Umuc (Arth 334) Understanding Movies Paper #1:Singing in the Rain

Singing in The Rain

The film I chose for this paper is Singing in The Rain. I decided to try this movie out because it’s a very popular musical that my family has been telling me about for quite some time now. This movie told the story of a company’s transition from silent films to films with sound. There was also a beautiful love story that accompanied this, as per usual with musicals.

The first scene I saw that I thought was something amazing was the scene where Donald is telling the story about how he came to fame. I think he said dignity too many times for comfort, especially consider ing the visuals that backed up the vocal parts of his story. It’s almost, if not exactly, as if he were lying. I loved the part where Don and his good friend Cosmo were doing the dance number with the fiddles. I found it entertaining when they swapped and played each other’s fiddle. I also liked was when Don was being chased by his fans and he jumped over all of the traffic and into Kathy’s car. I was a bit in awe, though I’m not exactly sure why. I could tell green screens were heavily used for the part that visualized sound films were sweeping the nation. Compared to the way green screens are used these days, I’m not exactly impressed with the job they did, but thinking back and having that mindset… it was a pretty amazing thing. One more scene I thought was absolutely magnificent was the scene where Don creates a setting on the sage with Kathy. I love how they had him explain each thing he did as he did it. This light is for stars, this one is for moon light, etc etc. I like how it gives an insight on how movies were created back then.

There were a few places I noted specifically where the audio seemed to play a big part in the movie. In the “Make them Laugh” scene, Cosmo was throwing himself around and messed his face up. The way he sorts of fixed his face reminded me of when I used to mime back in high school. I’m sure he practiced for that a ton. There were a lot of...