Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

gkeith_1 Spoilers. Observations. Opinions. The long ballet is spectacular. Caron is quite young, and Kelly is long in the tooth and biologically old enough to be her father. This is her first film, I am told, and he is at the peak of his career. They pull off the ballet splendidly, however. Georges Guetary ALSO looks old for Caron in this film.Two old geezers competing for the hand of such a young, delicate flower? The creep factor enters in, here. As usual, Oscar Levant has no romantic inclinations, here. He is married to himself, his obnoxious cigarette and his mistress of a piano. I know! All of the young, hot Parisian men got killed in the war, or something like that. Kelly was born in 1912, and Caron in 1931. This makes him 19 years older than Caron. He wasn't such a veteran as he is made out to be, however, since his first film, I am told, was For Me and My Gal in support of hot-at-the-time Judy Garland in 1942 -- only nine years earlier. Previously, Kelly had been on stage in Pal Joey.Jack (Jacques?) Bouvier? Wasn't that the name of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis' father? Yes, Jackie's father was Black Jack Bouvier. The long ballet: I still like better the long ballet in The Red Shoes. It is very exotic and intriguing. Mayhap An American in Paris somehow copied some of that? Red Shoes was ALSO the film debut of ANOTHER young en-pointe female ballet dancer named Moira Shearer, I am told. I like Georges Guetary and Oscar Levant in this film, plus the older women dancers and older gentleman in the cafe near the beginning of this film. I like the colors and fashions in this film. I like all of the dancing policemen. Pirates of Penzance, anyone?I am a degreed historian, dancer, actress, singer, makeup artist, film critic and movie reviewer. My favorite films are always song and dance musicals.

Smoreni Zmaj I watched this without single blink, it was pure 10/10. And then, when story line was near its natural end, endless train of dancing acts with no sense or connection to the story (at least I did not get it) started and lasted for about 20 minutes. Feeling was the same as when TV station breaks the movie at its peak to annoy you with long set of commercials. I caught myself thinking about other things while checking my nails and taking a look at the clock for the first time since movie started. It completely destroyed the magic. And then in some review I saw this: "One of the film's highlights is its impressive finale - an ambitious, colorful, imaginative, 13 minute avant-garde "dream ballet" costing a half million dollars to produce." - they could spend that money smarter. "The pretentious sequence, featuring an Impressionistic period daydream in the style of various painters, is one of the longest uninterrupted dance sequences of any Hollywood film." - and with this one I completely agree. If I ever decide to watch this again, I'll find version with this crap cut off. I bet someone already did it and posted it somewhere.

jacobs-greenwood "It's wonderful, it smarvelous", but it's also an average musical, though it does feature 44 (!) elaborate sets and did win six Oscars. It probably won Best Picture by benefiting from a split vote between A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and A Place in the Sun (1951).It does have a great, if long, dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. And, Oscar Levant and Nina Foch do provide excellent support. Director Vincente Minnelli received his first nomination (he later won for Gigi (1958), another questionable Best Picture winner).Kelly is a struggling American artist, working in Paris, until he finds a "sugar daddy" (er, "sugar mommy"?) in Foch. He pals around with his piano playing friend (Levant), dancing and singing "I Got Rhythm" with street kids. His friend knows a singer (Georges Guétary) that's engaged to a pretty young thing (Caron). When Kelly meets her, he naturally falls in love. He then chases her, trying to "win" her away from her unawares fiancé, much to the dismay of Foch and his friend Levant. But, when the two dance, "c'est la vie"!Added to the National Film Registry in 1993. #68 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. #39 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. "I Got Rhythm" is #32 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. #9 on AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals list.

Steve Pulaski An American in Paris seems to be the film that many people have billed a classic so prolifically and impulsively that the brand stuck with very little questioning. A fairly obvious Best Picture win in 1951 coupled with suave, acclaimed leading man Gene Kelly in the starring role of a musical and you have a film that was bound to be a feast for your eyes that you could enjoy with your ears, as well. This is a film so rooted in predictable Hollywood musical fare of the time that if you stare into the decorated setpieces and Kelly's meaningful smile you almost, almost forget how forgettable this film really is.The story revolves around Kelly's Jerry Mulligan, a former Army serviceman from America now trying to make it as an artist in the dreamlike land of Paris, selling portraits on sidewalks and streetcorners. One of the first people to really pay attention to his works is Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a woman who falls for him and his attitude almost immediately, so much so that she rents a studio for him to sell his artwork in a more professional manner. Jerry, however, becomes more infatuated with Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), a French woman he meets at a nightclub that he begins to actively pursue, despite her repeated attempts to make him go away (a standoffish personality, a fake phone number, etc). As Milo still tries to assist him, Jerry is hellbent on getting Lise to love him.In addition to Jerry, we are introduced to two people in the beginning of the film in a manner that sort of overstates the importance of these characters. One is Adam Cook (Oscar Levant), a struggling concert pianist who often works alongside Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary), a French lounge-singer. These two men, despite being introduce din the opening minutes of the film with Jerry's long monologue about his love for Paris even though he is an American, don't hold much weight come the hour-mark of the film, when An American in Paris largely turns to embellishing the rather awkward relationship between Jerry and Lise.Jerry and Lise's relationship is made awkward not only because of the fact that Lise really lacks personality outside of a pretty face and doesn't give us much of a reason to really concern ourselves with her presence, a feat that was so ubiquitous during this time in Hollywood that you almost can't critique it, but the annoying way Jerry becomes entranced with her off of what is ultimately just a vessel of beauty. An American in Paris really shows how far we, as a society, have become with how we approach women; what was once seen as an effort of true charm and persistency is now seen as offputting and creepy by the majority of women, despite whatever intention was assumed by the male. Jerry's intentions have far wandered past romantic and are entering in the aforementioned latter territory, though that doesn't seem to particularly concern him nor anyone else in the film.Once more, it's almost meaningless to bring this up because so many films had the same kind of masculine attitude towards females (I just watched His Girl Friday and the same case can be made with that film). The real issue I take with An American in Paris, however, is the lack of substance in the film. This is a film with very flat, impossibly perky, and incredulous characters that act and operate like robots from the 1950's rather than actual people. Gene Kelly's Jerry character is about as monotone and uninteresting as you can get, in addition to being very square, and both Adam and Henri have a fraction of that personality and are largely defined by strange character tropes and mannerisms. Milo seems to be the only real character in the film, and even she is underwritten as soon as Lise comes in, almost mirroring how Jerry entirely loses interest and ditches her upon meeting Lise.If that wasn't enough, An American in Paris has one of the biggest cinematic cop-outs I've yet to see. The final twenty minutes of an already lengthy and taxing one-hundred and thirteen minutes is a breathless interpretive dance number that just throws away any kind of conflict resolution and character development that was built up until this point. The film doesn't seem to have any interest in concluding its story with any kind of assured statement or seriousness, and instead goes full Broadway for a slight and outrageously expensive (well over $500,000 apparently) dance number that grows tiresome after a few minutes.An American in Paris gets considerable points for costume and set design, as even a mediocre script can't eclipse the majestic look and feel Paris always seems to ooze. However, with everything this film had going for it, there's little evidence of anything in the way to make this admittedly safe and harmless musical anything other than standard fare that was fortunate enough to get praised a bit too much by far too many people.Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Nina Foch, Oscar Levant, and Georges Guétary. Directed by: Vincente Minnelli.