The first thought that came into my mind when I finished watching An American in Paris was, “How the hell did this movie win Best Picture?!” More on that later, but it is something to keep in mind. The fourth musical to win Best Picture, An American in Paris had some dance numbers that rivaled The Great Ziegfeld in terms of production and entertainment value, but the story wasn’t nearly as compelling. This certainly was an entertaining film, but the story and the characters were very thin. In fact, I would liken An American in Paris to many of the action films of today. That is to say that, similarly to a modern-day action thriller, it seems to me that the story in An American in Paris serves mainly to get us from one dance number to the next. Overall the story is thin and the characters are shallow. The relationships have no chemistry and the movie has very little spine.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let me give you my reasons for feeling the way I do. Let’s start with the premise. This is a movie about an American ex-patriot, Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) living as a painter in Paris. He happens to fall in love with Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), the girlfriend of a mutual friend, but she won’t tell him why they always have to sneak around. Meanwhile, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), an American woman has taken an interest in Jerry’s art as well as in Jerry as a person. Between dance numbers, we follow them all around Paris as their relationships become more complicated and until a resolution must finally be reached. The most frustrating thing about the premise for me is that it’s actually quite strong. This is actually a set up for what should be a very dramatic and emotionally charged story.

So what happened?

I think what happened was the songs and dance numbers got in the way. Let me say this: I am a fan of musicals. However, there are certain things that a musical needs to do in its music and that is advance the story. If the song and/or dance number doesn’t do anything to advance the story, then it shouldn’t be in there. I mentioned The Great Ziegfeld earlier. That to me was a successful musical because the musical numbers served multiple purposes. They showed the varying successes and struggles of the Ziegfeld Follies and they showed what was going on inside Ziegfeld’s head. That is to say that they showed how his ego and his psyche were affecting what he put on the stage. There are many other musicals you can look at, and there will be quite a few in upcoming blogs, where the songs not only show the mental state of the character, but they actually move the story forward. I could be talked in to conceding that the song and dance numbers in An American in Paris do at times adequately show the emotional states of the individual characters, but they rarely advance the story.

It made me think about another Gene Kelly musical that I actually love. In fact many people love Singin’ in the Rain. It’s number 10 on the AFI list of top 100 movies (An American in Paris is #68), and it has some of the most iconic songs and numbers in the history of American cinema. But the songs and dance numbers in Singin’ in the Rain propel the story forward. All of them either do that or give some insight to the emotional state of the individual characters. I look at An American in Paris and there is none of that.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for much of what they did in this film. I have total appreciation for the talent that it took to choreograph and perform the numbers. Vincente Minnelli’s direction and Alfred Gilks’ cinematography, especially during the dance scenes, are impeccable. The production design and art direction allowed us to feel like we were immersed in Paris in a way that must have been challenging at the time, considering the entire film was shot on a sound stage. I understand that a tremendous amount of talent went in to the making of this picture. I am just of the opinion that the musical numbers can’t exist in a vacuum. You can’t have musical numbers for their own sake, and that’s what has happened in An American in Paris. The dance numbers, especially the last one (more on that later), were too self-indulgent to serve the picture as a whole.

To me, the biggest problem with An American in Paris comes from the characters. Yes, the story is thin, but it’s thin because the characters are equally as shallow. There are two likable characters in this film. One is Jerry’s friend Adam Cook (Oscar Levant), a song writer who writes songs for Henri Baurel, the man to whom Lise eventually becomes engaged. The other is Milo, and I don’t think we’re supposed to particularly like her. At the very least we’re not supposed to root for her and Jerry to end up together, which is clearly what she wants. We’re supposed to root for Jerry and Lise to end up together. However, it is Milo who opens herself up to Jerry. Lise doesn’t want anything to do with Jerry at first. And with good reason. It’s because she already has a serious boyfriend! Now look, I know what you’re thinking. That’s where the drama is. It’s like a love triangle. Here’s the problem. Henri is a terrific guy. He helped Lise out and practically saved her life when she was young. Now she’s going to reward him by sneaking around and seeing some American on the side? We’re supposed to like this woman?

Jerry does remain somewhat likable because he at least doesn’t know for most of the film that she’s seeing someone else. However, she is very sneaky about where they can go and whom they can see. It takes him a long time to become suspicious and I feel that that causes him to lose a lot of his sympathy. The other problem with Jerry is that he keeps Milo at arm’s length. It is certainly understandable, as Milo does throw herself at him when they barely know each other, and that can certainly be off putting. But she is offering him and incredible opportunity to show his work in a gallery when he hasn’t even been able to sell paintings on the street. She gives him the opportunity of a lifetime and he won’t even give her the time of day. In fact, I think Jerry loses the audience right away when he openly flirts with Lise in a club to which Milo has taken him. This is especially true since we’ve already been introduced to Lise as Henri’s girlfriend. The character we feel for and empathize with in this scene is Milo. She’s the one who is embarrassed and mistreated by Jerry. She definitely doesn’t deserve the treatment she gets from him.

From that point, we are supposed to root for Jerry and Lise to end up together. Personally, it doesn’t work for me. Our introduction to their relationship completely took me out of the film. I had no emotional attachment to the characters and thus no emotional engagement in the story.

The lack of caring about the characters is bound to have a negative impact on the story. Since we don’t care about the characters, we don’t necessarily care about what they’re doing in the story. Compound that with the fact that the dance numbers continue to take the audience even farther out of the story, and your left with a disengaged audience. In fact, I consciously found myself disengaged a mere ten minutes in to the film. That doesn’t mean I stopped paying attention or that I completely disliked it. In fact, there are some individual scenes that are quite entertaining. The scene where Adam finds out that Jerry and Henri are both in love with the same girl is very funny. In what might be the strongest connection of song and story in the film, Jerry and Henri sing about how great it is to be in love, neither one knowing that they’re both singing about the same girl, as Adam pouts in his brandy. It’s a thoroughly entertaining scene that has several laugh out loud moments.

Ultimately, however, this is a film that is less than the sum of its parts. The dance scenes are well choreographed and entertaining. There are individual scenes and performances that work very well as individual scenes and performances. However there is no spine holding the story together and there is no depth to make us care. The coup de gras of this film is the 17-minute dance number at the end of the film that encapsulates everything that is right and everything that is wrong with this picture. After telling Jerry that she and Henri are going to get married the next day, Lise leaves Jerry on top of a roof where a masquerade ball is happening in the room below. Henri hears their conversation, and sadly drives Lise away. Jerry then imagines himself and Lise in all of the places in Paris, and some in America. It’s not totally dissimilar in style and tone to the Gotta Dance! sequence in Singin’ in the Rain. There are a ton of extras and various sets and musical and costume changes. The entire sequence took a month to shoot and it serves as the climax to the film. Again, the dancing is beautiful. Leslie Caron shows her true talent as a ballerina and practically steals the scene from Kelly on a number of occasions. The sets and dancing are dynamic. The choreography is top-notch. The production value is as high as it could be.

Here’s the problem. It shows Jerry as an ineffectual hero. It’s all a fantasy of him dreaming about what his life would be like with Lise. Warning: Spoiler Alert! Then Lise shows back up when the dream is over because Henri has brought her back. Jerry has done nothing on his own to win her back. He didn’t pound on the glass of the church, a-la Ben Braddock in The Graduate. He didn’t fight for the right to be with her, a-la John Prentice in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. He wished for her to come back and she came back.

He didn’t deserve her.

Did the Academy get it right?

As you may have surmised by now, I believe that the answer is no, and I’m not alone. According to IMDB, An American in Paris was named as one of the “20 most overrated movies of all time” by Premier. And although I wouldn’t agree with every film they have on that list, I would certainly agree with this one. It isn’t a great film in my opinion, and it certainly didn’t deserve to beat either A Place in the Sun or A Streetcar Named Desire for Best Picture. Both of those films were emotionally powerful with characters that you could relate to and root for or against. Either way, you cared about all of the principal characters in both of those films in a way that you never came close to caring about the characters in An American in Paris. A Streetcar Named Desire had Marlon Brando at the absolute height of his animal magnetism. Vivien Leigh, in her other signature role as Blanche brought a level of pathos to the screen that bordered on hypnotic. That was a film that you could not take your eyes off of. Similarly, A Place in the Sun starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift as a would-be beautiful couple, if not for Clift’s terrible secret that would ultimately lead to a tragic ending. I remember seeing that film for the first time and being incredibly moved by the emotion in it as it’s a story about a man who starts with nothing, then tricks his way in to everything only to lose it all. And yet, you root for him because he’s an “every man.” I would have voted for either of those two films above An American in Paris. Both were more deserving and both were better films.