Film
Beyond The Canon: Golden Eighties + Singin' In The Rain
- 5PM
Dirs. Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen
With Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds
1952, 103min, 35mm
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.
Dir. Chantal Akerman
With Delphine Seyrig, Miriam Boyer, Fanny Cottencon
1986, 96min, DCP
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.
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