If you peek at my story from time to time, you might have noticed we had a family screening of this the other night; I shared clips from the breathtakingly beautiful ballet sequence, still so stunningly staged and shot 70-some years later. (I’ll always be convinced the finale is why it won the top Oscar over ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘A Place in the Sun.’)
There are countless ways to illustrate its many timeless charms: all that amazing Gershwin music, such lush Vincente Minnelli direction that’s every bit as lively as the dancing, the perfect human specimen and singular hoofer that was Gene Kelly, the adorable introduction of Leslie Caron. But I want to focus on two equally important yet often overlooked factors, and add a gripe. First the good: 1) actor’s actor Nina Foch (like Gosh, though for decades I assumed it must be Fawk or Foke), whose lonely heiress/arts patron Milo Roberts is not only the most actualized role, it’s one for which I now have much more sympathy, as I do Mrs. Robinson in ‘The Graduate’; and 2) that great wit and even greater pianist Oscar Levant, who has all the best lines (par for his course) and whose curmudgeonly mug alone places him among the funniest people ever, far as I’m concerned. Quintessential character actor M. Emmett Walsh died last week; film critic Roger Ebert once said (I’m paraphrasing) that no film featuring him could be all bad. I feel the very same way about Oscar Levant. Which is why I find it appalling that his contributions to the movie’s soundtrack have never been put on vinyl. This is an original 10-inch pressing. It lacks not only the tunes he helped sing (‘Tra-La-La’ and ‘By Strauss!’) but also his thrilling, arguably definitive performance of the third movement from Concerto in F. OK, so there wasn’t room for those *and* the title tone poem back in ’51. There certainly are ways to include them now. Only in 1990 and again in 2015 has the entire musical been made available — on CD.
#SoundtrackSunday 019
‘An American in Paris’
MGM, 1951
d: Vincente Minnelli