THE MGM musical An American In Paris is the classic of its genre, featuring the timeless music of George and Ira Gershwin, a razor sharp screenplay by playwright Alan Jay Lerner, some breathtaking choreography from Gene Kelly and some pretty decent direction from the assured hand and eye of Vincente Minelli.
It won seven Academy Awards and a special Oscar for Kelly. Shame then that World has decided to hide its light under a bushel by showing it at 1.25 am.
The logic of course is that a good colour disaster movie in which people perish is better than an old fogey black and white musical which contains a 17-minute ballet sequence. So S.O.S. Titanic got the nod.
In the disaster-free An American In Paris Jerry Mulligan (Kelly) is an ex-GI and struggling artist in post-war Paris. Jerry is discovered by Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a wealthy patroness who buys his pictures and encourages her society friends to do the same.
Enjoying his new-found success - and cash - Jerry visits a nightclub where he promptly meets and falls in love with Lise, played by newcomer Leslie Caron (who was discovered by Kelly in the Ballet des Champs Elysees). She, it turns out, is engaged to Jerry's best friend.
The plot was wearing a bit thin far earlier than 1951, when this was made, but otherwise An American In Paris has everything. The songs are all Gershwin brothers standards, but no worse for it, and that 17-minute ballet is a show-stopper.
The Parisien settings are spectacular, despite the fact that most of them, if I may strip away some of the magic, were painstakingly built on a Hollywood lot.
