Gene Kelly And Fred Astaire Go Mano a Mano- Kelly’s “An American In Paris” ( 1951 )-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

An American In Paris, starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, music by George and Ira Gershwin, 1951

Someday let me give you the complete story of how a film critic gets his or her assignments from “upstairs” (unless of course that person is hard road free-lancing and is just submitting pieces to publications “on spec”). I should know after some thirty plus years of doing this type of work recently here and from many years at the American Film Gazette (where I still do on-line reviews and where I started out as that free-lancer submitting pieces “on spec” when the publication was strictly hard copy  before I was taken on as a staff member). For now though since I am on a “run” so let me say that the reason I got this assignment to review Gene Kelly’s An American In Paris (and the next one which will be on Fred Astaire’s, and Ginger Roger’s, Shall We Dance) is that the editor here, Pete Markin, had grabbed these two films via Amazon for one purpose and one purpose only-to see who was the better dancer back in the day -Kelly or Astaire. (There is not even a question of anybody today touching the hem of either’s skirt since dance kings are a rare breed and one would be hard pressed to name one male popular dancer who is even close. Whatever else our disagreements as will be noted below we agree on that point-to our collective sorrows.)

This no academic question because not only did Pete go out of his way to view both film he engaged me in a heated argument one morning in front of the water cooler when he casually laid a bombshell on me. The bombshell? After years of assuming that Fred Astaire had the title of king hell king popular dancer wrapped up he had switched his allegiance to Kelly on the sole basis of this film under review. Needless to say I had to upbraid him for both his treason and his error. And hence this “run.” So you see here is a prime example of the odd-ball ways of those high and mighty general editors in doling out the work. But to the lists.          

Maybe An American In Paris with its paper thin plotline is not the best place to critique Mister Kelly’s dancing (or acting efforts which whatever faults I find in his dancer they do not compare to his wooden glad hand acting in this role) but I did not throw down the gauntlet this time. I do not utter that term “paper thin” lightly here. Here’s the play as my predecessor and friend in this department Sam Lowell always liked to say. Kelly finds himself in Paris after the war, after World War II of which he was some of veteran of although it was probably work in a Special Services unit entertaining entertainment-starved G.I.s fresh off the front lines with his song and dance routine. Empathically not after World War I when Paris was the center of the F. Scott Fitzgerald-dubbed Jazz Age and the period when the Gershwins, George and Ira, wrote the music and lyrics for the origin concept and which given the playlist here would have been a better time frame for Kelly’s character, a guy, a regular guy, named Gerry Mulligan stew to have strutted his stuff. In gay Paree (gay in the old-fashioned sense of happy, light, and so on not today’s sexual identity usage) Gerry was doing his best to be a mediocre artist, a painter (already you can see there is a problem since the transition to dancer in each routine seems bizarre or his being an artist seems bizarre when he was at least a better dancer than artist - take your pick). He is getting nowhere fast in his humble little garret imitation of how he thinks his heroes the Impressionists suffered for their art. Finally some moneybags “art patroness” takes up his cause and easy street and high society (which is really a ruse for trying to get him to fall for her-no dice-no nice dice)

What or rather who he does fall for, falls hard for, is a little French twist with a turned up nose and who we will find out quickly is as light on her feet as Gerry is on his on the dance floor. She gives him the cold shoulder for a while mainly because she is trying to do the honorable thing for her benefactor and fiancé (and to boot Gerry’s friend too). As Gerry pulls the hammer down on the romance she softens a bit. But still no sale until the end when after this serious imaginary dance Gerry has worked himself up over recreating various paintings by his max daddy artist Impressionist artists heroes (and a couple of guys from early trends in French art) where he and Leslie trip the light fantastic she relents. Or rather her lover-benefactor seeing the writing on the wall brings her to Gerry’s doorstep. Nice guy. So you can see no way that even the best song and dance man could overcome these disservices to the Gershwins 1920s be-bop Jazz Age pieces.    

Of course this whole dispute, this tempest in a teapot, brewed up by Mister Markin is not about the qualities of the storyline but about Kelly’s dancing (and singing too but dancing is enough to chew on). On the question of pure physical energy and verve Kelly is not bad reflecting I think the hopped up (maybe drugged up) post-World War II period when everybody who had slogged through the war was in a rush to get to wherever they thought they should be going. He has all the moves if not all the grace that Fred Astaire had in his own prime. And that is really the sticking point here, the point that became clear during that seventeen minute interlude where Gerry imagined those painterly scenes from the works of his favored artists. Kelly was all arms and legs and odd-ball twists and turned but only for a few seconds during that whole “why the hell is this long scene in this film anyway except to prolong the film” did he exhibit any grace and that was when he was doing yeoman’s work lifting Ms. Caron in balletic style. How the usually level-headed Markin could have called that one of the best dance scenes he had ever seen tells a lot. Tells me he, he Mister fancy general editor has maybe been at the hash pipe too long of late. Touché