Back to the Feature: An American in Paris (1951)

During the golden age of Hollywood musicals, Vincente Minnelli was that rare filmmaker who could put a personal stamp on the films he directed.  Minnelli films were garish and colourful, beautifully shot and elaborately choreographed to a degree that others of the era (save of course Singin’ in the Rain) couldn’t attain. Two of his films won Oscars for Best Picture; Gigi also won him Best Director. The other one was really good.

An American in Paris belongs to that class of old Hollywood musical that exudes a relentless charm in spite of everything that doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny. It’s very simple story and largely one-dimensional characters don’t matter next to the enthusiasm poured into every image and lyric. Harmoniously bombastic yet elegant, it was inspired by the George Gershwin composition of the same name and given the basic storyline of a struggling American artist in Paris falling in love with the cultured young woman he doesn’t know is engaged to his friend. Gene Kelly of course plays the titular Jerry, and opposite him Leslie Caron, whom he discovered, is the elusive Lise. They complement each other wonderfully, in both performance and musical capabilities, but the production itself is what often overshadows them.

This is a movie that feels big. It may not have the sense of scale as some of the later Broadway musical movies would, but the world constructed for the film feels very lived in, very sustained, bursting with life and opportunity. In line with conventional Hollywood romanticism after the war, Jerry’s artistic troubles seem to be relatively tame, his life in Paris almost as idealized as those of his inspirations, the post-Impressionists Rousseau, Cezanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec. And while Jerry is often a step removed from high society, it always seems to be within his grasp, due to either his successful friends or his heiress patron, played by Nina Foch, who is romantically interested in him.

However the film is able to maintain its’ humble precepts through Kelly’s everyman personality, his generic costuming throughout the diegetic duration of the film, and shot compositions in his own spaces emphasizing a lack of refinement. The narrative does this too. One of the early song sequences (“I Got Rhythm”) he sings to a crowd of street children, and Jerry is certainly lacking for class in his early pursuits of Lise, which she frequently rebuffs, giving him a wrong number (as many women in similar situations are unfortunately wont to do) that is shortly thereafter comically corrected by someone else. He follows this up by going to her place of work to flirt with her. As much as Jerry’s not taking no for an answer being passed off as romantic is a sign both of this films’ age and its’ egregious lack of realism (especially in how it eventually “works” and Lise agrees to go out with him), it does result in the merging of two worlds in their wonderful scene and song together on the banks of the Seine. “Love is Here to Stay” is the least elaborate of the major musical numbers, but it’s the better for it –delightfully atmospheric and intimate and very nicely romantic, proving that even relatively simple dancing and soft music have a place in great musicals.

The romance strengthens as the film goes on, if only for Kelly and Caron’s exquisite physical chemistry –quite impressive given Caron was a last-minute replacement for Kelly’s regular partner Cyd Charisse. Around them, the supporting cast is quite charming too, especially a scene-stealing Oscar Levant as Jerry’s concert pianist friend Adam(a concert pianist in real life in fact) who lends the movie both a charismatic comic relief and a believable personality amongst all the archetypes. Foch’s character is rather hard-done by due to sexist stereotypes of the time looking down on older women with sexual appetites, but Georges Guétary is perfectly decent and smooth as the successful singer Henri, despite being too young for the older character and perhaps too affable to be Jerry’s adversary in love.

As in many other musicals of the 1950s like Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon, the film makes use of mostly established songs of the jazz era, all written by Ira Gershwin to accompany his brothers’ music. And so while An American in Paris exists in a then contemporary setting, its’ music is notably a throwback to the 1920s, which combined with Jerry’s admiration of the painters who made Paris their home during that period makes the film something of a nostalgia piece, subconsciously longing for that time of thriving artistry and expression not too dissimilar to Midnight in Paris six decades later. It also makes a lot of sense when you consider how Jerry, our point-of-view character, sees his world. The songs themselves, while I wouldn’t call classics in the same vein as other musical staples of the era, are pretty great. “S Wonderful” might be the most memorable, but “I Got Rhythm”, “By Strauss”, and “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” are just as catchy or enchanting as Gershwin music always is.

But the movies’ real magic is in its flights of fancy, where Minnelli’s vivid aesthetics shine brightest and his penchant for showmanship is at its most audacious. We catch glimpses early on through the stylized way he highlights the impression of Lise in Henri’s mind through sharp cuts to her dancing in graceful ballet against monochrome settings in stunningly contrasting colours that both evoke the work of Gauguin, Seurat, and Matisse, and showcase with immediacy the gorgeous expressionism of Minnelli’s use of technicolour.  This is followed by the “Stairway to Paradise” sequence at the end of the first act that shrouds its opulent visuals and Broadway Melody inspired production value in a dreamlike air, rendering you unsure as to the nature of its reality –if anything pertaining to An American in Paris can be all that connected to reality. The film is under no pretenses about the Concerto in F performance immediately after, in which Adam plays the aforementioned piece whilst being conducted by himself, backed up by an orchestra of himself for an audience that includes himself. It’s a beautiful interlude of daydreaming whimsy that is at the same time as funny as a particularly absurdist Looney Tunes cartoon.

The dreamlike nature of the movie reaches its apex though in the famous finale –a ballet set to the titular composition that is above all what people remember of An American in Paris, and for good reason. Borne in text out of Jerry’s sadness at Lise apparently leaving with Henri for America and set to marry him out of an obligation, each of its seventeen minutes are captivating and entrancing, a luminous fantasy that communicates the utter passion and sincerity of Jerry’s feelings against the iconography, art direction, and aesthetic stylings of numerous Parisian artists and an extravagant scale of colour and splendour. The music is of course beautiful, the dances are more fun and elaborate than anywhere else in the movie, and the abstract nature of the whole sequence is gloriously mystifying. So long and detailed that it tells its own story, it has as much emotional intensity as some whole movies. The film ends immediately after with Henri returning Lise to be with Jerry in a rushed resolution so as to fulfil the happy ending requirement, but it hardly matters. There really is nothing more to see after such a climax and Minnelli knows it. The impact of this ending can be felt in subsequent musicals like Singin’ in the Rain and Funny Face (the original stage incarnation of which originated “S Wonderful” only for it to be more famous from this film by the time that one was made); and Damian Chazelle freely admits to robbing this sequence for his epilogue in La La Land.

It really does earn that kind of legacy though. An American in Paris gets by on the strength of its spectacle, and the talent both in front of and behind the camera putting so much work into such a display of raw enthusiasm. The result was arguably a genre watershed. Perhaps this film isn’t as endearing as something like Singin’ in the Rain, or its’ songs and characters not as memorable as some of the later Broadway adaptations. Perhaps it is just something hollow at its root, made to look fancy and glamourous. But whatever it passes as is pretty s’wonderful regardless.

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