Screenshot of the Fortnight: "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN" (1952)

Donald O'Connor, Madge Blake, Gene Kelly, and Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain.

Singin' in the Rain from MGM is widely considered to be the greatest movie musical of all time.  Co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly and starring Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor, it ranks 5th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films, behind Citizen Kane (1941), The Godfather (1972), Casablanca (1942), and Raging Bull (1980).  On the Sight & Sound-British Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest international films of all-time—"the only greatest movies list that most serious film critics take seriously" (Roger Ebert)—Singin' in the Rain is number 10, ahead of The Godfather (1972), The Searchers (1956), Seven Samurai (1954), Psycho (1960), Bicycle Thieves (1948), City Lights (1931), Casablanca (1942), and 83 others.

For the 1952 film year, the motion picture Academy did not even nominate Singin' in the Rain for Best Picture.  In fact, the movie received only two Oscar nominations—Best Supporting Actress (Jean Hagen) and Best Musical Score—and both nominees lost.  It was only the tenth-highest-grossing film in the U.S. and Canada and was poorly received by many critics who generally thought it was a mediocre follow-up to the previous year's Best Picture winner, An American in Paris, also an MGM musical and also starring Gene Kelly.  Not until its re-release in 1958 and Pauline Kael's review of it did Singin' in the Rain begin its rise from mediocrity to legendary status.

The Oscar race for Best Picture of 1952 was between High Noon (7 nominations) and The Bad and the Beautiful (6), with The Greatest Show on Earth (5) not seriously considered, even though it ended up winning the Oscar.  It is generally accepted that the two frontrunners canceled each other out and The Greatest Show on Earth won by default.  In its favor, the film was the highest-grossing movie in the U.S. and Canada.  On the other hand, it is telling that The Greatest Show on Earth took home 1 Oscar while The Bad and the Beautiful won 5 and High Noon won 4.

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Gene Kelly was a taskmaster as a choreographer and a brute as a dance partner.  Cyd Charisse's husband could always tell whether she had been dancing with Kelly or Fred Astaire by the number of bruises on her body.  Though their public criticism of him was always half-joking, both Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor complained to friends and family at the time that Kelly was a tyrant, overly demanding and inclined to belittle his fellow dancers in front of the rest of the cast and crew.  He reduced Debbie Reynolds to tears repeatedly.

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The 1946 French film, Étoile sans lumière (Star without Light) bears more than a resemblance to Singin' in the Rain.  Edith Piaf plays a hotel maid in the 1920s named  Madeleine.  A famous actress, Stella Dora, and her lover-agent, are staying at the hotel.  Dora's career is on the decline, and furthermore, she doesn't have a good enough singing voice to survive the transition from silent films to talkies.  At the hotel she is desperate and suicidal.  The agent  later overhears Madeleine singing while she is scrubbing the lobby floor and he gets an idea: he and Dora can use Madeleine's singing voice from backstage while Dora performs in front of the cameras.  Madeleine's singing becomes an overnight sensation.  But having tied Madeleine to a Faustian bargain, Dora gets all the credit.  Madeleine receives no film credits, she cannot not tell anyone that her voice is in the films, and she cannot not sing in public any of the songs her voice has made famous.  It was a humiliating life sentence.  In Singin' in the Rain the consequences of the dubbing are comedic and romantic.  In Star without Light they are tragic.