Compared to previous winners, An American in Paris is an unexpected choice for Best Picture, but I applaud the Academy’s decision. For me, it’s a breath of fresh air. There is an advantage to watching these Oscar-winners in chronological order. Patterns and trends become apparent. So do ruts. I dislike one flavor of anything if it’s overplayed for an extended period of time. It shows limited taste and ultimately wears thin. This bold musical broke a long span of “sameness” in several respects. It’s the first winner since Gone with the Wind to be shot in color. That’s twelve years of black-and-white between them. Once three-strip Technicolor was introduced in feature-length movies, beginning with 1935’s Becky Sharp, it was seen as a novelty and used primarily for spectacles, epics, or fantasies the way 3D is utilized today. Orson Welles once said with color film, you see the flesh of an actor, which can be a distraction, but with black-and-white you see the emotion first. You see the soul. To be taken seriously, black-and-white was the way to go. Speaking of “serious,” An American in Paris was also the first musical to win after 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld. A side note for those keeping track … despite a few moments of on-screen songs, I don’t see Going My Way as a musical, backstage or otherwise. From 1942’s Mrs. Miniver through 1950’s All About Eve, every Best Picture was a drama and all of them modern, except for 1948’s Hamlet. I’m not discrediting any of them, but stepping back for an overview, it’s like eating the same meal each night for a decade. There are other ways to tell stories and other genres worth celebrating besides the “black-and-white drama.”

Gene Kelly and Nina Foch.

An American in Paris is a risky choice for other reasons. At MGM, director Vincente Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed took a great leap of faith even among successful musicals of the day. During the last 20 minutes of this film right through its end credits, there is not one word of dialogue. Another risk has to do with Alan Jay Lerner’s Oscar-winning story and screenplay, which never would have passed the censors if it were left in less capable hands. The plot is about a young American painter who meets a Parisian girl, and they fall in love. Both are “kept” individuals, however. Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is financially supported and controlled by a rich divorcée (Nina Foch) while his new love Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron in her star-making debut) is beholden to well-known singer Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary), because his family protected her after World War II. She progressed from being his ward to his lover to his fiancée. That’s quite a thank-you for services rendered.

Another novelty is a popular format known today as the “jukebox musical.” Previous bio-pics had been constructed around a single composer or songwriting team where their catalogue of music was utilized to frame their life stories. MGM produced two of them in the 1940s: Words and Music, featuring Rodgers and Hart, and Till the Clouds Roll By with Jerome Kern. But this new project wasn’t going to be The Gershwin Story. It was a wholly unrelated plot inspired exclusively by the artistic catalogue of George Gershwin. This exclusivity became a contractual obligation made by his brother Ira in order to secure the rights to George’s 1928 orchestral piece “An American in Paris,” which would serve as a prominent ballet in the film. Today, we have the wildly popular Mamma Mia! with ABBA’s songs, and even MGM followed its own success in 1952 with Singin’ in the Rain, featuring Arthur Freed’s “jukebox” of material. These are new original stories, not biographies, integrating a collection of established music from a single creative source.

Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly.

The real groundbreaker here is the “American in Paris Ballet,” which earns its own title card at the beginning of the movie. Previous films had featured ballet sequences, like 1949’s On the Town, based on the hit Broadway musical, and 1948’s classic The Red Shoes. Legendary choreographer Agnes de Mille created narrative ballets for the stage productions of Oklahoma! and Carousel. None of them concluded their stories with an extended dance and no dialogue or singing. This ballet isn’t conceived as a dream, either. Instead, we dive into the waking thoughts and emotions of Jerry Mulligan, who has just learned that Lise, the love of his life, will be marrying Henri and leaving Paris for America in the morning. Jerry looks out over the Parisian skyline and sketches it. That drawing becomes the first landmark he steps into in his mind. From there we are taken on a journey across the landscape of six impressionist painters: Dufy, Renoir, Utrillo, Rousseau, Van Gogh, and Lautrec. The sets, costumes, lighting, cinematography, and art direction change throughout the 17-minute piece, but so does Gene Kelly’s magnificent choreography and staging. Our two lovers are seen enjoying Paris as envisioned by the brushstrokes of these master artists. This sequence really is the MGM musical at its finest.

Credit must be given to the cast as well. Kelly is charming and dances with such grace and ease. His number with the Parisian kids on the block, “I Got Rhythm,” is a standout. Nineteen-year-old Leslie Caron makes an astonishing screen debut. She barely knew English at the time, yet she carries herself as a seasoned film star. Oscar Levant as a struggling composer and pianist was George Gershwin’s friend in real life. His delightfully neurotic screen persona as Adam is only surpassed by his talent at the keyboard. Nina Foch is classy and appealingly manipulative as the aristocratic dilettante Milo Roberts, and Georges Guetary is dapper and dashing as Folies Bergère star Henri Baurel. There are a few fun cameos by future television personalities as well: Hayden Rorke from I Dream of Jeannie as Milo’s friend Tommy Baldwin; Batman’s Madge Blake as perfume customer Edna Mae Bestrom; and Superman’s Noel Neill as an American college girl critiquing Jerry’s paintings.

I realize some people are just allergic to musicals, and that’s a shame. I have an aversion toward monotony and predicability instead. I’m glad 1951 ended the black-and-white drama “winners circle.” When a musical inspires and goes beyond the limits of ordinary imagination and established techniques like this one does, it’s deserving of the highest praise, and in this case, the Academy’s highest honor.

An American in Paris