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| Georges Guétary, Oscar Levant, and Gene Kelly in An American in Paris |
Sure, there are things wrong with An American in Paris. The Oscar-winning screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner relies on clichés like the infatuation at first sight by Jerry (Gene Kelly) with Lise (Leslie Caron) and the threat of the predatory wealthy divorcee played by Nina Foch, and it serves too often as a mechanical way of setting up the musical numbers. Some of the numbers, like Oscar Levant's performance of the third movement of Gershwin's Concerto in F and Georges Guétary's "Stairway to Paradise," are simply shoehorned into the story. And the once-celebrated concluding 17-minute ballet now seems a little overblown and pretentious. Yet I cherish the film for serving up as many Gershwin songs as it does, including some comparative rarities like "By Strauss" and "Tra-la-la (This Time It's Really Love)." I like, too, that Kelly's sometimes overbearing charm offensive is checked by Levant's acerbity and by Guétary's less strenuous effort at being charming. It's not the greatest of MGM musicals, lacking the wit that Betty Comden and Adolph Green infused into their screenplays and the style that Stanley Donen brought to his directing. I sometimes think that Vincente Minnelli was a better director of melodramas like The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Some Came Running (1958), and Home From the Hill (1960) than he was of musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris and Gigi (1958), in which he could let the songs do the work for him. Still, if you've got Gershwin to do the work for you, why not just lean back and let go?
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