Gotta Dance! Singin’ in the Rain and Affect Theory (Essay)

What kind of affect makes someone dance in the pouring rain? Love, perhaps, but what of we the people who watch, knowing it’s fake love, and even fake rain, and yet still we yearn to be grinning through a storm ourselves? 

Only one thing could have swayed them to such an absurdity: what they saw was on a glowing cinema screen, and the affectual power of the dancing body in a piece of art erases all concern for artificial things. Instead we feel memories of joy in our own bodies, so strong we yearn for a downpour just to act them out. This phenomenon was clear when Gene Kelly attended Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, during a storm, and watched hundreds of people throw aside their shivering and sing, as one, to his song as it played over a loudspeaker. He called the whole experience “the biggest thrill of my life” (Wollen, 1992, pg. 44). There was nothing fake about his feelings, or the singing people, or the storm, and yet what brought them together was a film, a fabrication - except for Kelly’s body, that the audience saw dancing in Stanley Donen’s landmark film Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

At the centre of the musical genre’s signature performativity is the fact of a dancer. The truest part of a musical film, its biggest affective tool in the goal of authenticity, is the manipulation of something we all own: a body. Embodied reality, literally. So for a musical to work, at its best: you gotta dance.

I have chosen to limit my discussion to the old Hollywood musical genres to necessitate my chosen case study of this film, but also because the embodied reality of dance in modern musicals doesn’t really exist. Before CGI, the star you saw onscreen dancing was indeed dancing, especially in the favoured wide shots that showed the choreography at length. There was no hiding a ‘dance double’ through closeups and editing, then, and certainly no CGI. That has been the practice for films such as Black Swan, where Natalie Portman’s face was digitally placed onto her dance double Sarah Lane’s body for wide shots where the choreography was en pointe or otherwise beyond Portman’s capabilities (Farley, 2011). In 1952, a dancer in a musical needed to dance, end of story. Their singing or even speaking could be dubbed (which happens in the film’s plot) but there was no dubbing of a body.

In this essay I will explore the affectual significance of dancing bodies in the Hollywood musical, through the case study of Singin’ in the Rain. I will analyse three numbers in depth: firstly Broadway Melody, a balletic duet between Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse; secondly Make ‘Em Laugh, a solo by Donald O’Connor, and thirdly the title number, a solo by Kelly. The way dance – and, notably non-dance inspired movement – is used in these routines controls their resulting affect, emotional mood, and narrative purpose. 

Five hundred thousand kilowatts of stardust: fact and fiction in the Hollywood musical

As MacKinnon notes, in a musical a character’s personal feelings (though expressed in explosive dancing and singing) are validated in their intensity and their right to be expressed (2000, pg. 44). There is camaraderie between characters in a musical as they sing and dance about their secrets. Entertainment’s trick is to present negative or difficult feelings (jealousy, heartbreak, defeat) in a way that makes them seem easier and clearer than they do in normal life (Dyer, 2002, pg. 22). Feuer calls the musical genre ‘formally bold, yet culturally conservative’, a suitably contradictory comment (1993, page x). She devotes a chapter in her 1993 work “The Hollywood Musical” to tracking the simultaneous innovation and tradition of the genre. 

Hollywood musicals exist between performativity and authenticity in a complex way. Their manipulation of spectacle’s visual pleasure (Mulvey 1975 pg. 835) is a performative act, yet the emotion they access (as I discussed above) is an authentic act. This is why the cinematic illusion’s affect (Card, 1984, pg. 90) is so strong. The artistic disciplines in a Hollywood musical create images that commit to what Richard Dyer calls an affective code:

“… an affective code that is characteristic of, and largely specific to, a given mode of cultural production. This code uses both representational and, importantly, non-representational signs. There is a tendency to concentrate on the former, and clearly it would be wrong to overlook them… we also recognize qualities in non-representational signs – colour, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, camerawork – although we are much less used to talking about them.” (Dyer, 2002, pg. 20, emphasis mine)

In other words, musicals use their attention to detail to transform moments into non-representational signs (alongside representational ones) even through the the creating of ‘false, yet appealing images for us”(Card, 1984, pg. 91). No matter how false in some ways, these moments influence audience members’ truthful and personal understanding. This is an unspoken contract between filmmakers and audiences, that musicals have their own type of artificialities (Grant, 2007, pg. 10), and I believe that also means they have their own type of authenticity, one rooted in affectual response to creativity.

The dichotomy of fiction/non-fiction is most formally and directly examined in most in the “backstage musical” genre. That is, a musical film about people putting on a show or musical themselves (Rubin, 2002, pg. 55). The backstage sub-genre’s engagement with performance also gives the production an excuse for the aforementioned cinematic spectacle, with the logic being that the characters aim for spectacle in their own show. 

Beyond this backstage sub-genre, though, are other generic dominant examples that dwell on the border between performative and authentic. Freur identifies several of these sequence types that are present in Singin’ in the Rain: the dream sequence (fiction-in-fiction); the bricolage routine (which uses props for the illusion of spontaneity) and ‘integrated’ character numbers (which try to make themselves seem realistic emotionally or narratively). I will cover the affective codes and impacts of all these number types in my scene-specific sections.

Everybody dance: bodies of authenticity and affect in the musical

You’re nothing but a shadow on film, a shadow, you’re not flesh and blood!

- Kathy Selden

If the flesh and blood fact of dancing bodies are such an important tie to the musical’s authenticity status, then how does affect (a bodily reality) engage with those bodies and render them so significant? 

The carrying out of the choreography was a physical documented reality. Editing and manipulation can take Gene Kelly’s pirouette and put it to different music, for example, but cannot take away the fact that he did it all those years ago. Once you see it, you know it existed. 

Here I return to Dyer’s notes on the affective code and its non-representational signs. The physicality of dancing bodies can become signs like these: carriers of colour, movement, and sensory abundance, captured by a careful camera to amplify the conceptual aims of the dance number in which the body performs. It turns into an instrument for meaning through physical melody and harmony, in Rudolph Arnheim’s words in Film as Art (Wollen, 1992, pg. 63).

One could call affect simultaneously intimate and impersonal. The study of affect theory itself (rather than affect in film specifically) still returns my thinking back to dance and its status as a physical spectacle. It beckons to our instinctual bodily awareness, if unconsciously. To me, nothing is more simultaneously intimate and impersonal than our bodies: they carry our individual lives in flesh, as close to us as it is possible for anything to be, and yet there is nothing special about that connection when everyone on earth has a body that does the same. Ahmed maintains that emotions are linked directly to individual and collective bodies, and the way they respond to signs (2004, pg. 117). Dyer defines dance in musical film as most simply being bodies in space and in relation to each other (2000, pg. 25), and so the connection is clear for affect scholar or film scholar alike. Seeing even a fictional body in space and in motion, especially if amplified by the signs of an artistic affective code, beckons to our deepest primal awareness of embodied corporeal reality and feeling. Lisa Blackman also notes how, in affect modulation, the body has inherent potential for creativity (Blackman in Pedwell, 2017, pg. 151). This means the body’s presence strengthens a film’s sense of artistic success to an audience, consciously, not just compelling unconscious affect to our physical selves. This creative advantage of dance’s human bodies was thus doubly strong, and it is easy to see why the musical form fostered such commitment to stars who danced.

Heather Laing’s ‘Emotion by Numbers’ piece says much about music as an art form, specifically its “direct line to the human unconscious, bypassing systems of critical censorship and rendering the audience susceptible to emotional affect.” (Laing, 2000, pg. 7) She believes music raises feeling to a higher version of itself, like poetry. If song is one side of the audiovisual contract in film (Chion in Siefert, 1995, pg. 45) where sound gives an image greater significance, I believe the reverse is true. When the image is dance, I view it as a direct tactile counterpart in the contract, a physical expression of the messages and moods of the songs, making an organic unity (Doane in Siefert, 1995, pg. 46). The dancers carry emotion in their manner of movement, an embodiment deepened by the affective code that interprets the dance. The physicality of a character becomes an energy we can feel as a possibility for ourselves, not just a portrayal.

The icon: Singin’ in the Rain

Singin’ in the Rain is famous for its status as a signature of the genre, but it  invites self-reflexive viewing (Clover, 2002, pg. 159) as well as praise; toying with notions of authenticity and performativity for its entire running time. As James Card says, the film is “of and about illusion” (1984, pg. 92), and Hirschhorn notes that it perfectly reconstructs a world that has vanished forever (1981, pg. 326). A more accurate phrase might be that it deconstructs that world at the same time, because the work of the characters (their making of their entertainment product) becomes our entertainment (Feuer, 1993, pg. 12).

Peter Wollen’s outstanding 1992 book on the film identifies its thematic centre as raising questions about “the relation of sound and image, authenticity and unauthenticity”, all wrapped in songs and humour (1992, pg. 53). In this way, the narrative engages directly with the idea of reality in Hollywood during historical period of great significance to cinema, that saw the arrival of the talkies and musicals. Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green make much of their real memories of the sound changeover, which became inspirations behind their screenplay, and Gene Kelly has commented “almost everything in Singin’ in the Rain springs from the truth. It’s a conglomeration of bits of movie lore.” (Wollen, 1992, pg. 54). 

Comden and Green also make a very interesting point about the Freed-Brown catalogue songs (from the late 20s and early 30s) around which they were writing the film: “It occurred to us that… they would bloom at their happiest in something that took place in the very period in which they had been written.” (1972, pg. 4) It is as though they thought of the songs as living, affectual things themselves, with desires to flourish and belong, then wanted to give those beings a genuine home.

The film’s visual decisions were also guided by a duality of authenticity and performativity. This means there is a constant fluctuation between artifice and reality inherent the film’s spaces (Wollen, 1992, pg. 58). The story itself gives this a nod in its the You Were Meant For Me number, wherein its creative approach of revealing yet maintaining technology is turned into a character moment for Don and Kathy. 

Don, feeling like he needs the right (fake) setting to confess his (real) love for Kathy, takes her to an empty soundstage. He activates or points out the various technologies, while speaking metaphorically about the quality each of them brings to the scene; such as a ladder and the lights turning Kathy into “a lady standing in her balcony in a rose-trellised bower, flooded with moonlight.” After they sing the song, however, the camera comes in for a tighter final shot that excludes the previously exposed equipment, letting it seem like magic after all. Jane Feuer comments that this scene gives us a complete confession, just to then conceal the crime again (1982).

Overall, though, Singin’ in the Rain’s most important relationship between authenticity and performativity is the kind in the dancing bodies. This applies to any musical, as I have mentioned above, but Singin’ in the Rain’sespecially self-reflexive approach means the embodied reality of dance (within the staged environment) strengthens its overall thematic drive. In addition, more simply, the absolute soul of this film is in its dancing more than any other element, a point made by Clover that I absolutely endorse. She also has a note about the majority of the dance sequences in the film being finely styled production numbers with “controlled affect.” (2002, pg. 159)

One of these numbers is Broadway Melody, the duet between Kelly and Cyd Charisse that I will analyse first. Its affect is indeed relatively controlled, using an elegant aesthetic surrounding the highly technical movement vocabulary of ballet, to create the mood and story of a dream through its dancing bodies.

However, my other objects of analysis have an entirely deliberate lack of control in their affect: Donald O’Connor’s solo Make ‘Em Laugh, and Kelly’s iconic solo that bears the film’s title. These performances are frenetic, the former a farce of comedic chaos and the latter an exuberant expression of joy at new love. The affect of these numbers is shifted particularly by their choreography’s integration of more normalized movements, because they echo physical memory in the spectator (eg. walking happily down the street) and thus connect to similar emotions very naturally.

The differing affects between these three numbers show how dance on film can utilize its documented execution (thus its physical authenticity to an audience), and direct that for very specific purposes, increasing the success with an affective code that turns dancing figures into artistic signs: Charisse’s body is a dream, O’Connor’s is chaos, and Kelly’s is joy.

A veiled ballerina: the dreaming body 

That’s the Broadway Melody!

- Don Lockwood

Dreams and fantasies have always played a crucial role in the musical, often echoing the spectator’s relationship to the film itself, according to Feuer (1993, pg. 68-69), where the dream diegesis is our wish (Feuer, 1993, pg. 85) about cinema. Rubin calls spectacle a tradition about ensuring feelings of abundance and wonder (2002, pg. 53), words that also conjure the mood of a dream. 

The settings of Singin’ in the Rain in general have a enchantment as well as a realism, or a lessened tension between the prosaic and the lyrical, as Telotte memorably puts it (1984, pg. 39). This tension gives way to the lyrical side completely during the Broadway Melody ballet sequence, however, rendering the duet between Kelly and Cyd Charisse a deliberate fantasy. She looks like “a cross between a ballerina and an angel” (Mckinnon, 2000, pg. 41) and their dancing bodies are turned into hazy, unattainable blooms of romantic expression through the colour and shape that frames their choreography. That choreography is in itself unique for the film because of its ballet and Modern dance influences. This is a particularly strong affective code enforced by the film, because ‘a dream’ is emphatically the sequence’s diegetic status, as a wishful vision that Don’s hoofer character has about a vamp he met, and that hoofer’s story is in turn a part of ‘real’ Don visualizing the Broadway Melody sequence as one he wants to incorporate into the Dancing Cavalier. This is as well as the Broadway Melody ballet as it having a ‘dreamy’ mood to us as an extradiegetic audience. It is narratively and structurally the most unrealistic thing in the film, and so that’s how it comes across, visually and bodily.

MacKinnon names musicals as having a “cruciality of wishfulness”, as thinking of a better place (2000, pg. 40), a comment that applies hugely to this sequence as one that the film’s screenplay openly describes as “an imagined paradise” (Comden and Green, 1972, pg. 64). A dream like this connects to the idealism in every audience member, longing for a paradise of their own. This makes Richard Dyer’s thoughts about utopia in musicals very relevant. These films don’t give us actual utopias (worlds) though, never pretending we can find them. Instead we are given the feeling of utopia (Dyer, 2002, pg. 19), the best we can have. The ballet space is absolutely not an attainable vision. Our utopia stays a dream.

An even more specific device that unfolded from the general concept of the musical dream sequence is the dream ballet. It became common for MGM in the 1950s, according to Feuer, and appeared in many musicals. The transition into formal ballet was used as a direct sign of the character’s psychological state as the action moves into a fanciful space (Wollen, 1992, pg. 35). Kelly took advantage of his ballet knowledge and combined it with his ability to tell a story in purely visual terms (Mason, 2012, pg. 12). 

Don first partners with the Dancer as a gangster’s vamp character, coming across her within the bright red walls of a club when she catches his hat on the end of her foot, with that same long leg totally objectified by the camera. The stinging green sequins on her dress look almost like scales as she dances with him quite forcefully, with serpent-like sexuality in the jazz choreography (Chumo, 1996, pg. 45). The vamp eventually returns to her mafia lover, leaving Don alone. This is the cue for his dream about her when he sees her again, it is a direct embodiment of his hope that she has changed and will now embrace him romantically as he spots her in a white bridal dress across a crowded casino. Of course, she spurns him again, having now married her lover from the previous scene. 

Before moving onto further discussion of this number, the representational signs of Charisse’s character must be acknowledged in themselves, as well as the non-representational artistic signs her body assumes in the process of her dance. This is because Charisse’s balletic choreography differs so drastically from all other dance numbers in Singin’ in the Rain, as different dance styles are deliberately used depending on the persona of the character (Fogarty, 2014, pg. 12). Therefore, her Modern/ballet fusion is especially for her as the vision in a dream.

Thus, this conscious decision to integrate a new form is such a strongly influential base for the non-representational signs she assumes. The affective code of this scene is as strong as it is due to aesthetic decisions like the ‘abstract space’ and the ethereal floating costume, but first and foremost, it begins with the style of dance and the way Charisse executes it, showing her as the representational sign of the ‘ballerina image’ before that image is further worked into a dreamy non-representational sign. The ‘ballet’ side of ‘dream ballet’ is there for a reason, it is a high art moment vocabulary that can easily be turned into something ethereal. Charisse’s screen credit is in a way the biggest confession: Dancer. No other name, no pretending she is anything else. She is not a named character with other personality traits, she is a Dancer, a mercurial pool of physical expression whose shape is human. Nothing she does can be done without dance training – right from her first leg extension with Don’s hat, when she is the vamp. The only everyday human thing she does is stand still, and smoke. 

I am discussing this Broadway Melody number first, to establish the terms of it as a work of ‘pure dance’ compared to O’Connor and Kelly’s solos (that are my next objects of analysis), so we may see the difference. The choreography of the other two numbers absolutely includes steps only possible with training (Kelly’s effortless taps, O’Connor’s back-flipping off a wall), but also include many moments of more relatable physicality that function as transitions in and out of the more complex steps. Kelly ends his dance stomping in puddles like any child, and O’Connor’s vaudeville tricks are designed to look like a regular person’s comical clumsiness. Charisse’s Dancer, on the other hand, does not spend a single moment pretending not to be a professional. The embodied reality of her movements is openly inimitable, suggesting that a graceful body is the ultimate demonstration of talent in Singin' in the Rain. (Chumo, 1996, pg. 46).

She is barefoot (the only character to be seen as such), as though she is so ephemeral that not even her steps can be heard. Her feet show her ballet training even without pointe shoes (fig. 1), through two distinct elements. 

fig. 1

First are her balanced bourreés, small steps with the ankles and knees close together as a dancer travels. Secondly, visible in her bourreés is a technically advanced relevé, meaning the height of her heel off the floor as she balances on the ball of her foot and engages her arch. Her carriage, posture, leg movements and general aesthetic elegance all align with ballet, but her footwork is the biggest giveaway, and the ballet-trained choreographer Kelly would have ensured that. Her character appears in a dream because only in our dreams can we (or most of us, as non-ballerinas) move like her.

The duet is in a sunset-like space of rosebud pink, with notes of lilac. It’s markedly like the stage from You Were Meant For Me, meaning some reality is present in the fictive (Ewing, 2006, pg. 14), and ‘exorcising’ Don’s real romance from his subconscious. Unlike You Were Meant For Me, however, the “five hundred thousand kilowatts of stardust” from that similar scene appear of their own accord in this sequence, not by Don’s hand, so the illusion is complete. Complicit in that illusion is the white fabric sail, fifty feet long, that was blown into the air on set with carefully aimed aeroplane motors. In this way, a highly technical effort appears as part of the celestial mirage (Wollen, 1992, pg. 43).

Every shot is perfectly composed, often with Don and the Dancer mirroring each other’s positions, showing a soul or heart connection that emerges spontaneously from their bodies. Their arms are often wide (fig. 2), as though inviting any emotion that might find its way to them in the limitless abstract space of pure expression. 

fig. 2

Charisse’s veil soaring into the air gives her an ethereal appearance, one Ewing accurately characterizes as like an angel or bird of paradise (2006, pg. 16). The Dancer’s veil is also often caught and wrapped around Don completely, ‘tying’ their bodies together into an unmistakable affective symbol of romance. A particular lift (fig. 3) shows this connection as he holds her to him, her leg extended into balletic hyperextension with a perfect foot in tendu (or ‘pointed’) foot, the veil anchoring them together but flapping behind them like it will carry them to the skies.

fig. 3

The rounded central shape of her body draped in white is like the shadow of a lily about to bloom, with Don’s legs the stem below and her extended foot the stamen nudging out of the petals. Charisse is a flower now, still not quite a person, and neither is Don when he is with her. Their bodies dream for us, carrying our affect of wishes and idealism.

Take a fall, butt a wall, split a seam: the chaotic body

You start off by pretending you’re a dancer with grace, you wiggle til they’re giggling all over the place!

-Cosmo Brown

After my discussion of the technical and aesthetically gentle Broadway Melody dream sequence, we now move onto the fractured chaos of Donald O’Connor’s solo, Make ‘Em Laugh.

The sequence type of this performance is what Feuer calls a bricolage number, in which objects and physical human actions alike are blended to give the illusion of spontaneity and authenticity (1993, pg. 5). We see a person ‘making do’ with what is around them and root for them to succeed, even if it’s to have fun and not survive. It’s also contextually and culturally deliberate for a Hollywood production to have an ‘American inventiveness’ feel (Feuer, 1993, pg. 5-6). His rendering himself equal to surrounding objects and spaces is an alliance with inanimate things, turning them expressive in a surreal way (Wollen, 1992, pg. 64) that adds to the chaos affect. 

The creation of the number oddly echoes the thrown-together bricolage style it conforms to, which I discuss below. Screenwriters Comden and Green succinctly report thus: “For this number Gene and Stanley took every piece of zany gymnastic clowning and surrealist vaudeville bit Donald had saved up in his body, and worked them into an insane classic unlike any other before or since.” (1972, pg. 9)  Guiding the creation, in my opinion, was the established comedic persona of Cosmo, who spends most of his other scenes pulling faces and being ‘the joker’.This means his ‘clown act’ actually functions as a relatively believable extension of his character (Wollen, 1992, pg. 34). 

The clown image is a legacy of the original clowns, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Stanley Cavell reflects on their phenomenological presence (1979, pg. 36-37) in a way I believe applies directly to Cosmo in this number. Cavell calls the comedic appeal of these film performers as being one rooted in our own frustrations of survival in a difficult world, the instinctual response to a body in danger. Against the odds, Cosmo survives AND thrives. He searches for our impersonal affectual reaction of laughter at chaos, the same energy of schaudenfreude or even sadism.

The goal is named in the very title: laughter. As a pre-personal and universal sensation of humour, it’s a particularly affectual aim to feel in our own bodies, and far more attainable than the implacable dreaminess of Charisse’s balletic elegance. Cosmo hits the floor like a sack of potatoes, as we all have from time to time. 

Professional polish would spoil his spectacle of ‘energetic, even maniacal, movement’ (Cohan, 2000, pg. 64) that turns his human body into a whirling wind. Another abstract image I often see in his movements is a running hose that no one is holding and sprays uncontrollably, which is quite an odd thing for a human to become. It’s an exuberance and enthusiasm that Don himself embodies in the title number (Chumo, 1996, pg. 51), which is next in my discussion.

Cosmo performs the number dressed in grey and brown, the dull colours of the construction environment around him, as though he is an object there too, comedically so, not a person. The bricolage idea (meaning the spontaneity illusion) comes through his treatment of various things, like walking on a piano as though it’s a table or whipping a hat off a passing costume cart to play with. The studio workers continue to build things around him, no matter if he gets in the way, lying on a plank and pretending to swim (fig. 4).

fig. 4

The zany affective energy of his body rhythm is basically ignored diegetically, and it makes us even more appreciative of it. He also uses his face: his expressions shift so often they can barely be described, so that every inch of him becomes a tool of chaos. He is no longer the signifier of a human, he becomes elastic, an abstract sign. This is confirmed even more strongly as he begins interacting with a dummy and the sounds of him moving are the whirring of a clockwork toy.

A lack of fear defines the whole number, as O’Connor throws himself around with no apparent reservation. The difference between a real fall and a stage fall is, of course, intention, but that does not numb the pain of a body meeting a hard surface, especially not when he takes so many falls in such a short time. The audience feels bruised just watching him, and the human body’s reaction to pain is a primal and entirely impersonal feeling and thus seeing it gives us a primal affect. Cosmo defies logic and instinct to make himself an agent of entertainment and chaos. 

The final stunt breaks the illusion of being relatable – backflipping off a wall is unapologetically impossible for 99.99% of the population – but it is also followed by a strange form of realism, when Cosmo ends the number by collapsing to the floor. Almost no one can do what he just did, but if they could, they would land on their back just like him.

In summation, Cosmo Brown (or, rather, Donald O’Connor), uses physical chaos to transform his body into a tool of comedy, and thus his subversion of his own humanity makes the audience doubly aware of their own. All we see is pain and hyperactivity, that we recognize in some form, blown into a whirlwind we cannot imagine until we see it. It is a masterwork of entertainment, but also of the musical genre’s illusion of spontaneity.

What a glorious feeling: the joyful body

“In the pouring rain, Don, happy and in love, sings and dances in the wet street, jumping up on the lamp-post, sloshing joyously through puddles… in an outburst of exuberance, kicking up water in the gutter like a kid. He notices a policeman… and strolls off, drenched and in love with life.”

- Singin’ in the Rain (screenplay by Comden and Green, 1972, pg. 62)

The most significant body in Singin’ in the Rain is Gene Kelly’s in the title number, a routine so legendary it has transcended decades, genres, and languages. Though, like Make ‘Em Laugh, I believe the number’s endless popularity is as much due to its use of non-dance movements alongside the admirably skillful choreography. Even the above quote from the film’s screenplay specifies steps that require no training, just enthusiasm. Sticking one’s head under a pipe streaming with cold water in a fit of excitement might not be advisable, but it’s certainly possible for the average person. To me, it links straight to the trick of a number like this. 

I believe here we relate to Kelly’s pure happiness, the simplistic physical side effects of anyone’s good mood, that penetrate this number’s sequences of more complex dance combinations. This appeal to our hidden ‘ideal selves’, meaning the idea that we could be stars too in a small way, is a Cavell (1979) idea. His dancing body is humanized into relatable joy by this movement, but to me it is also accomplished by another choice in the affective code: the realistic, tactile setting with the sight and sound of rain, with its damp and uncomfortable physicality (Fogarty, 2014, pg. 4) which we have all felt, We subconsciously connect our memories of optimism to our memories of rain and suddenly Don’s feelings become our own, and we become more and more invested in the number. Thecollective cultural memory holds onto that affect from him, the ‘glorious feeling’, almost more than any of the perfectly timed taps themselves. 

Don balances on the curb edge like a circus tightrope walker, convincing us the idea came to him in the moment (Chumo, 1996, pg. 49) sudden yet perfect for a novelty-style performance full of squelching sounds, not perfect taps (Wollen, 1992, pg. 16). The affective code of his body interacting with the water to create whirling sensory images (as though he is a gust of wind or raindrop himself) renders him a fizz of proudly imperfect happiness. 

Formally speaking; where Broadway Melody is a dream number and Make ‘Em Laugh a bricolage one, this number is best understood as a model of narrative integration, so strong it has become utterly iconic. Integration in musicals steadily improved throughout the 50s (Grant, 2007, pg. 43) and this number is a strong demonstration of that.

There are very few things to say about this number that have not already been said in the 67 years since the film was released, but I will try to bring some fresh remarks. Peter Wollen’s extended study (1997) is a good one, though I have other notes of my own. Wollen begins by affirming the theory I share on the number’s integration being key to its success, where the dance is an illustrative approach of Don’s optimism at this point in the film.

In simple terms, Don spends more time than you probably remember simply walking, smiling, and carrying his umbrella in a way most of us actually can. It is these ‘possible’ transition moments, crucial things that make us believe the body we see is like ours. 

fig. 5

I also believe that Kathy’s comment about the ‘California dew’ being heavier is significant, with that romanticized image sticking in Don’s mind to the point that he wants to feel it on his skin. He also leaps onto the lamppost easily, in the routine’s most iconic moment, as though the ‘heavy dew’ hasn’t stopped him feeling weightless and giddy. 

He waves at strangers rushing through the storm as they turn and stare at him, their pedestrian body movements reminding us of what Don ‘should’ be doing. He swings his umbrella in time with his steps, activating an inanimate object to be as ‘happy’ as he is – if the umbrella can do it, why not us? At the end of the number, he visibly gets sick of dancing and throws it away completely to become a child, an animal, a bouncing rubber ball, dissolving into childlike splashing from spontaneous playful excitement  (Fogarty, 2014, pg. 5). When caught by a policeman (who enforces and thus represents social norms), he states the truth, his unapologetic ‘thesis’ for dance, as Kelly called it (Hirschhorn, in Wollen, 1992, pg. 26): “I’m dancin’, and singin… in the rain.” A simple thing, a happy thing, and all the explanation that is needed. My thoughts return to MacKinnon’s point about musicals having appeal for the way the characters’ emotions are validated (2000, pg. 44). In this universe, a grown man can hop about in an uninhibited frenzy (Wollen, 1992, pg. 27) but experience no impolite questions about his sanity. Many would love to live in such a world, where glorious feelings explode proudly.

Conclusion: 

Musical films are remembered for their performativity, their precise construction of lavishly beautiful numbers, but those numbers nonetheless connect to our most intensely real thoughts and dreams. Singin’ in the Rain is particularly fascinating in its embodiment of this performativity while also deconstructing the musical film in various ways. Singin’ in the Rain does not so much wink at its own reflection as do so after hanging up its own (highly ornate) mirror. One thing is for sure: the sight in that mirror is a dancer, and in seeing their body we feel affect seep into our own, whether it is dreams, chaos, or pure joy. With feelings like these, we might just dance in the rain.

References:

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(originally written for UNSW Honours thesis)