Singin’ in the Rain

My first time. A real surprise. It’s one of those pieces – like The Artist, and (apparently, donchaknow) a new Downton offering – which deals with the problems faced by some horrible-voiced silent movie stars when the talkies came along. This is a comedy, but has an amazing extended sequence where the story’s hero/Gene Kelly (here the two seem to fuse) projects his vision of how a number (‘Broadway Melody’) might be produced. Dream-like, sexual, all very strange, and a long way from my previous ideas of the film which were based entirely on Eric and Ernie’s parody of the actual singing in the rain song.

Dune (1)

The book was great (when I read it in the 1970s), and I hadn’t seen any earlier film versions. This was jolly good fun, close in atmosphere to the book, but I don’t remember the Harkonnens being as obviously ‘we’re the bad guys aren’t we’ as the Nazi way they were portrayed – that was the only off note. Weird seeing the guy I saw for the first time recently as Wonka in a sci-fi messiah role, but hey, er, whoops – wossa difference – he’s fighting pantomime baddies in both.

How they are related

Messianic parallels aside, I’m tempted to make a comparison between the amazing dancing in Singin’ and the agility and physical skill of the Fremen (the indigenous people of the desert) in Dune. Both certainly represent a heightened mode of existence, a way of living which both physically and mentally marks them apart from lesser mortals like me. It’s about an intensity of focus over a lifetime and concentration in the moment.