Best Picture: "An American in Paris," 1951

Movie Stats:

Released 1951 (UK; premiered there a few months before its American premiere)

American, in English (significant non-translated French & German, although you can still tell what’s happening in the scene without knowing either language)

Director – Vincente Minnelli

Stars – Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, and Nina Foch

Plot Summary:

Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) is an American artist trying to get by in Paris. He’s good friends with an equally struggling concert pianist by the name of Adam Cook (Levant), who happens to be good friends with a French singer named Henri Baurel (Guetary). Through a convoluted series of circumstances, Jerry and Henri fall in love with the same woman, Lise Bouvier (Caron). Nina Foch also stars as Jerry’s patron Milo Roberts, who is deep in unrequited love with him.

Bad Stuff:

[SPOILER]

The “love” here is really kind of gross. Jerry becomes obsessed with Lise from the first moment he sees her. He grabs her and forces her to dance with him. (Back in my club-going days, I had guys try to do this to me. It is neither cool nor romantic.) He gets her phone number through trickery and continues to pester her, even though she tells him to leave her alone, until she breaks down and agrees to a date. That’s called stalking not romance. On the other hand, Lise knows Henri because he sheltered her during the war when she was a girl. He fell in love with the young girl he was charged with protecting and she feels like she “owes him.” ICK.

Also, if a guy started dancing around and singing “It’s very clear, our love is here to stay” to me on our first date, I would run as fast and as far as I could in the opposite direction.

[END SPOILER]

The dance sequence at the end was interminable. I have a feeling that it’s what wowed moviegoers at the time, but I thought it was overblown and weird. The movie ends right after this sequence and I literally said, “Oh thank GOD” out loud.

It’s in color. I know they probably shot in color so we could see all the gorgeous dance costumes, but color film wasn’t very forgiving back then. It’s obvious from the first scene how much make-up Gene Kelly is wearing. I found that distracting. It’s difficult not to sit there sniggering when the male lead is wearing more rouge in a scene than the female lead.

Good Stuff:

Watching Gene Kelly sing and dance is always a pleasure. Also, Georges Guetary was very easy on the eyes.

The dance costumes are fantastic.

I really liked Oscar Levant. He’s absolutely hilarious in the scene where Adam discovers that his two friends are in love with the same woman. Unfortunately, his character is underutilized. Absolutely nothing happens to him. He’s there only to eek out a few laughs from the audience, which is unfortunate.

The Verdict:

I’m not opposed to fluffy movies in general. However, there was something really off about this one. The longer I watched it, the lower it went in my estimation. There is absolutely no character development whatsoever. There is no real plot. Kelly and Caron have no chemistry together. Their “love” was completely unbelievable because they really had very little screen time together, except for in scenes where they walk around, telling the audience that they’re in love with each other. Why? They barely know anything about each other. And as much as I loved Levant, why was his character even there? There’s no point to him.

By the end of the movie, I had a really hard time imagining how it won the Best Picture Oscar. I said to myself, “This can’t possibly have been the best movie of 1951.” Then I saw that it beat out “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Now I know the Oscar voters were smoking crack.

I give this movie 2 stars.