An American in Paris

An American in Paris is one of those classic films that is very well-known and respected, but I have shied away from it because it looks like the kind of song and dance musical that can feel very dated.  It stars Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron and Gershwin music. The movie ranked number 68 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 top American films released in 1998 (although it was left off the updated 2007 list), and it gets a 98% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

All of which leaves me very much in the minority position, as I really did not appreciate this film.  It has a couple of redeeming features, but it also exhibits many of the problems that older films have, and for me these overwhelm the experience.

The redeeming parts:  Gene Kelly is definitely light on his feet, able to dance all around very nicely.  Also, there are a couple of fantasy musical numbers, including a really grandiose scene at the end, that are entertaining (I'm sure the second one was considered great in its time.)

However, the film has many of the problems that plague older films.  When we first meet Gene Kelly, we look in his window to see him just waking up, looking from head to toe like he has been up for hours.  People burst into impromptu song and dance with harmonies and matching choreography.  Gene Kelly is supposedly a painter who has been in Paris for two years, but one scene implies he has never sold a painting.  How does he live?  The streets of Paris are suspiciously clean (turns out it was filmed in a studio in the US.)  The French children learn bits of English with surprisingly good accents (turns out they were American.)

But it's the love story that really comes off wrong.  Kelly meets a lovely rich American woman who wants to help him sell his art, but he isn't interested in her because, you know, what man wants to be dependent on a woman?  Instead, he meets a young French girl (Leslie Caron) and falls for her, but he comes off as more of a stalker than a man in love.  Caron is not appealing at all in this film (she's OK, barely), but the moment he meets her, he's smitten, just walking by her.  She is sitting at the table behind him, and although he is with a group, he ignores them and leans back until he catches her name.  Then he changes seats and stares right at her from about six feet away.  She is clearly uncomfortable with this (who wouldn't be?), but he qucikly gets up and asks her to dance, using her name and pretending he knows her.  She again tells him that she is uncomfortable.  He then asks for her phone number, and when she lies, her friend corrects her.  He calls anyway and is able to figure out where she works, then of course shows up there, and she finally agrees to see him.  On their first date, he sings about how their love will last forever.  All this, and the film says she is 19, while he looks at least 30-ish.  Actually Leslie Caron turned 20 in 1951, when the film was made, and Gene Kelly turned 39.  Creep.

If you like the music and the dancing, fine.  But the filmmaking is everything you wish old films were not.