Singin’ in the Rain – Kenwood House

Rain-soaked splendour – Singin’ in the Rain was screened at Kenwood House, London

Singin’ in the Rain was screened as part of the Live By the Lake series at Kenwood House, London.

It feels odd to be reviewing a film which just last year celebrated its 60th anniversary. But when it’s one of the most enjoyable films ever made – and very possibly the greatest movie musical ever – any opportunity to enjoy it on a big screen is to be welcomed.

Seeing Singin’ in the Rain in the open-air at Kenwood House would be fun enough, but having the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, conducted by Neil Thomson, providing live versions of the film’s superb score elevates it to another level. The original orchestrations having been lost (long since consigned to landfill under the LA freeway system), the orchestra has used the painstaking re-creations by John Wilson to perform the live score as close as possible as to what directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly would have heard in the 1950s recording studio.

Indeed, so close to the original music is the live instrumentation that it is often easy to forget that one is not listening to the film soundtrack, save for the varying sound levels as the recorded orchestrations are silenced to allow the vocal tracks to accompany the orchestra’s fine work. And there are some segments – notably the flashback sequence as Gene Kelly’s Don Lockwood embellishes his route to Hollywood stardom – where the original music plays in, only to be replaced by a sudden blast of onstage bombast in a way that jolts the viewer into recognising the technical, and musical, skill involved in the re-creation.

Most of the time, though, it is sufficient to sit back and enjoy the ultimate jukebox musical – constructed at the time to capitalise on the back catalogue of songs by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Arthur Freed. The script remains one of the funniest, sharpest comedies in Hollywood history, and its deconstruction of celebrity culture and the PR machine that swarms around movie stars is as pertinent today as it ever has been.

And then there’s the dancing. Either the joyful cheeriness of ‘Good Mornin’’ or the precision tap of ‘Moses Supposes’ would be the standout performance of any other movie. But of course this one also has the rain-soaked splendour of the truly iconic street sequence to the show’s title number – and, to my mind even better than that, the ‘Broadway Melody’ sequence with Cyd Charisse, with the ballet-trained star performing her first ever jazz routines under Kelly’s demanding tutelage.

In the open-air environs of Kenwood House, at one point the heavens threatened to accompany Singin’ in the Rain with suitably appropriate metereological effects – but ultimately, the balmy summer evening provided the perfect atmosphere in which to enjoy the performances of Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds – and, most especially, of Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont. When you realise that the cultured-speaking voice that is dubbed over Lamont’s piercing tones belonged not to Reynolds but to Hagen herself (Lamont’s singing voice being dubbed by Betty Royce) you realise just how much of the film depends on her versatility and comic abilities.

Everybody should see Singin’ in the Rain on the big screen at least once in their lives. But to see it with the glorious MGM music performed live makes it a once-in-a-lifetime viewing experience – and emphasises that the movie is, to coin a phrase, a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament.

Scott Matthewman