It opens with shots of the stars, the solar system, and eventually the Earth that glide across the screen to the lilt of "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!
For a bot, the little guy has a lot of personality: He scavenges knickknacks like a flea-market addict, and constant viewings of an old videotape of Hello, Dolly! help him get through the day.
Babylon (2022)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
influenced by Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Themes Visuals Plot
We’re dealing with the same themes as “Singin’ in the Rain,” only in a bloodier, pissier vein.
Chazelle also borrows heavily from documented Hollywood episodes such as the Fatty Arbuckle/Virginia Rappe scandal and makes constant and direct references to “Singin’ in the Rain,” but most of “Babylon” is a meandering and often stultifying work of pure fiction, in which extended set pieces overshadow anything resembling true character development or real insight about Hollywood in the 1920s.
While La La Land had Chazelle channeling Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger musicals, along with the work of Jacques Demy, Babylon has the director finding his inner Scorsese and matching it up to Singin’ in the Rain.
“Make ’em laugh,” Donald O’Connor urged in Singin’ in the Rain , a movie that serves as Babylon ’s conceptual and spiritual template, and it’s the essentially enigmatic, deeply subjective question of comedy—of whether or not something is funny, and why—that hangs over the proceedings like an old-timey anvil.
As Babylon makes constant references to one of Chazelle’s most beloved films, Singin’ in the Rain , it’s difficult not to muse on how certain classism and sexism tropes continue to be recycled on-screen despite so-called progress, with LaRoy’s more obvious inspiration Clara Bow similarly sidelined from movie history, then caricatured in Singin’ itself as a cartoonishly dumb blonde who viciously attempts to sabotage the virtuous ingénue.
Chazelle borrows a similar playbook from Singin’ in the Rain (1952), wherein the filmmakers struggle to capture sound for tomorrow’s audience with crude equipment under riotously brutal conditions—hot lights and temperamental recording devices.
A story of the transition from silent cinema to talkies in the vein of “Singin’ in the Rain” or “Babylon,”…
We get a nice riff on the oft-told tale of silents going from sound, perhaps best seen in SINGING IN THE RAIN…
You'd probably imagine something similar to Hail, Caesar!, The Artist, or even Singin' in the Rain, right?
If that premise sounds suspiciously like Singin’ in the Rain or The Artist by way of Illumination, well, that’s because it kinda is.
…everything comes crashing down "Singin' in the Rain" style with the advent of sound…
Luhrmann shamelessly borrows from wide sources, plagiarizing Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" production number almost intact except for placing Kidman at its center, and purloining Gene Kelly's lamp post pose from Singin' In The Rain .
(I was reminded of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor's motto in " Singin' in the Rain ": "Dignity.
At one point De Niro gets emotional watching Gene Kelly sing "You Were Meant for Me" to Debbie Reynolds in "Singin' in the Rain," a nod to both the classical Hollywood that Meyers looks to update and more straightforward notions of romance.
The closest these two get to a bed is sitting on one while watching Gene Kelly croon “You Were Meant For Me” to Debbie Reynolds in a Netflix screening of Singin’ in the Rain.
At the end of their talk, as Jules drifts off to sleep, Ben watches misty-eyed as the TV plays that wonderful scene from Singin' in the Rain where Gene Kelly sings " You Were Meant for Me " to a glowing Debbie Reynolds.
He turns to mush watching Singin' in the Rain, and he hits it off with the company's in-house masseuse, Fiona (Rene Russo).
They can be comedic (Singin’ in the Rain, Day for Night), personal (The Fabelmans, 8/12), reflective (Sullivan’s Travels, Stardust Memories), acerbic (The Player, Sunset Boulevard)…
…pasando por títulos como ‘Cantando bajo la lluvia’ (Jay Kelly remite a Gene Kelly)…
Everything from Look Back and The Fabelmans, to Singin’ in the Rain, The Hero, and Opening Night.
While Don and Lina are shooting a silent swordplay-and-damsels flick, The Dueling Cavalier, for Monumental Pictures, a new Warner Brothers smash called The Jazz Singer opens -- and the first major studio feature employing sound technology is a screaming success.
The setting is 1927, the official end of the movies' silent era and the beginning of talkies with Warner Brothers' "The Jazz Singer." Kelly is a conceited silent-screen matinee idol, Don Lockwood, whose on-screen love interest is Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), a relationship made in hell as Lockwood can't stand the lady.
Everything turns upside-down when The Jazz Singer and talking pictures hit town like an earthquake.
Then The Jazz Singer opens, and Hollywood is turned upside down.
Set in Hollywood in the late �20s, at the moment when the unimaginable success of Warner Brothers� The Jazz Singer sent the other studios into a desperate furor of nervous activity as they closed down all production of silents and wired their stages for sound, Betty Comden & Adolph Green�s screenplay burlesques the movie business with as much deadly accuracy and outrageous wit as anyone ever has.
Its hard to believe, now, that anyone ever imagined that "talkies" were a passing fad; that it took the success of The Jazz Singer (which was scarcely a "talkie" at all) to convince Hollywood otherwise.
With a screenplay as much of a misfire as we have here, no one could make it work, despite all the frantic attempts to enliven the action with elaborate musical numbers (including one that recalls classic-Hollywood-musical ballets à la Singin’ in the Rain ).
But there’s only one Greta Gerwig and if any director could convince a major studio to fork over a truckload of cash and disguise a movie based on the world’s most instantly recognizable doll as a thoughtful (and rollicking) meditation on gender norms, what it means to be a human, and fragile masculinity while also doubling as an homage to “An American in Paris” and “Singin’ in the Rain” (complete with dream ballets!) it would be her.
If one threw Playtime , The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Singin’ in the Rain , Sabrina , Young Frankenstein , and Josie and the Pussycats into a blender and poured the contents into a glass, it’s likely that the pink-colored concoction would look a lot like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie .
Sound a little more complex than Singin' in the Rain (a fine little musical, in its own right)?
Personally, I don't think it equals "My Fair Lady," "Oklahoma," "Singin' in the Rain," "The Music Man," "The Sound of Music," or "Cabaret," but it's right up there with the best of them.
And in "Good Morning" (borrowed from the Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney Babes in Arms), Kelly, O�Connor, and Reynolds express their bottomless joy at solving the Dueling Cavalier problem by dancing over an upended sofa.
In addition to being geographically thorough (city and state)—and alluding to Bernstein, Comden & Green's On the Town—the title of the film suggests two New York Citys: the real one and our idealization of it.
On an emotional level, the film is a powerhouse, offering some of the most convincingly painful rows ever shot; as a depiction of changes in American music and the entertainment world, it is accurate and evocative; and as a commentary on showbiz films, it's a stunner, sounding echoes of Minnelli's own mother's movies and career (particularly A Star Is Born) as well as other classics like On the Town and the first A Star Is Born (in which Stander also appeared).
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Visuals Themes
It’s visual touchstones are classic sci-fi, Grand Guignol, gangster movies, and lavish musicals, as evidenced by a lovelorn Frank’s love for cinema, particularly the song and dance romances of actor Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), a Gene Kelly/Fred Astaire coded matinee idol.
His greatest comfort comes from watching his favourite actor, a Gene Kelly–like musical dancer played by Jake Gyllenhaal, glide across a movie screen.
When the Wilsons try to take refuge at the Tylers, they discover that their friends have already been murdered by their own tethered in a scene that recalls Malcolm McDowell and his droogs dancing to “Singin’ in the Rain” as they make havoc in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Act 2 still offers moments of bloody delight and inspired choices, particularly a bubbly soundtrack that runs counterpoint to the grisly action, like Kubrick’s use of “Singin’ in the Rain” in “A Clockwork Orange” (1971).
Se7en if Gwenyth Paltrow jumped out of the box at the end à la Debbie Reynolds leaping from the cake in Singin' in the Rain .
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Directed by Charles Reisner
influenced Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Music
Disc extras include audio commentary by Donen, Reynolds, O'Connor, co-star Cyd Charisse, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and others; the new documentary Singin' in the Rain: Raining on a New Generation; a making-of piece; the 1996 PBS documentary Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM, about the producer-songwriter behind Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, Meet Me in St. Louis and countless other musical classics; an outtake of the musical number "You Are My Lucky Star"; and an irresistible collection of clips from earlier movies that featured the songs included in this film (for instance, "Singin' in the Rain," first heard in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, actually appeared in at least 15 movies before getting a movie named after it!).
It's funny stuff, but it's totally random, veering from references to famous movies that adults will remember ("Singin' in the Rain") to famous people whom kids will recognize ( Britney Spears).
Credit Wedge and company for a generous supply of creative bits such as Fender doing a "Singin' in The Rain" number and Big Weld playing the biggest game of dominos ever.
Baby Driver (2017)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Themes Visuals Plot
It’s like Singin’ in the Rain with a souped-up engine.
Aside from watching Spacey verbally spar with Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Eiza González, and Jamie Foxx, there is a sequence at the beginning of the film that is pure “Singin’ in the Rain” magic.
Wright’s latest high-octane motion picture, Baby Driver, is a foul-mouthed, ultra-violent spin on the heist thriller, the whole thing playing like some sort of whimsical hybrid of Walter Hill’s The Driver, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Buoyed along by a beautiful Michael Brook score, “Brooklyn” is just the sort of escapist entertainment its own characters might have chosen had they paid their 65 cents for a night at the cinema way back in 1952, the year the film opens, when the infectiously nostalgic “Singin’ in the Rain” (which Ronan’s protagonist goes to see at one point) and the garishly square “The Greatest Show on Earth” vied for Oscars.
They have a sweet courtship that includes going out to movies like “Singin’ in the Rain” and having dinner with Tony’s large family, and are becoming increasingly serious when Eilis gets a call from home that requires her returning to Ireland.
Could it be that I’m just a big softie who smiled when they went to see “Singin’ in the Rain” and teared up on cue several times?
Screenplay: Ernest Lehman (based on the musical show Hello, Dolly!, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, itself adapted from the play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder).
Adapted by Ernest Lehman from a record-setting 1964 Broadway musical that was itself based on Thornton Wilder's 1955 play The Matchmaker (which based on Wilder's earlier The Merchant of Yonkers and onward back to the beginning of time), Hello, Dolly! opens in New York City, where the region's most famous and beloved matchmaker/factotum Dolly Levi (Barbra Streisand) is heading off to the suburb of Yonkers, with her own marriage in mind: she's hellbent on snaring wealthy, grumpy hay & feed store owner Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthew).