Singin' in the Rain and the Rejection of Classical Hollywood Narrative Style

Hollywood films are often accused of engaging in a style that puts too much emphasis on narrative storytelling, even to the point where the biggest crime is including anything that detracts attention away from the comprehensibility of the narrative arc. The opening sequence in the beloved musical Singin' in the Rain is a perfect example of how these rules are often contraverted and unappreciated in what still remains the most innovative and revolutionary of all Hollywood movie genres, the musical. From the beginning to the end of Singin' in the Rain co-directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (also the star) engage in irony and other cinematic tricks of the trade to persuade the audiences of this glossy, big-budget Hollywood standard to rebuff the idea that moviemaking has to be so pathetically obvious. Singin' in the Rain perpetually, in ways both on the surface and beneath, calls into question the foundational concept of what is assumed to be the prevalent ideological mechanism at work behind Hollywood movies; the misunderstood acceptance of naturalistic realism.

Singin' in the Rain commences with a sequence that even by the time it was released in the early 1950s had come to be a cliché. The use of a swanky Hollywood premiere for a new movie had become shorthand by then for all manner of emotional registers, from melodrama to satire. The glittering introduction of pompous celebrities is contrasted with the screaming and adoring fans who want little more out of their pathetic lives than just to catch a brief glimpse of their favorite movie stars. In this case, those stars are silent film megastars Don Lockwood and Lena Lamont, and they are awarded treatment previously accorded to none but royalty. The sequence lavishly sets up a recurrent theme that will drive the narrative of Singin' in the Rain, that of the façade that exists between reality and Hollywood illusion. This is done especially well in the set piece that establishes the rise of Don Lockwood to his current heights of glamour.