From this Saturday at 12am Eastern, that’s 6pm Saturday in NZ, 4pm in Sydney and 5am in the UK, and repeated every four hours throughout the day, it’s the described movies An American in Paris from 1951, Singin’ in the rain from 1952, and Dora’s Dunking Doughnuts from 1933.
An American in Paris is a 1951 American musical comedy film inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition An American in Paris by George Gershwin.
Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron (her film debut), Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary, and Nina Foch,
the film is set in Paris and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner.
The music is by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira, with additional music by Johnny Green, and Saul Chaplin, the music directors.
The story of the film is interspersed with dance numbers choreographed by Gene Kelly and set to Gershwin's music.
MGM executive Arthur Freed bought the Gershwin musical catalogue from George's brother Ira in the late 1940s, since George died in 1937.
Some of the tunes in this catalogue were included in the movie, such as " I Got Rhythm" and " Love Is Here to Stay".
Other songs in the movie include " I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise" and "'S Wonderful".
The climax of the film is "The American in Paris" ballet, a 17-minute dialogue-free dance featuring Kelly and Caron set to Gershwin's An American in Paris.
The ballet sequence cost almost half a million dollars to shoot.
It was filmed on 44 sets in MGM's back lot.
According to Leslie Caron in a 2009 interview on Paul O'Grady's interview show the film ran into controversy with the Hays Office over part of her dance sequence with a chair; the censor viewing the scene called it "sexually provocative", which surprised Caron, who answered "What can you do with a chair?"
An American in Paris was an enormous success, garnering eight Academy Award nominations and winning six (including Best Picture), as well as earning other industry honours.
In 1993, it was selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
It is ranked number nine among AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals.
Directed by: Vincente Minnelli.
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner.
Produced by: Arthur Freed.
Starring: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guétary, and Nina Foch.
Cinematography: Alfred Gils Ballet: John Alton.
Edited by: Adrienne Fazan.
Music by: George Gershwin Lyrics: Ira Gershwin Musical direction: Johnny Green Saul Chaplin.
Production company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Distributed by: Loew's Inc..
Release dates: 4 October 1951 (New York), 11 January 1952 (USA).
File Length: 113 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $2.7 million.
Box office: $7 million.
Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American musical romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds, and featuring Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charisse.
It offers a light-hearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to " talkies".
The film was only a modest hit when it was first released.
O'Connor won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America Award for their screenplay, while Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
However, it has since been accorded legendary status by contemporary critics, and is often regarded as the greatest musical film ever made and one of the greatest films ever made, as well as the greatest film made in the " Freed Unit" at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
It topped the AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list and is ranked as the fifth-greatest American motion picture of all time in its updated list of the greatest American films in 2007.
In 1989, Singin' in the Rain was one of the first 25 films selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2005 the British Film Institute included it in its list of the 50 films to be seen by the age of 14.
In 2008, Empire magazine ranked it as the eighth-best film of all time.
In Sight & Sound magazine's 2012 list of the 50 greatest films of all time, Singin' in the Rain placed 20th.
Directed by: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen.
Written by: Adolph Green and Betty Comden.
Suggested by: "Singin' in the Rain".
Produced by: Arthur Freed.
Starring: Gene Kelly , Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charisse.
Cinematography: Harold Rosson.
Edited by: Adrienne Fazan.
Songs: Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed (lyrics).
Colour process: Technicolor.
Production company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Distributed by: Loew's Inc.
Release dates: 27 March 1952 ( Radio City Music Hall) and 11 April 1952 (United States).
File Length: 103 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $2.54 million.
Box office: $7.2 million.
Dora's Dunking Doughnuts is a 1933 American short subject directed by Harry Edwards.
Teacher Andy is fixated on both Dora who runs a bakery and her doughnuts that he has every morning on his way to teach school.
He proposes using the musical talent of his students to perform on a radio show to advertise the bakery.
Directed by: Harry Edwards.
Written by: Ernest Pagano and Ewart Adamson.
Starring: Andy Clyde, Ethel Sykes, Shirley Temple, Bud Jamison, Fern Emmett, and Florence Gill.
Cinematography: Dwight Warren.
Production Company: Educational Pictures.
Release date: 1933.
File Length: 20 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
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