Oscars Retrospective: An American in Paris (24th Academy Awards Review)
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If there’s one key thing that we’ve come to learn about the early days of Hollywood, it’s how intertwined the industry was with the Broadway musical. The first movie that could talk was a musical detailing the rise of a Broadway star. Afterwards, many of the most important movies from pre-Code Hollywood were musicals, many of which we have discussed already. Of particular note were the films directed by Busby Berkeley, with his gigantic sets and swooning camera in films like 42nd Street (1933), and the movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who were masters of tap dancing in films such as Swing Time (1936).
While musicals never really went out of vogue per se, the large productions had a bit of a stopper to them in the 40s, mostly due to price costs on account of that whole World War II thing. As America, and Hollywood, started trending more conservative going into the 50s, more and more musicals started coming back onto the screen. An American in Paris thus serves as a breaking point of the start of the new decade of Hollywood: the decade where the bigger the production, the larger the ticket sales and the more they could entice audiences to break away from that dumb little box they kept sticking into their living room. An American in Paris would also serve as a showcase for two of the most important names of the coming decade: director Vincente Minnelli and star Gene Kelly.
An American in Paris is set in postwar Paris as American, Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is trying his hand at being part of the bohemian lifestyle where he wakes up in a closet-sized apartment, works a crappy job to make ends meet while working on his art and drinks coffee with his fellow artists, Adam (Oscar Levant) and Henri (Georges Guetary). One day, however, he meets a beautiful young woman named Lise (Leslie Caron) and starts pursuing her. Of course, this being a Hollywood movie, he doesn’t realize that Lise is already in love with another man, that man being Henri.
A pretty simple plot that allows for some screwball antics and mainly acts as an excuse for the musical numbers. And what musical numbers they are. While Astaire and Rogers were known for tap-dancing, Kelly took his influence more heavily from ballet. It’s very hard to describe unless you’re into the dancing world (and I am not) but he seems to use much greater usage of the sets and props while Astaire and Rogers kept it all mainly on their footwork. Despite this, his influence from Astaire and Rogers still carries through, showing an example of how artists throughout the generations of film and media build on each other (Bill Robinson a.k.a. Mr. Bojangles taught Fred Astaire who mentored Gene Kelly who influenced Michael Jackson).
The musical numbers were also given a giant boost… kinda. To be honest, I often hear about how this film really pushed the envelope in terms of the scale of the musical numbers which is why this film was so beloved and fast-tracked to earning the Academy Award but this is another one of those statements that has me slightly skeptical. Before this, Vincente Minnelli had already directed Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which had gorgeous color cinematography and great sense of kinetic energy and, even before that, there were the gigantic sets in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). Though I guess then the argument would be that this is the first to really combine high-quality dancing with the size and scale of these epic sets.
Much of the music in the film is taken from George Gershwin’s orchestral piece, also entitled An American in Paris, in a pioneering case of transmedia storytelling. Almost every musical number is based off of a Gershwin piece, ultimately climaxing in a 17-minute extravaganza set exclusively to An American in Paris. This final sequence, taking place in Mulligan’s head as he ruminates about his relationship with Lise, is the big draw of the film. The sequence blends a lot of Jazz Age iconography in the backgrounds, this whole dance sequence cost MGM over $450,000 ($5.2 million in 2023 money) and was shot on 44 sets. It’s one of those things that the longer it goes on, the more impressive it gets and is the highlight of the movie.
While this sequence alone is incredible, the whole film is filled with amazing dance scenes with correspondingly amazing cinematography. Which is a good thing because everything outside of the musical numbers fails to impress. Buckle in, this is another notoriously undeserving Oscar winner.
Anyone who’s ever heard of Gene Kelly will know that easily his most famous movie is Singin’ in the Rain (1952), a film that actually has a similar setup, cinematography, style and even themes (inasmuch as these movies have themes) as An American in Paris. At the risk of tipping off what we’ll be complaining about in next month’s edition, it’s amusing that An American in Paris is the film that won the Oscar while the more iconic Singin’ in the Rain is known for being one of the biggest Oscar snubs. Knowing that the two movies came out in back-to-back years, it makes a bit more sense, especially considering how An American in Paris came out first. Still, if you compare the two movies, you can see several problems with An American in Paris that Singin’ in the Rain did improve upon.
The biggest? While An American in Paris works as a symposium showcasing fantastic dance numbers, it fails as a romance. Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron can dance with each other pretty phenomenally, but they sure as Hell can’t sell you the fact that they’re attracted to one another. And I don’t really blame the actors for this one. While Gene Kelly is remembered primarily for his contributions to dance, he was also a genuinely fun actor. He had that kind of Cary Grant or (for a more modern example) James Marsden sense of humor about himself where even though he was Hollywood handsome, he was always willing to let himself look like a complete doofus if it made for a good bit. Leslie Caron I also get the sense is genuinely trying her hardest here. The problem is that the characters seem to have almost nothing in common or any sort of spark. And that would be if the character of Lise even had that much of a character to begin with. Which she does not.
And this is really weird because Lord knows that the movie could spare the time. If you were to cut out all the song and dance numbers from the movie, it would probably be less than 45 minutes long. I’m aware that for a movie like this, we don’t exactly need the characters to have some sort of J.R.R. Tolkien-level of depth where they have layers upon layers upon them but I seriously can’t name a single thing about the character of Lise besides just that she’s the girl. But what really kills this movie for me, however, is the ending.
Not the actual musical number, that part is as incredible as all the laureates make it sound. I’m talking about the ending from a storytelling point of view. I’m going to be spoiling the ending of An American in Paris so consider this your warning to skip ahead if you still want to watch the movie.
An American in Paris does have a pretty good set-up for a conflict in the idea of the main character being in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. The film thankfully avoids the cliché of having Henri be a villain, an egotist or even unlikable in any way. He’s a good guy who is genuine friends with Jerry Mulligan. When Mulligan finds out that the girl he’s been pursuing is Henri’s fiancé, he’s genuinely torn up about it because he wants to be happy for them both. The film climaxes with him letting Lise go and watching her and Henri walk away into the night. This then provides the impetus for him to start daydreaming about her choosing him instead which launches into the aforementioned climactic musical number.
This could be a pretty great ending that acts as a good reversal of the typical screwball romance cliché of the time. Haven’t we all been in a situation like this? Where we love someone, find out they’re already taken and have to make the mature decision to let them go because we know how selfish it’d be to try to break that up? Doubly so when it happens to a girlfriend of someone you’re friends with. The ensuing dance number thus acts as a great daydream of the emotions surrounding heartbreak. Further, the sequence also acts as the desperate dreams of a starving artist. Throughout the sequence, Jerry lives in a world that is composed entirely of art, a world he wants to be in, dancing with the girl of his dreams all day, every day.
Which makes it even worse when after the scene finally ends, we get a literally-one-minute epilogue where Lise dumps Henri to return to Jerry and Henri seems oddly overjoyed about the fact that he’s about to develop trust issues for the rest of his life. In the span of sixty seconds An American in Paris transforms from being one of the most mature musicals of all time into just another generic romantic screwball of the era. I honestly don’t know if this is one of those things that got focus-tested by the audience or if the filmmakers were afraid to take a risk or if there’s just a time-lapsed culture clash going on but this is such a cop-out to the ending.
Longtime readers may remember that in one of our first installments, we had the philosophical query of whether or not a bad ending can retroactively ruin an otherwise good movie. I usually tend to take the point-of-view that it does not but it can count as a strike against it. In this case, I don’t think this one 30-second bit ruins what is otherwise a fun film but it does count as a serious flaw, especially since the ending is what almost made the film actually somewhat special.
Ignoring these flaws, An American in Paris is good fun and comes to life with its musical moments, drag though they may at times. The only reason why it even invites this level of discourse is simply because it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. If it was any other musical of the time, it’d be respected but because it was considered the “best,” it needs to be examined to such an extent that its significant problems can become magnified and the movie may seem worse than it is. At the time, this was seen as incredible but, with some hindsight, it’s not quite up there. And I’m not just talking about now. An American in Paris basically became obsolete the second that Singin’ in the Rain came out as it’s literally the exact same movie, only better in every possible way. Still, if you’re a Gene Kelly fan, or a fan of these old Hollywood musicals, this is one that you'll want to check out.
But am I being too harsh? Could it maybe have been called movie of the year after all?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2
11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2
12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2
13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2
14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2
15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2
16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2
17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2
18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2
19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2
20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2
21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2
22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2
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