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Singin  in the Rain

Singin’ in the Rain on DVD

By Jim Bray

What a Glorious DVD!

Warner Brothers has given this classic musical a wonderful deluxe Special Edition DVD treatment and it’s terrific in almost every way.

Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor star as a pair of silent movie types learning to cope with (and exploit) the advent of movie sound, with a young and luminous Debbie Reynolds as an up and coming performer who becomes the object of Kelly’s affection and the source of his co-star’s (Jean Hagen) angst. The title song and O’Connor’s “Make “em Laugh” number are worth the price of admission alone.

It’s a witty script lovingly filmed and featuring exuberant performances all around, especially the three stars and Hagen (whose role as the screechy-voiced starlet is highly thankless and highly entertaining). The songs and dances are wonderful, too, and it isn’t hard to see why this movie is considered one of the all time great movie musicals.

It’s also a fun “insider” look at Hollywood during that time of transition.

But it’s as a DVD that this particular release shines. In 2002, Warner Brothers restored the film digitally using, according to the box, state-of-the-art elements - and it shows. The picture is magnificently glorious. I love the look of the old Technicolor features, and it positively shines in this new transfer.

Alas, it isn’t anamorphic widescreen, so owners of 16x9 TV’s will have to stretch and/or zoom the picture to fit their rectangular screens, but that’s okay because instead of the movie being Panned&Scanned, or cropped it’s shown in its original 4x3 composition. Widescreen TV owners will lose a little resolution, unfortunately, but the restoration is so good that you won’t mind too much - and better to live with that than to have the movie compromised.

Audio is billed as Dolby Digital 5.1 and while there’s a hint of surround very, very occasionally, it’s really straight monaural - but that’s how the film was originally recorded and that makes it tolerable in this age of surround effects. Audio quality is pretty good all things considered, though I wonder how it would have sounded if they’d managed to re-record the orchestra. Possibly that would have been difficult, though, since there are so many vocals that couldn’t be re-recorded.

Anyway, for what they had to work with, they did a wonderful job.

The two disc set is also chock full of interesting extras. Disc one includes a great “gang commentary” hosted by Debbie Reynolds and featuring Donald O’Connor, Cyd Charisse, Kathleen Freeman, co-director Stanley Donen, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, filmmaker Baz Luhrmann (who made Moulin Rouge), and author/film historian Rudy Behlmer. They combine to give some great insight and some terrific anecdotes about the movie.

The studio has also included "What a Glorious Feeling," a new documentary about the film's making and its impact; it’s very good. Even better is “Musicals Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM,” a full length documentary about the career of producer-songwriter Arthur Freed

And there’s some interesting stuff you don’t normally get to see, such as scoring session music cues, an outtake of Reynolds doing “You Are My Lucky Star,” and some excerpts from other movies in which Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown songs (including the title song) originated.

You also get a stills gallery and the theatrical trailer.

Well done, Warners. I’d love to see many more of these special Special Editions coming.

Singin’ in the Rain, from Warner Home Video
103 min. full screen (not 16x9 TV compatible), Dolby Digital 5.1
Starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds
Produced by Arthur Freed,
Written by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

 

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Updated May 13, 2006