Film

The classic moments just keep coming in Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's perpetual joy machine, the oft-cited peak of MGM's legendary Freed Unit. Set during a key moment in Hollywood history—the transition from the silent to the talkie era—it's wall-to-wall with iconic musical numbers: Donald O'Connor’s riotous “Make 'Em Laugh”; the gleeful “Good Morning”; the sizzling Jazz Age “Broadway Melody Ballet”; and, of course, Kelly's lamppost-swinging romp in the rain. A glorious feeling, indeed.

Chantal Akerman's audacious, exuberant musical—about the romantic ups and downs of young women working in an ultra-stylized soundstage shopping mall—plays like a classic MGM confection filtered through the Jeanne Dielman director's feminist, avant-garde formalism. Oddly catchy New Wave songs, quirky choreography, and a pastel-colored visual palette are among the many delights in one of the filmmaker’s most inventive and daring experiments.