Singin' in the Rain (movie)

In spite of this, the movie has been digitally restored to an impressive standard of picture and sound quality. The French Connection was also the nickname of a line of hockey players for the Buffalo Sabres in the 1970s consisting of Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, and Rene Robert. The audio commentary on the movie's "Special Edition" DVD includes a claim that the original negative was destroyed in a fire. It was followed in 1975 by a less-acclaimed sequel, French Connection II. In 1986, a television movie, Popeye Doyle, appeared. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Roy Scheider), Best Cinematography and Best Sound. Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. It also won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role, (Gene Hackman), Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Kelly was also responsible for the Choreography. It was the first R-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (Midnight Cowboy had won in 1969, but it was X-rated at the time). The film was directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. The movie established the careers of both Friedkin and Hackman, and was instrumental in ushering in an era of neo-realist directors in Hollywood during the early 1970s. Shooting began on June 18, 1951 and was completed on November 21, 1951. This car chase was parodied in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. This was done using three break dancers, a recreation of the original set and superimposing Kelly's face onto the dancer. Other shots involved stunt drivers who were supposed to barely miss hitting the speeding car, but due to errors in timing accidental collisions occurred and were left in the final film.

It has also been the subject of a 2005 advert for the new VW Golf GTI, where Kelly appears to be break dancing instead of doing his usual routine until he reaches a policeman standing by the car. The production team of course received no prior permission from the city for such a dangerous stunt, and the only precaution taken was to place a "gumdrop" police siren on the car's roof and blare the horn. It has of course been parodied several times, notably by Morecambe and Wise and Paddington Bear. Many of the shots in the scene were "real", in that Hackman actually drove the car at high speeds through uncontrolled traffic and red lights, with Friedkin running a camera from the backseat while wrapped in a carpet for protection. The dance routine in which Gene Kelly sings the title song while twirling an umbrella, splashing through puddles and generally getting soaked to the skin, is probably the most famous of all movie musical sequences. The chase involved Popeye securing a civilian's car and then obsessively chasing an out-of-control elevated train, on which a hitman was trying to escape. The song "Make 'Em Laugh" uncomfortably resembles the Cole Porter song "Be a Clown." Comden and Green wrote the music and lyrics to the number "Moses Supposes.". The film is often cited as containing one of the greatest car chase sequences in movie history, and car chases, with elaborate stunt work, became de rigueur afterward.

The film features a rendition of the 1929 song "Singin' in the Rain" by Arthur Freed (who also produced) & Nacio Herb Brown, along with other Freed and Brown tunes from the late 1920s and the 1930s. However, after Rabal was finally reached, they discovered he spoke neither French nor English, and Rey was kept in the film. Meanwhile Lockwood falls in love with the overdub artist Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) and Lamont does everything possible to sabotage the romance. Rey was instead contacted but did not speak a word of French. After a terrible screen test, Lockwood and his partner Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) decide to return to their roots and convince the studio to overdub Lamont's voice and turn The Dueling Cavalier into The Dancing Cavalier, a musical comedy. Friedkin had asked his casting director to get a Spanish actor he had seen in the French film, Belle de Jour, who was actually Francisco Rabal, but Friedkin did not know his name. The production is beset with difficulties, not least Lina's inadvertently comical speaking voice. The casting of Rey as the main French heroin smuggler, Alain Charnier (irreverently referred to throughout the film as "Frog One"), resulted from mistaken identity.

After the smash-hit of the historical talking picture innovator, The Jazz Singer, Lockwood's studio decides to convert the current Lockwood/Lamont vehicle, The Dueling Cavalier, into a talkie. However, Gleason at the time was considered box office poison by the studio after Gigot had flopped, and Breslin refused to get behind the wheel of a car, which was required of Popeye's character for an integral car chase scene. Lockwood barely tolerates his vapid leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), who is convinced their screen romance is real. He was strongly opposed to the choice of Hackman for the lead, and actually first considered Jackie Gleason and a New York columnist, Jimmy Breslin, who had never acted before. Kelly plays Don Lockwood, a silent film star with humble roots. Though the cast ultimately proved to be one of the film's greatest strengths, Friedkin had problems with casting choices from the start. Themes of certains arts being inferior to others, or the immortal if you seen one of them, you've seen them all (which is what Rossini also said about his operas) are today as vivid as ever. The film was adapted by Ernest Tidyman from the novel by Robin Moore.

The movie has an extraordinarily intelligent plot, which greatly contributes to the work being systematically classified as the best musical comedy ever. It stars Gene Hackman as New York City police detective "Popeye Doyle", Roy Scheider as his partner, Sonny, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco and Eddie Egan, the real-life police detective on whom Hackman's character was based. Singin' in the Rain, a 1952 Gene Kelly musical film, chronicled Hollywood's transition from silent films to "talkies". The French Connection is a 1971 Hollywood film directed by William Friedkin which tells the story of two New York City policemen who are trying to intercept a heroin shipment coming in from France, based on the actual, infamous "French Connection" trafficking scheme. In the lead in to Make 'em Laugh, O'Conner/Cosmo sarcastically references the tragic line "ridi pagliaccio" ("Laugh, clown") from I Pagliacci. Dora Bailey, the gushy gossip columnist is an uncredited role played by Madge Blake who was later famous for her role as Aunt Harriet on Batman.

Simpson also uses one of Freed's frequent expressions when he says that he "cannot quite visualize it and has to see it on film first", referring to the Broadway ballet sequence. F. R. Simpson are a reference to Arthur Freed.

F. The initials of the fictional Monumental Pictures' owner, R. Surviving prints of the sequence feature Reynolds singing in her own voice. One possible reason why the scene was cut is that it somewhat contradicts the initial scene where Debbie does not immediately identify Gene when he jumps into her car.