DGA Monthly

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 5 I 1 3 There's almost no improvisation, no room for that in a musical sequence. You can't change it. It's fixed. It's hard. It's recorded. He's got to get from A to B to C to D exactly in time. The accidents happen in rehearsal. So we rehearsed for six months, but we never quite got the rain from the spout to hit at the exact place when he goes under it. He's a tiny bit late getting into the right position. But not to complain. We were quite happy. Gene loved the umbrella. It was the prop that helped express the number. It was a hard prop in some ways. It's clumsy when it's open, but it's not open that much in the number. The whole idea is that it's down. It's about singing in the rain. It's how he wants to feel the rain. Musicals are a combination of acting, singing, dancing and entertaining. It's everything playing at once. It's not like acting where you're trying to really show the truth. 9 11 We filmed in Technicolor. There were some physical problems because you need- ed an enormous amount of light in those days, compared to what we do today. The film was slow, and the lenses were not as fast, so you needed huge amounts of light. It took a long time to organize the lights because there were so many of them, and they needed constant attention. They were arc lights; they weren't incandescent. So you had to trim the arcs. Everything has got to be controlled, and everything is. It's not a documentary. It's the antithesis of a documentary. 10 Gene is embarrassed by the policeman because he's like a kid playing in the water. As for the policeman, I'm not sure, but when I see it now, I have a feel- ing that somewhere in my head it came from Chaplin. I was such an admirer of Chaplin's sequences, and policemen were always interfering. This is the first time I cut to the point of view of another person. I think it was just a way of saying, see what's happening here, this is what he does, is that interesting? 13 Here at the end, he gives the umbrella away to a man who's very happy to have it. We shot this whole sequence in maybe two and a half or three days. There aren't a lot of setups. It's very spare. But that's generally how I like to do it. I want the viewer to believe that it's happening, and that there's nobody in charge. When the technique of making the movie becomes a part of the movie−and there are people who do it wonderfully−then you're not going to have Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. You're going to have Federico Fellini. I wanted, 'Oh, he just got up and did it, and they photographed it.' That's how it should look. 14 Choreographing dry is certainly easier than choreographing for rain. But it wasn't a problem. We imagined all these things, and then choreographed every instant. All the things that look like they just happened, didn't. They were planned. So when Gene splashes in the water, we had to dig holes in the cement to make a place where he would stamp. The dance step had to take him to that place on that note, so it's very detailed. 12 SCREENPULLS: COURTESY OF MGM HOME ENTERTAINMENT

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