Singing in the Rain

Yesterday I showed the first half of Singing in the Rain to the nine girls in English Club. It may not have been a good choice. I tried to see it through their eyes–the flapper dresses, the bobbed hair, the silent movies, and it looked like a mish-mash of what they know to be American (Hollywood) and what they’ve never seen before (the Roaring Twenties). This is one of my favorite movies, and I wanted them to like it, but when I asked them what they thought they said ‘interesting’ which in Japanese vocabulary means ‘weird, but I’m too polite to say so’. For those of you that haven’t seen it–shame on you!–this is an American classic akin to Oklahoma! if Lorrie wore hot pink fox furs. Or if the lead actor in The Music Man was a hustler trying to get actors for the first ‘talking picture’.

As I was watching it I thought that almost my entire knowledge of the twenties comes from Singing in the Rain and Thoroughly Modern Millie. They answer nearly all of my questions. There is a sequence in the beginning where the two main men characters tap dancing in matching plaid suits while playing the violin. If I saw that now I’d assume they were ‘of the homosexual persuasion’ but even when one jumps on the other’s back and swings his legs like he’s riding a horse I’m thinking: what a nice little diddy. Then there’s the dancing girl who jumps out of a cake. She’s supposed to be a lewd entertainer, but she’s wearing what would now be called an ultra-conservative bathing suit. Instead of falling into a pole dancing routine, she and the other girls dance the Charleston while singing ‘All I do the whole night through is dream of you’. Ah dreaming, ah confusion, confusion for the Japanese girls who are probably thinking what I thought of the movie choices of some of my French teachers–’that new language teacher sure is a wacko’.

To top it all off, one of the main climactic points in the movie is that the lead actress has a nasty, nasaly voice, and the stuido can’t figure out how to hide it in the new, talking movie. When I heard this lady’s voice again yesterday I started laughing, and I looked over, but none of my students even cracked a smile. I guess when it’s hard to hear the difference between the ‘l’ and the ‘v’ sound it’s downright impossible to hear shrill, pure snip of Lina Lamont. I’d had visions of showing classic musicals for the rest of the year, but I know there’s a dance/dream sequence/montage coming up in Singing in the Rain where Don Lockwood must dance with a green-tighted woman who looks like she has a peacock for a hat. I have no explanation for this.

The one part that did make them laugh was the song ‘Make ‘em Laugh’ in which Cosmo, the musician, runs through a wall, knocks his nose out of joint and gets hit in the head with a board. Now if only I can do that in class.