- Two for the Road
This weekend, the Music Box kicks off its latest weekend matinee program, which focuses on musicals. The lineup features some gold standards (Meet Me in St. Louis, 42nd Street) as well as a few lesser-known titles—I’m particularly interested in Silk Stockings, Rouben Mamoulian’s remake of Ninotchka. Kicking things off, appropriately enough, is Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain, the oft-revived classic whose endless shelf life makes it one of the most rewatchable movies around. Donen himself is an interesting figure, a respected director who probably deserves even more credit than he already gets. His films are fun and flighty on the surface, but they also possess serious-minded yet subtly communicated ideas about art, image consumption, the craft of acting, commercialism, and dance as a pure form of expression. Like all great directors of his era he formulated weighty ideas and expressed them in ways that appealed to broad audiences, a serviceable and ultimately democratic notion. His best films close the gap between high-minded ideas and vulgar forms, forming a safe space for moviegoers of any stripe. Here are my five favorite Donen films.
- Funny Face (1957) This spiritual companion to Singin’ in the Rain is a brash, antielitist defense of pop and commercial art that criticizes highbrow notions of beauty and value and the intellectual community’s almost puritanical opposition to perceived vulgar and crude forms. As Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, the plot is kind of dumb, but its implications are fascinating.
