What famous movie scene was shot in very difficult conditions that have nothing to do with the joyful atmosphere we see on screen?
The big scene from Singing In The Rain , by Stanley Donen.
Mythical scene, masterpiece of cinema…
A moment of joy, beauty and elegance, humor…
And yet, it was a nightmare to shoot.
To begin with, the scene had to be shot in broad daylight, because there were scheduling constraints.
The technical team therefore had to pull gigantic tarpaulins over two blocks of (fake) houses from the MGM studios, in order to create a nocturnal atmosphere.
Problem: under the California sun, which beat on the black canvas, the set turned into a furnace...
Another source of stress was that Los Angeles was in the middle of a drought at the time of filming, and there was no guarantee that there would be enough water to do the scene.
On top of that, the cinematographer was faced with a major challenge: he had to find a way to film the rain convincingly.
In the cinema, so that the camera "takes" the rain, it is necessary to light the rain from behind. The problem is that we also had to film Gene Kelly from the front, so that we could see him.
It doesn't seem like much, but lighting an actor from the front while lighting the rain from behind, without it being seen, is a monumental headache.
It is said almost everywhere that milk was added to the water so that we could see the rain in the image, but this is false. This story has been told so many times that it even appears in serious books. However, that is not true. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly have debunked this legend several times. Besides, it's hard to imagine how it would have been possible to find enough milk to do this when we see the quantities of water used...
From a technical point of view, this scene was therefore very complicated to achieve. An enormous surface to water (and therefore to illuminate), the fact that the star is constantly moving, and that the rain must fall naturally...
The atmosphere on set was no joke.
And on top of that, Gene Kelly was sick on the day of filming. He was feverish, had a bad cold and wondered if he was going to catch pneumonia from staying under water for hours.
But in the end, what will remain, what the film has immortalized, is a man in love who dances like a kid on a rainy night...
It's a hell of an illusion, but how beautiful is it...
Posted Sep 1, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC