“History begets history, and so too with cinema. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain pays homage to its predecessors while making great strides in advancing the Hollywood musical. The script is yet another in the narrative continuum if the truth and glory of life behind the scenes and on the sets. The advent of sound threatens the future of the silent screen's romantic duo, Lockwood and Lamont. Panicked, the studio searches for a gimmick to salvage their latest extravaganza, The Duelling Cavalier. The solution: set the period epic to music. Their delight is temporarily foiled upon the discovery that the leading lady can neither sing nor talk. Then an aspiring unknown appears to capture the hearts of Lockwood and company (save the jealous Lamont) and rescues their project from a premature retirement in the vault.
“A lavish MGM production, Singin' in the Rain reminisces about that crucial transition from silence to sound and the accompanying problems - effective post-synchronization, wiring actors for sound, etc. What were the production headaches of early musicals provide a source for jokes in this film. The inclusion of popular songs from over the years, as well as the self-referential tone of this film-within-a-film revive and reassert the magic of that unique Hollywood tradition, the musical.” --L.A. Thielen