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Singin' in the Rain:
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As Don approaches Kathy the camera cranes forward, eclipsing Kathy but still positioned above Don. It now allows for a part of the soundstage floor to enter immediately behind Don, bathed in a softly aggressive red light. The camera continues to crane, and as Don reaches the "balcony" and stands on the first step of the ladder the camera gently retreats settling into a 'polite' mid shot. Don is careful to stand on the opposite side of the ladder to Kathy, indicating that there is something between them to be removed, but also reiterating his understanding that she is not of his world.
As the song continues Don climbs the ladder, though never reaching a point where he is above Kathy, and as he does so the camera once again actively sides with Kathy, craning up and returning to rest, almost hide, behind Kathy. This appears to further repeat the equivalence that the sequence wishes to make between Kathy, the camera, and us, and the considered approach that Don makes to this triumvirate. However, just as the camera appears to come to rest Kathy now descends the ladder, and the camera and Don, taking their cue from her, descend too.
Each now circle the ladder, with Don following Kathy's lead, until Kathy ends up on what was Don's side, and Don on hers. The camera, now at floor level with each character, could be characterised as almost neutral in its positioning, carefully framing the ladder that still separates the would be couple. As the song concludes Don moves to Kathy's side, takes her hand, and through movement invites her to dance.
The song is a prelude to dance - Don's 'claim' needs to be made in words before they enter the much more physical world of the dance. This again repeats the general structure of the sequence, and the structure of the film, so that Kathy's (and cinema's) movement down to the stagefloor, to what will now be a dance floor, represents a shift from not just the spoken word but to the corporeality of the musical. That Don sings to Kathy is also significant in this context, for the shift that is being described and advocated is not merely the movement from the silent cinema to the speaking cinema, but is much more forcefully characterised as the qualitative transformation from the silent to the musical - the singing and dancing cinema.
That such choreography is evidenced ought to be unsurprising in a film directed by a dancer and a choreographer, particularly in a sequence that involves dance. That the choreography becomes so articulate in terms of its mise-en-scéne is perhaps surprising, but even more marked is the film's folding of the general wooing of Kathy into the seduction of the camera and us, by Don, which in turn allows the film to offer itself as an almost syllogistic proof of its own legitimacy.
Finally, the lyrics of the song, while principally romantic, begin with "Life was a song, you came along". As with the Don's earlier comments about needing the "proper setting" this lyric simply and rather elegantly reinscribes the validation of the musical into the world of the film. If "Life was a song" then obviously one ought to sing it, rather than just plod their way through it, again shifting the performance of the film away from mere generic redescription and towards the normative.
And of course, since it is a musical, song will not be sufficient.