Warblin' in the Precipitation

Always a lover of musicals, I was blown away by Singin' in the Rain, a film created in the early 1950's and directed by Gene Kelley and Stanley Donen. Because I had already seen clips of the movie in other classes before and because of my interest in musical theatre, this film immediately grabbed my attention on the AFI's Top 100 list. And thank goodness it did.
From the opening scenes of this movie, the audience can tell that there will be very different cinematography styles from what we may expect when we go to the movie theater in today's world. For example, in the initial scene of the movie in which Lina and Don are emerging from their car, the camera angle moves from a group of boys to the lady who is announcing the names of those approaching the theater. Instead of the usual cutting-on-action or simply just changing the focus of the screen between takes, the camera pans across the screen until it finds the announcer and she begins to speak. Not only does this provide an idea of what the movie may be like, but also when the character Don starts speaking directly into the camera in the same opening scene, I realized that Kelley and Donen were using particularly interesting filming ideas. Another aspect that caught my attention was the idea that there was a movie being produced within a movie, and that too had specific elements that were being analyzed such as microphone placement as films began to use their own sound recording systems.
Finally, I loved both the humor as well as the dancing presented in this film as reflective of the times. As a "retired" tap dancer myself, I enjoyed watching the rhythm of the dancer's feet as they moved to the mostly upbeat music, usually in time to a comical song. My favorite of these has to be "Make 'Em Laugh" in which Cosmo is combining both humor and dancing as he tries to make the audience chuckle. This also ties into actor/actress choices. Out of all the characters, I think that Cosmo is the best selected for his role as he continuously causes the viewer to laugh as he mocks and pretends. In the same way, Lina was an excellently casted role even though she was a static character, her voice, appearance, and nature aligning perfectly with the role.
Because of these reasons listed above, I would give this movie a 5/5 easily and highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes musicals...or people who hate musicals and need to realize what they are missing.