filmbriefs
Screenwriter

Betty Comden

2
briefs
13:00
average
26 min
in total
On film.briefs2
13:00

Singin' in the Rain

Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen · 1952

Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, set during Hollywood’s transition from silent films to sound. With a script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, it follows a leading man, his vaudevillian friend and a rising actress as they salvage a failing production by turning it into a musical. Built around pre-existing songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, the film treats song-and-dance as narrative logic, not decoration. Its enduring reputation rests on choreographic precision, structural wit and an unironic belief in collective skill — not nostalgia.

13:00

The Band Wagon

Vincente Minnelli · 1953

Tony Hunter, a fading musical star, joins a Broadway show written by friends — only for its director to recast it as a pretentious Faust adaptation. Clashing with ballerina Gabrielle Gerard, he walks out, then returns to reshape the show as light entertainment. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, with songs by Schwartz and Dietz and choreography by Michael Kidd, the film treats musical theatre as a living, negotiable form — not a vehicle for stardom, but a site of collective recalibration.