An American in Paris 9781838713706, 9781844574711

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© Sue Harris 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication m a y be m a d e without written permission. No portion of this publication m a y be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or u n d e r the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication m a y be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author h a s asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE on behalf of the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE 21 Stephen Street, London W I T 1LN www.bfi.org.uk There's m o r e to discover about film and television through t h e BFI. Our world-renowned archive, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you. Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company n u m b e r 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London N l 9XW. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is a global imprint of t h e above companies and is represented t h r o u g h o u t the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered t r a d e m a r k s in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. Series cover design: Ashley Western Series text design: ketchup/SE14 Images from An American m Paris, © Loew's Incorporated; poster for stage version of An American in Pans, Theatre du Chatelet, Paris 2014/15 © Theatre du Chatelet - Philippe Apeloig Set by Cambrian Typesetters, Camberley, Surrey Printed in China This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and m a d e from fully m a n a g e d and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and m a n u f a c t u r i n g processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-84457-471-1

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Acknowledgments I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my friend, mentor and former Head of School Peter William Evans who encouraged me to write this book, and supported me practically and intellectually at every stage of the project. Other colleagues at Queen Mary University of London provided a friendly support network, in particular my Head of Department Libby Saxton, and colleagues in the Film History Research Cluster: Lucy Bolton, Charles Drazin, Adrian Garvey, Annette Kuhn, Pauline Small and Guy Westwell. Eugene Doyen and Louis Jackson provided support on many occasions, and Janet Harbord, Jen Harvie and David Adger offered constructive advice while the project was being developed. Mark Glancy and Mark White in the School of History at QMUL invited me to present papers in their London-based research seminars on Film History and American History respectively. Work in progress was also presented at conferences, seminars and public screenings in France, the UK and the USA. I greatly appreciate the helpful feedback I received on these occasions. Not least, I extend my thanks to the many undergraduate and postgraduate students at QMUL whose enthusiasm for An American in Paris has been a source of enormous pleasure in my teaching. The primary research for this book was conducted at the incomparable Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and I join my voice to the many other scholars who have acknowledged the welcome they received there from Barbara Hall and her colleagues. Research was also conducted at the Cinematic Arts Library at the University of Southern California: my thanks to Ned Comstock. Further research and writing was conducted at the Bibliotheque du Film in Paris, and at the library of the British Film Institute in London. My research trips

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would not have been possible without the support of friends who generously provided accommodation and hospitality in Los Angeles and Paris. Veronique Flambard-Weisbart and Jon Weisbart welcomed me into their beautiful West Hollywood home; Laurent Debouverie regularly provided a home from home in Paris, as he has done for so many years; and Shirley Jordan and Raymond Kuhn kindly allowed me to borrow their Paris home for a few months while I was on research leave in Autumn 2013.1 also thank Jean-Luc Choplin, the artistic director of the Chatelet Theatre in Paris for taking the time to meet with me to discuss his involvement in the stage production of An American in Paris, and Edouard Dahger for facilitating my visit. The Palgrave editorial team have been a pleasure to work with: my thanks to Sophia Contento, Jenna Steventon and Lucinda Knight, and to the anonymous readers of the draft manuscript for their precision and guidance. The work of writing a book is made infinitely easier when one can rely on the interest, good humour and sense of proportion of friends. In addition to the above, there are many to whom I am grateful including Lesley Collins, Lisa Downing, Julie Doyle, Elizabeth Ezra, Audrey Farley, Lynn Higgins, Kate Hutchinson, Muriel Lefebvre, Kathy Magarrell, Athena Mandis, Will McMorran, Candice Nicolas, Leigh Oakes, Denis Provencher, Paul Rissmann and Paul Vates. Closer to home, Neil Harris and Euan Harris have supported me as they always do: wholeheartedly and cheerfully. Thank you both, for everything.

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Vincente Minnelli at MGM

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1 'Who knows, it may even put Paris on the map ...' Prologue When producer Jesse L. Lasky opened the envelope that revealed the name of the 1951 Best Picture Academy Award, he could not hide his disappointment. 'Oh dear' he declared, 'the winner is An American in Paris'.1 Lasky's ungracious aside came at the end of an award ceremony in which the M G M film had been riding high, garnering a raft of Oscars in all the major technical categories: art direction (Preston Ames and Cedric Gibbons), cinematography (Alfred Gilks and John Alton), costume (Walter Plunkett, OrryKelly and Irene Sharaff), musical score (Saul Chaplin and Johnny Green) and screenplay (Alan Jay Lerner). The film's star and choreographer Gene Kelly had been singled out for an Honorary Academy Award that celebrated his career as a performer, director and choreographer, while the Irving Thalberg Award went to the legendary Louis B. Mayer for his achievements as a producer at M G M . The clean sweep was marred only by the Academy's apparent snub to Vincente Minnelli, who would have to wait another seven years to receive Best Director recognition for a second Paris film, Gigi (1958). Minnelli's omission may have been entirely within the norms for a contract director of the era - genre directors tended to be seen as helmsmen rather than talented artists in their own right - but the slight rankled: as Minnelli remarked many years later in his autobiography Some erudite types point to An American m Paris as the perfect example of the studio-as-auteur theory. I disagree. Though I don't minimize anyone's contributions, one man was responsible for bringing it all together. That man was me.2

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Lasky's shock at the outcome was perhaps less surprising then than it might appear now. In the 1940s, M G M was famed for its witty, colourful musical productions, many of which had been directed by Minnelli, and the genre was the particular forte of the M G M Arthur Freed Unit, an in-house production team with deep links to Broadway theatre. Hit films included The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948) and On the Town (1949), and the unit's continued success into the 1950s would be assured by the likes of Singin in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954) and Gigi. The studio's reputation for quality and excellence was underpinned by two factors: vast technical resources (overseen by MGM's supervising art director Cedric Gibbons), and a roster of top stars ('more stars than there are in heaven' as the publicity boasted). Musicals were particularly resource- and time-intensive projects, harnessing the skill and craft of armies of artisans, artists and performers to create fleeting, magical worlds of pure escapism. But the finished product was rarely considered to amount to more than the sum of its parts. Few were ever critically acknowledged as having dramatic depth or narrative originality, and only two such films had ever previously taken the coveted Academy Best Picture prize: The Broadway Melody (1929) had been an early recipient of the award in the era when sound cinema was still a great novelty, while the sheer extravagance of The Great Ziegfeld (1936) merited three Oscars including Best Picture. In 1952, for the first time, an integrated, story-led musical was comprehensively acclaimed as accomplished and complex, and with the success of An American in Paris, the critical fortunes of the Hollywood musical were definitively remade. An American in Paris was very much a pet project for Arthur Freed and his friend and frequent collaborator Minnelli. The film was structured entirely around the music of the composer George Gershwin, who had died of a brain tumour in 1937 at the age of only thirty-eight. The title rights to Gershwin's eponymous composition

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were acquired by Freed from Ira Gershwin, the late composer's brother, over a weekly poker game at the latter's home; the purchase price was $300,000, and the condition was that only music from the Gershwin back catalogue would be used in any film that would be made. In an era when successful Broadway shows were forensically mined for film adaptations, the success of the former offering a guarantee of the success of the latter, An American in Paris or Production 1507, represented something of a break with M G M practice: there was no pre-existing story to work with and no insistence that George Gershwin's life be the subject of the film. Indeed, the only certainties were those dictated by the title: the setting would be Paris, and the main character would be an American who lived there. Although the film was a popular and commercial success on release (grossing over $8 million from a budget of $2.7 million), critical reactions to it, as hinted at in Lasky's reaction, were mixed. Many felt that while it was superbly crafted, the film was more memorable for its weaknesses than its strengths: the energetic Gene Kelly tied down to a painter's easel; a patently artificial Paris populated by Gallic stereotypes; a timid leading lady who doesn't sing; and a thin, at times quite cynical plot in which 'a kept man falls in love with a kept woman'. 3 Its seventeen-minute ballet finale was widely admired, but was also criticised as an opportunistic imitation of the ballet in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, the British film which had dominated the American box office in 1948. Admittedly, the film offered a feast of George Gershwin's music, but this came hot on the heels of the Irving Rapper biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and offered none of its insights - however inaccurate into the composer's short life. The view of critic Bosley Crowther, writing in the New York Times, that the film was little more than 'a minor romantic compilation in the usual gaudy Hollywood gay Paree' 4 was typical of many reactions. That this film should be awarded the Best Picture Oscar, over such serious dramatic competition as Quo Vadis (1951), A Streetcar

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Named Desire (1951) and A Place in the Sun (1951) clearly riled many in the industry. But for others, its flaws notwithstanding, it stood as the apogee of the craft of musical production. Among its supporters was producer David O. Selznick, who wrote to Freed: 'My most sincere congratulations to you on An American in Paris. It is that rarity - a truly great film, and unquestionably the most distinguished musical ever made'. 5 Its broad appeal to a wide cross-section of audiences was also noted, with one critic describing it as 'entertainment for mass and class alike',6 a reference to its ambitious amalgamation of diverse and seemingly incompatible cultural forms: French art, classic ballet, orchestral music and modern dance, all within the framework of a musical comedy. Sherwin Kane writing in Motion Picture Daily was effusive: If any serious fault can be found with An American in Pans it must be that it gives the customers too much for their money. It would be embarrassing, experience would indicate, if they expected as much every time they entered a theatre. The picture is a credit to the industry as well as the people and the studio who made it. No intelligent showman can sit through its unreeling without feeling proud that he is part of the industry in which it was produced. An American m Paris is Entertainment with a capital E, and of the highest order.7 As Minnelli so eloquently put it in his memoirs 'just as no one sets out to make a bad picture, rarely under the studio system did anyone set out to make a classic. An American in Paris certainly wasn't designed as such'.8 The film may have begun life as just another commercial entertainment project, but what coalesced around Production 1507 was a remarkable amount of talent and creative vision in the form of skilled artists and craftspeople for whom this project was deeply personal: a director reputed to be Hollywood's most flamboyant stylist; the leading dancerchoreographer of his generation; a new screen star direct from the

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Paris ballet; family and friends of the late George Gershwin; musicians who had learned their craft from him; designers and technical advisors who had lived, worked and even trained in Paris. And the unparalleled creative infrastructure at Culver City, Los Angeles was entirely at their disposal: 'We had the stages, we had the tools, we had the savvy, we had the manpower, and we were geared to do this kind of thing' remembers art director Preston Ames. 9 Seymour Peck, writing in Compass, was bowled over by the achievement, and understood immediately the impact the film would have with audiences: 'An American in Paris shoots the works [...] it is a lush, lavish, large scale, supercolossal, all out M G M lovesong to a city. Who knows, it may even put Paris on the map'. 1 0

The film's legacy In the 1940s, An American in Paris referred to a modern musical composition from the 1920s. After 1951, it came to signify the

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Hollywood musical at its most ambitious and refined. In the years since, the film has become iconic, offering a template for cinematic ideas of Paris as an enchanted space of pleasure, leisure and romance, as well as a title that remains easy shorthand for narratives of transformation experienced by Americans in Europe. From Stanley Donen's Funny Face (1957), to Woody Allen's comedies Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and Midnight in Paris (2011); from Billy Crystal's romcom Forget Paris (1995) to the Season 6 finale episodes of Sex and the City ('An American Girl in Paris Parts Un & Deux', 2004), the referential value of Paris as decor, destination and site of romantic fulfilment takes us back again and again to ideas and images of the city elaborated, celebrated and permanently fixed in the popular imagination by Minnelli's 1951 film. More than sixty years later, the influence of the film is as strong as ever. In December 2014, the Chatelet Theatre in Paris was home to the world premiere of a multimillion-dollar stage adaptation, a French-American collaboration which played to packed houses over a forty-night run. In March 2015, it took up residence on Broadway, and became part of the permanent landscape of American musical theatre. The currency of the film thus remains high in contemporary culture: the story and characters still charm, the performances still dazzle, and as a historical document it offers compelling evidence of the artistic ambitions, technical mastery and creative imagination that informed musical production at M G M in the 1940s and 1950s. As much as many great works of literature by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Edith Wharton, it testifies to an enduring affection for, and fascination with the city of Paris in American minds. An American in Paris did indeed put Paris on the map, fixing an image of the city in the global popular imagination even more acutely than films produced in France. And then as now, French audiences loved it every bit as much as much as those back home. For Freed, Minnelli and Kelly - in different ways - An American in Paris marked the culmination and highest achievement

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of a decade of work in production, direction and choreography. While each brought singular talents and specific strengths to the project, their collaboration took place in a rare spirit of creative compatibility, founded on professional experience and close personal friendship. And it is precisely the pleasures of collaboration and mutual endeavour that are woven so deeply into the fabric of the film. The inclusivity of their 'Paris' - as a place of friendships, solidarities and communities - is insistently present at the level of story, music and dance, characterisation and design. After An American in Paris, location shooting would become the norm for European-set films, and by the end of the following decade, films such as Moulin Rouge (1952), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Funny Face, Love in the Afternoon (1957), as well as Minnelli's own Lust for Life (1956) and Gigi, had been filmed wholly or partly in Paris. But with this lavish last hurrah, in the very last months of Louis B. Mayer's long tenure as studio boss, M G M embraced the art of artifice, and showed the world what it could do with nothing more than backlots, soundstages and the power of its best imaginations. The film shifted the ground on which the Hollywood musical was understood: refining it, elevating it and legitimising it as something more than easy commercial fare. An American in Paris proved that the musical could now take its place in the pantheon of film classics.

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2 The Building Blocks of Production 1507 Synopsis The American in Paris at the heart of the film is Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly), a cheery, wisecracking ex-GI from Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Jerry came to Paris on the GI Bill, and lives on the bohemian Left Bank of the city, in an attic room above the bustling Cafe Huguette. His passion is painting, and Jerry has been drawn to Paris to work in the shadow of the great French artists he admires: as he tells us in the first minutes of the film 'Brother, if you can't paint in Paris you better give up and marry the boss's daughter ...'. Jerry's co-tenant is another American, a pianist called Adam Cook (Oscar Levant), who has made Europe his home following a series of music scholarships: 'I may be the oldest child prodigy in America ...', he wryly informs us. A third character completes the male cast, Henri Baurel (Georges Guetary), a famous French cabaret singer for whom the city is his home and his stage, a place where he is recognised and adored as a local celebrity. Over breakfast in the Cafe Huguette, Henri and Adam share their news, and Henri tells Adam about the girl he is about to marry. He explains that Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron) was entrusted to him by Resistance friends during the occupation; once an orphan in his care, she is now the love of his life. Jerry arrives in the cafe and borrows some lunch money from Adam and Henri, before heading off to Montmartre to display his paintings on a street corner. He is surprised and delighted when a wealthy American woman, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch) offers to buy two of the paintings, but he rejects her subsequent romantic advances. When they go out for a platonic dinner at the Cafe Flodair, Jerry's attention is captured by a beautiful young Frenchwoman at another table. He sets about courting her, much to Milo's embarrassment and anger.

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Jerry thus finds himself at the centre of a dilemma involving the two women. He zealously pursues Lise, the reluctant and frequently indignant girl from the Flodair, without knowing that she is Henri's fiancee. He persuades her to meet him in a series of secret trysts by the Seine, and the more they meet, the closer they grow. At the same time, he stubbornly refuses to read the signs of Milo's desire for him, and is indifferent to her attempts to ensnare him with her patronage. When she sets him up in a luxury studio and arranges for an exhibition of his work at a city gallery, he lets himself believe that she is simply interested in promoting his work. Henri, unaware that he and Jerry are in love with the same woman, counsels Jerry about the mystery woman in his life, and advises him to declare his love and bring things out into the open. Ecstatic, Jerry does so, only to have Lise confess that she is about to marry Henri, and leave immediately with him for America. In his disappointment, Jerry decides to cultivate his relationship with Milo, and takes her to the Beaux Arts Ball, where all the main characters are gathered for a party. Jerry and Lise say their final goodbyes, both acknowledging the impossibility of their situation; but unbeknown to them, Henri witnesses the scene. As Jerry broods on his loss, he is consumed by disappointment and regret: this is represented in a prolonged ballet, in which he relives all the emotions and events of the film in a Paris reconfigured as a vast painted canvas. His despair turns again to joy as the ballet concludes, and Henri brings Lise back to the Ball. Henri graciously concedes that the two lovers belong together, and Jerry and Lise are finally united under the dazzling Paris skyline. The script The simplicity and coherence of the above storyline belies its tentative origins, and the long period of gestation that was necessary for the script to emerge. With a treasure trove of Gershwin's music to draw on, the logic seemed to dictate that An American in Paris would be a biographical portrait of the composer, with the years he spent in Paris

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to the fore in the narrative. In the 1940s, musical biopics were all the rage in Hollywood, and Freed had already produced two of the most significant: Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), based on the life and work of Jerome Kern; and Words and Music (1948), which dramatised the collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Warner had added to the repertoire with Night and Day (1946), starring Cary Grant in the role of Cole Porter. Given the commercial security of the genre, and the involvement of Ira Gershwin as consultant, the appeal of a Gershwin biopic was inevitably great for Freed's team. But they had been out-manoeuvred by the release of Rhapsody in Blue in 1945, and for all that film's sentimentality, there was clearly little to be gained in revisiting the story of the composer's life so soon after its release. It was decided that an original script would be developed, and the task was given to a relatively unknown Harvard graduate, Alan Jay Lerner. Although this might have seemed an enormous gamble for a production as ambitious in scale as 1507, Lerner was already one of the most exciting new talents at M G M in the late 1940s. A young Broadway dramatist, he had begun to make a name for himself co-writing with his partner Frederick Loewe: a stage production of Brigadoon had been a great success in New York in 1947, and Louis B. Mayer had been sufficiently impressed to commission Lerner to write the screenplay for Royal Wedding (1951). But this new project was an unusually daunting challenge especially for a relative novice - requiring Lerner to come up with a workable narrative treatment well before the song selections had been finalised. The approach was counterintuitive: instead of tailoring musical numbers to accommodate plot-driven emotional and dramatic situations, Lerner had to develop his script around vague dramatic pillars that showcased both the skills of Gene Kelly and the Parisian setting, while leaving enough flexibility for adjustment as the project became more concrete. Minnelli's later description of the script process as being 'like a Chinese puzzle' 11 gives a sense of the peculiar complexity of Lerner's task.

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Lerner's involvement began with the production of an initial story outline in November 1949, followed by a nine-page treatment in early December 1949. The first complete script of 105 pages was delivered on 20 February 1950, just days before Lerner was due to get married to actress Nancy Olsen. The complete composite screenplay, comprising 280 pages, was signed off by Freed on 12 June 1950. It was subject to various amendments leading to retakes dated 20 March 1951, and more again following preview screenings at the Crown Theatre in Pasadena on 21 March 1951 and the Bay Theatre in Pacific Palisades on 8 April 1951. The final complete script, signalling that the film was finally good for general release, was dated 13 August 1951. 1 2 Even then, M G M production executives were under no illusions about its limitations: for Dore Sharey, the head of production, the script was no more than 'serviceable', and lacked both sophistication and maturity. 13 In spite of these reservations, it is clear that one of the main strengths of the script is its attention to accuracy of detail, and its provision for a diegetic world that, although artificial, was as grounded in authenticity as possible. Thus, progressive revisions saw character names Gallicised (Lisa became Lise; George became Georges) and venue names found that approximated Parisian originals without infringing owners' rights (Cafe Florida became Cafe Flodair). Permission was sought for trademark usage in the decor (Byhrr, Perrier and Dubonnet all appear on street posters); prices were checked (the sum that Jerry asks to borrow from Adam varied from script to script as research was carried out into the value of the French franc; it went from 20 to 100 and finally 300 francs in the final film); and French dialogue was approved for Parisian characters: for example, that Georges (Eugene Borden), Mathilde (Martha Bamattre) and Henri would speak to each other in French rather than accented English when they first meet up in the Cafe Huguette. One late script also had Lise and Henri conversing entirely in French over dinner at home, but this was abandoned in the film, given that the relevance of their conversation to the onward plot had to be easily understood by viewers.

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One significant character was dropped from the script as the project took shape: a second ex-GI named Ben Macrow, who had been conceived as a painter buddy for Jerry Mulligan. As late as June 1950, this Brooklyn artist was a fully fleshed out character: a student with Jerry at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, with whom Jerry could talk about Monet and Picasso, and his other artistic influences. The scenes with Macrow depicted Jerry formally learning his craft as a painter, and if included, would have given more substance to his professional identity, as well as a clearer rationale for the final gathering of all the main characters at the Paris Art School at the end of the film. There is even evidence that the role may have been cast before it was dropped, with the actor Dick Wessel's name attributed to the character in some filmographies, and lines of dialogue credited to the character during the Beaux Arts Ball sequence in the script dated 12 June 1950. One constant feature of the script from start to finish was the setting: Paris. From Montmartre's cobbled streets full of amateur painters, to Montparnasse basement clubs 'where they play American music', to nocturnal scenes on the quayside by the Seine, Lerner proposed and developed Paris as the dramatic and visual core of the film. In the various scripts, Lerner frequently justified his choice of dramatic spaces, noting traditions associated with particular landmarks and describing proposed locations in close detail: It is the custom following the Beaux Arts ball that everyone troops through Paris and wades in the fountain at the Place de la Concorde. (14 November 1949) The Cafe Bel Ami is a typical small cafe. The River Seine flows by ... .In the middle of the river is the lie de (sic) St Louis. Rising proudly on the lie is seen Notre Dame', (this is in fact an error: the Cathedral sits on the lie de la Cite, not St Louis) (20 February 1950) They have a charming custom in those cafes .... Under each drink is a plate, and each plate has the price of the drink engraved on it. The only trouble is

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Montmartre

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The Cafe Bel Ami

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just before you leave they add up the plates and ask you for money ... (10 January 1951). Progressive revisions indicate that Lerner struggled to give Jerry Mulligan the right balance between wide-eyed wonder and informed understanding of the city of Paris. Early and late versions of the opening monologue all bear the traces of Lerner's efforts to express the ineffable quality that Jerry finds in the city - 'you can't define Paris with such inferior stuff as logic. Paris is a mood, a taste . . . . A longing you didn't know you had until it was answered' (20 February 1950); 'it's like love ... or a r t . . . or faith. It can't be explained; only felt' (10 January 1951) - but the result is ineloquent, setting Jerry up as inarticulate and pretentious. The monologue in the completed film circumvents these rather pompous efforts at verbal definition, allowing the image of the city, rendered in location footage of landmark spaces, to speak for itself. With the obligation to explain his 'inexplicable' feelings removed, Jerry retains a breezy, but excited tone: a tone consistent with the companionable star persona of Gene Kelly. Structurally, however, the film was intact from the outset, with the basic framing of the narrative unchanged from the first treatments. While the monologue that opens the completed film differs significantly in detail and length from earlier versions, the February 1950 script indicates clearly that the film would open with a bird's eye view of the city, before proceeding to a series of shots of familiar landmarks: the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysees and the Place de la Concorde were all proposed as desirable views. A location shoot was very much part of the original planning, and a memo dated 6 July 1950 talks about obtaining clearance for the use of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and using the Cluny Museum or the Tuileries Palace if this proved difficult. Other proposed locations were also set out at different points: these included the Ritz Hotel, the Place Vendome and the picturesque Place du Tertre. A Left Bank art studio was to be scoped to serve as the fancy studio in which Jerry prepares for his gallery exhibition.

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A location shooting schedule was produced in both English and French, and this was extremely detailed in setting out potential panoramic vantage points like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Grand Palais. 'Exhilarated walking shots', filmed from a concealed camera in a travelling car would pick out the highlights of named streets in 'glamorous' Paris - the Avenue de l'Opera, the Boulevard de Capucines, the Boulevard des Italiens - as well as some of the more 'colourful' streets of the older Latin Quarter like the Rue du Chat qui peche, Rue Julien le Pauvre and Rue de l'Universite. Day, night and dawn shots, shots of bridges and fountains, and a number of process background shots were set out. A late scene in which Lise leaves the Beaux Arts Ball with Henri was to show her travelling through Paris, via a series of travel and pan shots that suggest her leaving 'all the languor and beauty of Paris behind her'. 'We have to make arrangements with the Power Company of the city to turn on lights on these locations on designated time' notes the schedule dated 18 August 1950. Significantly, the film's conclusion was envisaged from the first treatment as a dance episode, described by Lerner in the initial outline as something approaching a 'choreographic pantomime'. This embryonic hint at the abstract finale dispels any notion that the film's climax was in any way a creative afterthought or decorative appendage to the more conventional narrative musical content.

The music George Gershwin is the other 'American in Paris' whose presence permeates the project. His 'An American in Paris' was a symphonic composition written following a period spent in Paris in the 1920s, and it was first performed at Carnegie Hall, New York in December 1928. Then barely thirty years old, Gershwin was already a major force in the world of American music, celebrated for his ability to translate the popular Tin Pan Alley style into formal orchestral compositions. His breakthrough composition was 'Rhapsody in Blue' (1924), quickly followed up by the 'Concerto in F' (1925). The Paris

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symphony, which he called 'a tone poem for orchestra', attempted to capture and convey the energy, cosmopolitanism and sheer upbeat life of the city he had encountered, and which seemed to provide such a counterpoint to American life. One of his most influential later works was the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935), but this was not well received at the time, and disappointment at its critical and commercial failure led him to Hollywood, where he worked with his brother Ira on the Astaire-Rogers film Shall We Dance (1937). His Hollywood career came to an abrupt and tragic end, however, with his sudden death from a brain tumour in July 1937. The numbers for the film An American in Paris were drawn from a vast back catalogue of some 150 songs and compositions. The selections were made collectively, and over a period of several months, by the core creative team - Ira Gershwin, Arthur Freed, Saul Chaplin, Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly and Alan Jay Lerner - and it was down to the last three to assure their dramatic integration into the narrative. Everyone was clear that the object was not to revel in 'Gershwiniana' but rather to identify songs and scores that lent themselves to staging, while being immediately representative of Gershwin's style. Nevertheless, many of the songs selected for inclusion were popular staples, already well known from the movies. Two had been previously covered by Judy Garland, one of MGM's biggest stars and Minnelli's wife until 1951. 'Embraceable You' and 'I Got Rhythm' were both taken from the 1943 film Girl Crazy, itself an adaptation of Gershwin's 1930s Broadway show of the same name (the first number had been sung by Ethel Merman in the Broadway production). 'Embraceable You' was retained without lyrics as the music to which newcomer Leslie Caron would be introduced in a dance solo. The second number was adapted to a call-and-response format between Jerry Mulligan and a group of street children, and was selected to be the first Gene Kelly solo number in the film, importantly confirming painterly Jerry at an early point in the narrative as the virtuoso showman of audience expectations.

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The number is a typical Kelly vehicle, close in format to several other of his recent film performances: the construction site number in Living in a Big Way (1947), for example, similarly showcases Kelly's athletic moves in the form of comic imitations performed high up on scaffolding; and the 'Dig for Your Dinner' number in Summer Stock (1950) sees Kelly lead an enraptured audience, while calling out a repeated 'You gotta ...' line. In both numbers Kelly demonstrates his mastery of a range of dance steps - the sidestep, time step, shim-sham, Charleston - to an admiring audience. In Living in a Big Way, as in An American in Paris, the audience are also children dazzled by the skill of this putative teacher, with his routine ending in a similar mock collapse from exhaustion. 'I Got Rhythm', then, ensured that both Kelly and the audience were on familiar territory from the outset. No doubt as a consequence of the unusual selection process, many of the musical numbers in the film come into their own as freestanding 'turns'; platforms for the talents and personalities of the star Jerry clowns around with the local children

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performers rather than integrated storyline markers. This is particularly the case in the male solo performances - Georges Guetary (Til Build a Stairway to Paradise') and Oscar Levant ('Concerto in F') - parallel numbers that follow each other in the film, and which clearly stand outside its main narrative and thematic frameworks. While the numbers provide a distraction from the romantic plot development, they primarily serve to reinforce the musical credentials of Henri/Guetary and Adam/Levant. As music rather than dance stars, Levant and Guetary are somewhat overshadowed in the screen time they share with Kelly, so these two free-standing solo numbers showcase them fully. The 'Stairway to Paradise' number, composed by Gershwin for the 1922 season of George White's Scandals revue, is a classic stage show performance, pitched somewhere between the Folies Bergeres and Ziegfeld Follies. The number is extravagant, yet formal, Til Build a Stairway to Paradise'

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establishing Guetary's Henri Baurel as a suave showman with a popular touch. Immediately following this, is the 'Concerto in F' sequence, in which a dreaming Adam fantasises that he is an entire orchestra, playing every part from piano soloist, to lead violinist, to conductor, to percussion chief. The number stands as a tribute to the complexity of Gershwin's orchestral work, while emphasising Levant's standing as Gershwin's confidant, friend and expert interpreter. It is also a playful nod to the era in which the score was composed, taking its inspiration from Buster Keaton's slapstick silent film The Playhouse (1921), in which Keaton plays a stagehand who dreams of taking on every role simultaneously in a theatrical production. As in An American in Paris, Keaton conducts his multiple selves playing a variety of instruments - although in his case, the comedy stems from the fact that he plays them very badly. The chaotic performance comes to an end when Keaton, like Adam, wakes up on his bed and is revealed to be sleeping on the job on a stage set. While Levant's hallucinatory fantasy is cooled by his opening of a chilled all-American bottle of Coca-Cola rather than strong liquor - the implication being that he has had quite enough already to find himself in such a state - Keaton writes out a fierce memo to himself: T resolve never to drink any more'. 'By Strauss', the first ensemble number in the film, was first performed in public at stage revue The Show Is On, directed by Minnelli in New York in 1936. The number is light-hearted and uptempo, and establishes the film's wider thematic preoccupations with cross-cultural and cross-national understanding. It brings the three male leads together in an inclusive performance that proposes their national differences and artistic incompatibilities, only to immediately eliminate these as barriers to friendship and creativity. The self-referential lyrics of Gershwin's original song (with its lines T give no quarter to Kern or Cole Porter and Gershwin keeps pounding on tin') are playfully reworked to create a number that comically prepares the ground for the film's broader thematic reflection on art and popular culture in an international context.

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'Concerto in F'

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Other numbers are more fully and conventionally integrated into the narrative of the film, notably the two that convey the euphoria felt by Jerry as he find as himself falling in love with Lise: 'Tra-la-la (This Time It's Really Love)', composed for the 1922 stage comedy For Goodness Sake, and "S Wonderful', from the 1927 stage production of Funny Face. Each of the two numbers is staged as a duo, in which a besotted Jerry's feeling of sheer joy at the turn his life has taken are shared with a male counterpart (Adam and Henri respectively). Like T Got Rhythm', both are upbeat numbers that allow Gene Kelly to improvise in his trademark expansive, rapid, open dance movements. The ballad 'Our Love Is Here to Stay' is the number that is most deeply integrated into the romantic narrative arc. At the time of the film's release, the song was one of the least well-known in the Gershwin canon. It was written for The Goldwyn Follies (1938), where it was sung by Kenny Baker, and was one of the last songs penned by George before his death. The creative team felt that the mood, pace and lyrics were perfectly suited to the romantic intimacy of Jerry and Lise's first secret meeting on the Seine quayside. The number therefore has none of the ludic qualities and upbeat energy found elsewhere in the film; instead it is dark, almost melancholic. Fragments of other Gershwin tunes provide background music throughout the film, and intensify the sense of Paris as a space of perpetual artistic expression. These include 'Bidin' my Time' (1930), 'Liza' (1929), 'Fascinating Rhythm' (1924), 'Strike Up the Band' (1927), T Don't Think I'll Fall in Love today' (1926), 'Someone to Watch over Me' (1926), 'Oh, Lady Be Good' (1926), 'But Not for Me' (1930), and 'How Long Has This Been Going On? (1928). Two further complete solo numbers were filmed, but were cut at the editing stage following Freed's decision that the film was too long and they were expendable. 'I've Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie' (1926) was a dance number filmed in Jerry's attic room; Kelly claimed it was one of his favourite routines, and was frustrated by

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its omission given the time he had spent rehearsing it. The second was a solo, 'Love Walked In' (1937), performed by Guetary in the Cafe Huguette: in this scene Henri sings to a visibly pensive Lise who, unbeknown to him, has just returned from a tryst with Jerry. Although nothing in the final film suggests that Lise has connections with the Cafe Huguette and its patrons, the deleted scene makes clear that it is a place she knows well and explains her panic when she arrives there in a taxi with Jerry. The 'American in Paris' composition was always intended for inclusion in its entirety, so the question was how it would be arranged, and even re-orchestrated to accommodate the choreography and dramatic arc of the ballet. Whereas it was possible - and certainly desirable - for the majority of the songs to remain intact in terms of Gershwin's authorship, with lyrics updated by his brother Ira where necessary, the cine-ballet - staged across multiple stages and decors, and with very precise storyline priorities - could not be easily mapped onto an existing piece of music. Johnny Green, Saul Chaplin and Conrad Salinger collaborated on the musical arrangement, conscious of their responsibility to both the material and the memory of a dearly missed friend and mentor. They were required to stretch and condense elements in line with the choreography, and to reorder or even embed new elements in line with the shape of the overall dance. For instance, as Green recalls there is a trombone theme that comes in early in An American in Paris. The next substantive motif that you hear in the picture George Gershwin never wrote. Saul Chaplin wrote it. Before this picture it didn't exist.14 Similarly, the jazz theme of the Toulouse-Lautrec 'Chocolat dansant au bar' segment in fact comes much earlier in the Gershwin symphony, but it was felt this moody segment would be better dramatically suited to the finale. Many such amendments were made to the score, all aimed at tackling the complexities and densities of

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the original for film recording, and conducted with the needs of the individual dramatic sections in mind. Having worked with George Gershwin as a young man, Green was confident about the decisions they took: If George had been alive and on the picture, I can assure that neither Solly [Chaplin] nor I would have done any adaptation. George would have done it. But he would have done exactly what we did. I know it.15 Having learned the score directly from Gershwin, Green only ever endeavoured to recreate the authentic Gershwin sound of the score: 'George taught me "An American in Paris"' he recalls. 'I learned it from George; I play it the way George wanted it. The tempi and the sauciness of the times, the spirit, the sentimentality, and the blues that sound like blues'. 16

The cast When An American in Paris went into production, Gene Kelly was one of the most bankable stars at M G M . A dance-school teacher and stage performer from the East Coast, he had joined the studio in 1942, and spent much of the decade that followed honing his skills as a performer, choreographer and, with On the Town and Singin' in the Rain, director. He had worked with Minnelli on Ziegfeld Follies (1945) and The Pirate (1948), and in spite of the latter film being one of the studio's biggest commercial failures of the decade, the two had a good working relationship and were keen to work together again. Kelly's willingness to take risks with the conventions of dance on screen complemented Minnelli's desire to innovate in matters of decor and style, and The Pirate had shown that the two were capable of combining fantasy and dance in new and exciting ways. As an innovator, Kelly was very much aware that dance on screen was a very different kind of expression from dance on stage, and he energetically explored what cinema could offer to the art form. Two complex technical routines from his 1940s career testify to his

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imagination and ambition for cine-dance: the 'Alter Ego' number in Cover Girl (1944) in which, through a splicing effect, he seems to dance with himself; and T h e Worry Song' number from Anchors Aweigb (1945), in which Kelly becomes part of an animated world in order to partner Jerry Mouse of 'Tom and Jerry' fame. Kelly's principal roles through the 1940s tended towards the masculine-active type: swashbucklers, naval officers, soldiers on leave, pirates. His 'regular guy' persona, large frame and athletic dance style differentiated him from the era's other leading dance man, Fred Astaire, who was unmatched for elegance, style and urbanity. Kelly's forte was his playfulness, and an ability to be partnered with male as well as female dance leads. Anchors Aweigh and On the Town both established the 'soldier-buddy' character type on which An American in Paris builds; a man at ease in the company of men, for whom dance is an expression of exuberance and liberation, as well as of confident modern masculinity. As a GI veteran, Jerry Mulligan is a character firmly located in a historical reality that would have been immediately familiar to cinema audiences of the time. And yet his experience of war service is not a factor in his characterisation: at no point does he talk about the war, the friends he made, the experiences - good or bad - from his time spent in Europe; and his cheerful, easy pleasure in this newfound bohemian life eclipses any darker associations of the period. He is clearly recognisable as a figure of the liberation, dispensing bubblegum to local children, and delighting them with impromptu lessons in his exotic American language. For his adopted Parisian community he is, of course, the quintessentially exotic American hero known to them already from the movies: the genial entertainer, the charismatic good neighbour, the handsome boy with the dazzling smile and the moves to match. While Lise Bouvier and Henri Baurel are semi-serious characters straight from the pages of the history books - the daughter of French Resistance heroes and her gallant protector respectively - Jerry is in fact much more of a movie trope: the perennially immature adult of the movie musical, a delayed

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adolescent for whom Paris is a playground, and who will grow up and become a man only when he is elevated by romantic love. Nevertheless, the darkness of the historical period is allowed some expression in the way the easy charm of the Kelly persona is given a deeply cynical edge. He is at his most familiar and reassuring when flirting and dancing with the old ladies and children of his neighbourhood, but Jerry Mulligan is a lone wolf who establishes friendships through circumstances rather than solid affection. Adam Cook is the buddy he hangs out with when he is on his way in and out of the building, and who greets his moments of euphoria and despondency with the same deadpan response. Henri Baurel becomes his friend when he offers to lend him money: Jerry takes the money via the intermediary of Adam, before declaring that Henri should be more cautious with his favours - 'I wouldn't lend him money, if I were you. He's a bum risk'. Underneath the humour of his interactions with Adam and Therese (Ann Codee), the building's cleaning lady, there is a sense of Jerry's deep frustration at his situation, and an awareness of a kind of infantilisation wrought by his life cut adrift from the social norms of American adulthood. 'Even in Paris you need money for women and wine', he declares to Therese as he passes her on the stairs. He gives his first potential customer of the day short shrift - 'she's one of those third year girls' - and bums a cigarette from his second, Milo. He displays his impoverishment as macho insouciance: when Milo suggests that the 1,500 francs she is offering per painting amounts to $50 each, Jerry refuses to be overwhelmed or grateful: 'Is it enough?' she asks. 'I don't know' he replies, 'I haven't changed any money lately'. When she attempts to seduce him, he is annoyed and chippy: 'Lady, you must be outta your mink-lined head'. In addition to his role as principal lead, Kelly was accorded an exceptional degree of creative control in the An American in Paris project. Although he is not credited with direction, he choreographed all the film's dance numbers, composing dance routines directly for the specific camera set-ups required by Minnelli. Minnelli was absent

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from the set during the development of the ballet, busy filming Father's Little Dividend (1951) (the sequel to the enormously successful Father of the Bride [1950], starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor), so Kelly acted as the interim director, staging the complex piece in its entirety, and conceiving and directing key pieces that had not yet been fully formulated by Minnelli. These included the introduction of Lise during the first conversation between Adam and Henri in the Cafe Huguette. That Kelly's mark is on this number rather than Minnelli's may be detected in the way it precisely replicates the content and style of the 'Miss Turnstiles' number from On the Town, in which Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen) poses in a series of differently coloured, differently styled sets. In both cases, the number presents the female object of desire as a mysterious fantasy figure: multifaceted, enigmatic, unknowable. However, Minnelli's direction remains visible in the transition: in On the Town, the transition to fantasy is effected through a subway poster the men look at, whereas in An American in Paris, Lise is seen to appear in a gilt-edged mirror, a motif extensively and distinctively used by Minnelli in his acclaimed melodrama Madame Bovary (1949). Minnelli also devised the stylistic conceit of using a series of monochromatic decors to further differentiate the two sequences. Jerry's buddy Adam is played by Oscar Levant, who in the 1940s was something of a celebrity, a man who moved in Hollywood circles, but was associated with concert music rather than performance; when he acted, it was only ever as a heightened screen version of himself. Levant had been a close friend of George Gershwin, and their friendship is traced in the 1946 Warner biopic, in which Gershwin (Robert Alda) meets Levant (played by Levant). This film's moving conclusion, which occurs shortly after the death of the composer, features Levant in a stage performance of 'Rhapsody in Blue', accompanied by a full orchestra. He was similarly staged in his first M G M movie, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), playing a virtuoso piano solo of Tchaikovsky's 'Piano Concerto N o . 1', accompanied by a full orchestra. As the foremost interpreter of

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Gershwin in the 1940s, Levant's presence lent legitimacy to the project. Curiously though, for such a known figure, his character had more basis in reality than anyone else's in the film: the inspiration for the character was a musician named Dave Diamond, a pianist (and protege of Levant) who was famous for having spent the bulk of his professional life on a series of European music scholarships. There was uncertainty about who would play the role of Henri Baurel, but in the interests of authenticity, it was felt from the earliest that it should go to a French star. Maurice Chevalier was one of the biggest French names in Hollywood, and a veteran of 1930s musicals associated with Paris. He had previously been contracted to M G M but was reluctant to take a part in a film that saw him lose the girl to a younger rival. But although the name would have been a draw, there were doubts about the wisdom of this casting; first, it was felt that he was already too old to play Lise's benevolent loverprotector (he was in his 60s when the film went into production). And second, he was one of a number of French stars whose wartime activities loomed large in public minds: not because of his war service, but because his decision to continue performing in occupied Paris had led to accusations of collaboration. Even though he was acquitted of all charges, and even found to have facilitated the release of ten French prisoners of war from a Berlin camp where he himself had been imprisoned in 1914, there was too much taint about him at this particular point in history for such a high-profile Franco-American project. Upcoming star Yves Montand was also considered for the role in the early stages of the project, but his declared communist sympathies were too much of a risk in the paranoid climate of McCarthyism. The role finally went to a relative newcomer to American entertainment. Georges Guetary had been signed to M G M following his success in a Broadway production of Arms and the Girl (1950). Theatre critics had raved about his performance, describing him as 'the most exciting French talent to arrive in Hollywood since Maurice Chevalier came from Paris to set feminine hearts on fire', and he

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received two notable awards: the New York Critics Award for 'Outstanding Leading Man of the Year', and the Tony for 'Best Foreign Performer'. Outside America his star profile was high: he had broken Frank Sinatra's concert record in Montreal, while his performance in Bless the Bride on the London stage was a huge success: the show ran for nearly 1,000 performances and the M G M pressbook claimed that 'the ordinarily reserved British ladies ... swooned with all the exuberance of American bobby-soxers'. 17 But it was his French credentials that were most impressive (although Guetary, whose birth name was Lambros Worloou, was in fact born in Egypt to Greek parents): his musical training in Paris, the fame he garnered when, as a young hopeful, he partnered the legendary Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris, and his entertainment work in the Free French Zone during the occupation (a major difference with Chevalier). This 'nice looking nobody with a nice voice' 18 was nevertheless an unusual choice for such a high-profile M G M film, and a great deal of energy was spent on promotion and publicity materials to sell him to the American public. There was general agreement that the role of Lise Bouvier should be taken by a professional dancer, but the studio initially felt that a home-grown American star would be perfectly fine in the role. Cyd Charisse was an early choice, but was ruled out when she became pregnant (her son was born in August 1950) and Vera-Ellen, hot from the success of On the Town was also considered for the part. Studio executives insisted Minnelli consider other contract players such as Sally Forrest and Marge Champion, and screentests were made of the former. Freed, however, was convinced that the film needed the cachet of a French leading lady, and arranged for screentests of two Parisian dancers who were already attracting the attention of the critics in France: Odile Versois and Leslie Caron. For Kelly, it was Caron, whom he had seen perform at the Ballet des Champs-Elysees in 1949, who had the edge: unlike Versois, she had no acting experience, but she had all the youthful fragility that Lerner had envisaged for the character. In June 1950, Leslie Caron,

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still a minor, and with a somewhat insecure command of English, travelled to Hollywood accompanied by her mother, to start a new life in Los Angeles. For Caron, the film was an adventure for reasons that were very different to everyone else's. Within days of getting the call from M G M , she found herself transplanted from the austerity of post-war Paris to a Californian world of plenty. The patronage of Gene Kelly and the presence of her mother helped her settle to her new life, but the American restaurants, shops and services were a shock after the long material deprivations she had experienced in wartime France. Caron's gamine physique, which made her so perfect for the role in the eyes of the production team, was ironically a consequence of chronic anaemia brought on by years of nutritional deficiencies: wartime and post-war rationing had left many French citizens weak and underweight. She recalls being completely astonished at the amount of food served in the restaurant she went to with her mother and agent on her first night in town: There was so much meat on my plate. I ordered like I would in France: pate to begin with, then a steak, a vegetable, and salad. When it came, the portions were like for four people. I couldn't believe such wealth. In France, you could order pate and a steak and a salad and some vegetable and a dessert and still be hungry because the portions were so small, but here the steak hung over my plate. After the pate I already had enough to eat.19 While the daily work routine at Culver City was sometimes tedious for a girl who had served her apprenticeship in a Parisian ballet corps - T thought it was incredible the amount of time you sat around not doing anything' she recalled. 'To me, filming was all preparation and not much real talent' 20 - it soon became clear that she lacked the stamina for the sustained and gruelling rehearsals that were required of her. The studio doctors resorted to giving her daily injections of vitamins in order to combat the exhaustion brought on by her physical condition. And nobody had thought to check in advance

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whether or not she could actually sing. She couldn't, and the film has the distinction of being one of the rare Hollywood musicals to boast an all-male vocal score. Caron found aspects of her new life profoundly alien, such as the publicity treadmill and the sudden ownership of her image by the studio machine. Her publicist Emily Torchia recalled that it was very hard for her to adapt to the demands of interviews, luncheons, 'holiday art' photoshoots for the popular magazines, English and singing lessons, and dance rehearsals: 'Leslie had very little time for herself, so I can see where it might have been physically and emotionally very difficult. And it was all business with us. We loved her but it was still business'. 21 Caron's lack of understanding of the process was made wholly apparent when, on the eve of shooting, she impulsively cut her long hair into a modern 'Bettina' crop, of the kind later favoured by Mia Farrow. The producers and make-up department were thrown into a complete frenzy, and the shooting schedule had to be rearranged while a hairdresser was appointed to 'pull my hair out, to try to make it grow'. 2 2 Although Caron has described herself as 'a dancer with a few lines' 23 rather than an actress in this first film, her success was immediate and spectacular. Her salary was modest by studio standards, but it had in fact risen by a stupefying 1000 per cent, from the equivalent of $50 per month in France to $500 per month at M G M . This also took some getting used to. When she turned up late for rehearsals one day, apologising because she didn't have a watch or alarm clock, Gene Kelly sternly suggested she go out and buy one: 'I was so amazed' she said. 'It was like buying a chinchilla for a Mexican peasant, because during the war in France we just spent money on food and that was that'. 2 4 Caron remained with M G M after the film, going on to star in Lili (1953) with Mel Ferrer, before taking the lead role alongside Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan in Minnelli's multi-Academy Award-winning Gigi. Her fame back home in France was such that her name became shorthand for overnight success: a 1952 cover of

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Paris Match magazine pictured one of Caron's former classmates at the Paris Conservatoire with the tagline T h e New Leslie Caron'. The classmate, it was suggested, was poised to become as famous as Caron in the years to come: 'Miracles can happen twice', the article stated Only two years later, it's the same fairy tale we are witnessing. Leslie Caron, a little dancer with the face of a kitten went off to conquer America. Today another 17 year old dancer with a pouting smile is becoming the symbol of youth. Her name is Brigitte Bardot.25 The remaining major role in the production went to Nina Foch, a Dutch-born actress from New York who was cast as Milo Roberts, Jerry's American benefactress. A socialite rich on her father's money, who lives at the Ritz Hotel and sees Paris as a hunting ground for the acquisition of both art and penniless, handsome young artists, Milo was conceived as a dramatic rather than musical character and so she does not take part in any of the musical numbers. The initial name in the frame at the studio was Celeste Holm, fresh from her critical triumph in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All about Eve (1950), but the first to read for the part was Foch who, in the view of Freed, Kelly and Minnelli, had 'just the right amount of savoir-faire, worldliness, sweetness, and bitchiness' 26 for what was to be a pivotal role in the drama. Groomed to perfection, sassy and smart, Milo is both a temptation and a threat to Jerry, whose 'precious male initiative' as she calls it, is repeatedly undermined by her confidence and wealth. She introduces herself to him as 'Milo ... as in Venus de', and casually admits to living on her inheritance. 'Say, how d'ya come by all these worldly possessions?' asks Jerry, impressed and a little intimidated by her suite at the Ritz where he has gone to deliver the paintings she has purchased. 'A rich husband or a rich father?' 'Father' she replies. 'What's he do?' Jerry asks. 'Oil ...' she ventures, to which he responds 'I should've known'. 'Suntan oil' she quips with

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knowing self-deprecation, establishing the charm, confidence and vulnerability of her character in one brief, masterful exchange. Foch's role, however, was curtailed by a late editing decision which saw her final scene - a scene that she claimed was among the best in her career - cut from the film. The plan was that that Milo would drunkenly reflect on her rejection by Jerry at the Beaux Arts Ball, before finding solace in the arms of Adam; the implication was that the doomed mentor-protege vicious cycle was about to get underway again. But evoking such sympathy for her could only detract from the film's core priority: to bring the Jerry/Lise love story to a happy resolution. 'Everyone who had seen it talked to me about that scene' remembers Foch. 'I got a letter from Arthur Freed afterwards saying "We're sorry we cut that wonderful scene out. We all loved it, but it made Gene look bad" \ 2 7 Foch did however make a significant additional contribution to the final film: at a late stage in the filming, she contracted chickenpox, and the production had to be halted for a few days. It was in these few precious days that Minnelli, Kelly and Irene Sharaff found the necessary time to outline the shape, content and texture of a ballet that was still just a vague idea. 'It was the luckiest chickenpox I've ever known' Minnelli claimed. 28 What remained once the core casting was complete, was to populate the Parisian world of the main protagonists, and even this was carried out with a high degree of care for accuracy of type and overall look. On 5 July 1950, the technical advisor Alan Antik sent a memo to Arthur Freed stating I have forwarded to your office a detailed description of desirable characters, types, clothes etc. - I am convinced that this is extremely important and we should attempt for our 'french (sic) people' to appear to be real without making the too often made mistake of having a bunch of overdressed, wild gesturing overacting latins (sic) [...]. Now that we have comparative authenticity in our sets [the two main street sets will look pretty close to reality] - we ought to have authentic live characters in them - they make Paris what it is.29

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Minnelli was entirely in agreement with this strategy, recalling that he sent out a call for French people around Southern California, to cast the lesser roles and fill in the crowds. This picture was going to look as authentically French as possible, even though it was being filmed in the United States.30 But curiously, the production team found it a challenge to recruit suitable French extras in Hollywood. Recalling that some 150 Greeks and Mexicans auditioned unsuccessfully for speaking parts, Antik recalls that 'most of the French actors in Hollywood were hams. Either they owned restaurants or they thought their mission was to be very French, and by being very French they were being ridiculous'. 31 Two delightful casting suggestions that never transpired were a cameo by legendary French comic actor Fernandel as the chauffeur of Milo's limousine; and an appearance by Lena H o m e as a torch singer in the Cafe Flodair where Jerry meets Lise. The bar was conceived as a typical American haunt in Paris, and the songs planned for H o m e were stand-alone Gershwin staples: 'How Long Has This Been Going On?' and 'The Man I Love'. Minnelli and H o m e were old friends and artistic collaborators, having worked together on the musical Cabin in the Sky (1943). But H o m e at this time was a risky proposition for M G M : a high-profile civil rights activist, in an interracial marriage, whose film appearances were routinely excised when it came to distribution in the segregated southern states. She did not make the cut. The s h o o t Rehearsals began on 5 June 1950, just after Leslie Caron arrived from France, and the pre-recordings of the music began on 20 July 1950. The production got underway formally on 1 August 1950 and closed on 8 January 1951, but only some of this period was actually spent shooting the film. The film's internal schedule was quite

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unusual, with the film shot in two distinct parts and over two distinct periods. First came the filming of the 'book', which is to say all the dramatic content and some of the less complex musical numbers such as 'Stairway to Paradise' and 'Tra-ia-la'. A forty-two-day shooting schedule had been agreed between Minnelli and the unit production manager Ed Woehler, and this was more or less respected with a wrap party held on 15 September 1950, on a thematically decorated soundstage. The second phase of the production was given over to the development of the ballet, which was designed and choreographed while Minnelli was away directing Father's Little Dividend. It was more efficient financially to arrange the shoot in this way, so that actors like Levant, Guetary and Foch, whose contribution was complete, could be released, and all the attention be given over to further set construction and dance rehearsals. It also provided an opportunity for Kelly to choreograph and direct sequences that had not been yet been finalised, such as the introductory 'Embraceable You' number. New team members were brought into the production at this point, most significantly designer Irene Sharaff, who took a central role in the conception of the film's finale. Kelly, his assistant Carol Haney and Leslie Caron began rehearsals for the ballet on 2 November 1950, and the symphony score was pre-recorded a month into the rehearsals on 1 and 2 December. Minnelli and new cinematographer John Alton arrived on 6 December to shoot the ballet, and this was completed on 2 January 1951. With two very different shoots and budgets to manage, this was clearly a busy period for Minnelli professionally. But it was also a turbulent period in his personal life: his wife Judy Garland's mental and physical health was in serious decline in 1950, and both she and the toddler Liza (born in 1946) were reliant on his care and support. Suspended from her contract with M G M in June 1950 (in the preproduction stage of An American in Paris), Garland attempted suicide, and a media storm erupted around the celebrity couple. On 29 September 1950, she was sacked by M G M after fifteen years

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of service. The marriage ended at Christmas 1950, when Garland moved to New York, leaving Liza in the care of her father, and divorce followed in March 1951. The sunny optimism of the film, finally released on 11 November 1951 belies the fact that Minnelli's life was, in his own words, 'on the road to hell' over these months.

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3 Paris, Culver City City of Darkness, City of Light In the years immediately following the end of World War II, Americans were everywhere in Paris. American troops had participated in the liberation of the city in August 1944, and negotiations for the Marshall Plan economic aid package were held in Paris in December 1947. 3 2 In addition to the army of administrators whose job it was to implement this ambitious European recovery plan were the American GIs who, as the frontline representatives of the NATO alliance, provided a permanent military presence on European soil. Furthermore, between 1946 and 1948, thousands of young Americans - mainly students and demobilised veterans - took advantage of the devalued franc, and flocked to the city on both the new Fulbright scholarships and the GI Bill. The latter, 33 provided tuition and $75 per month to US military veterans enrolled in education programmes at home and abroad. Paris was a favourite destination, to the extent that it was said that if 'all the veterans who were enrolled there actually showed up for class, they would need a soccer stadium to accommodate them'. 3 4 In August 1949, Life magazine carried a long article about American GIs in Paris. 35 Entitled 'The New Expatriates', the article profiled a number of ex-servicemen now resident in the city, and gave detailed coverage of their way of life there: classes in writing, painting and cordon bleu cookery; evenings spent in Left Bank cafes; cramped accommodation without modern luxuries like bathrooms. One of those profiled was a debutant artist, Robert Hyman Bizinsky, who could have been the inspiration for Jerry Mulligan. He recounts that: In the States an artist in the family is a disaster. His folks think he is wasting time and he isn't too sure that they aren't right. Here we are all trying, and

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the very atmosphere of the place helps. Even the cop leaning over your shoulder when you are working on the street either keeps his trap shut or says something to the point. You get respectful attention in the States only after you are a success - not before, when you need it.36 Bizinsky's words were illustrated with a photograph that, were it not in black and white, could be a still from An American in Paris. Captioned 'In a Garret', the image shows Gl-artists Howard Simpson and Hill Hazelip in a cramped sixth-floor attic room, complete with mansard ceiling and tiny window. Simpson paints at his easel, while Hazelip sits on the bed, watching him at work. In another contemporary account, New York Herald Tribune columnist Art Buchwald, who travelled to Paris in June 1948, could be talking about Jerry Mulligan, Adam Cook and Milo Roberts when he describes his fellow ship passengers as: budding Pulitzer Prize winners, eager painters, future geniuses of the arts and sciences, as well as well as children of extremely successful businessmen. [...] We carried hardly any luggage, but if we'd ever declared our dreams to French customs, they would have been worth thousands of dollars in duty.37 Given the powerful draw of the city, and the weight of the American presence there, it might seem puzzling that An American in Paris was not shot on location. MGM was still basking in the success of a partially New York-shot On the Town (released on 30 December 1949 when Lerner's script for An American in Paris was in development) and other major productions of the 1950-1 season were filmed outside America: Quo Vadis in Italy and King Solomon's Mines (1950) in Africa. On the Town, the story of three sailors on shore leave in New York for twenty-four hours, was one of the most innovative films of the Freed Unit, breaking the production mould by taking the action out of the studio and onto the streets and public sites of New York City. The modern flavour of this film - which also starred Gene Kelly - was enjoyed by both

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critics and audiences, and it seemed logical that the Freed Unit's next major city-set production would try to capitalise on this successful model. The topicality of a veteran in Europe on the GI Bill seemed to cry out for a shoot in one of the world's most iconic and crucially unspoilt - capital cities. It was initially anticipated that up to 40 per cent of An American in Paris would be shot on location, and as late as 7 July 1950 an internal memo from musical director Johnny Green advised on the pre-recordings that had to be made before 24 July 'and/or departure of company for France'. A second unit was dispatched to Paris, with a detailed shooting schedule that would be undertaken in the course of August when the city was traditionally quiet. Among personnel in Paris was Eddie Woehler, a unit director specialising in location work, and Peter Ballbusch, a cinematographer tasked with photographic research and shooting exterior footage. A memo from the production's technical advisor records that the intention was to combine location shooting with studio matching: As I understand, we plan to have as much authenticity as permissible in this production, because part of the action will be shot on location in Paris, and there may be a necessity to match some shots from it with our studio sets. 38 The M G M news bulletin later that month boasted that filming was scheduled to start in France 'this summer', 39 and Minnelli remembered that 'We first thought of shooting the picture in Paris. We even went for our shots and passports'. 40 However, when the film went into production on 1 August 1950, it was in Culver City, not Paris, with the capital recreated in a massive decor that consisted of forty-four different sets, whose construction was supervised by art director Preston Ames. Although the second unit shot some 10,000 feet of footage in Paris (at a cost of $20,000), only about 500 feet found its way into the film, in the form of an opening montage, the arrival of Jerry and Milo at the Ritz

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Hotel, and some process shots when Jerry is seen painting for his exhibition. The rest went into the M G M stock library. Although Minnelli would go on to make a number of films partly or wholly on location in France (Lust for Life, Gigi, The Reluctant Debutante [1958], The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [1962]), a decision was taken at a late stage that what would be his most iconic French film would be realised in the studio. Gene Kelly wrote to members of his fan club on 2 November 1950 telling them simply that Well, it didn't work out for us to actually go to Paris for any shooting on An American in Paris, but the atmosphere and color of that great city have been duplicated exactly and with backgrounds shot by a second unit there, you won't be able to tell it from the real thing.41 The reasons for this radical change of heart seem to have been a mixture of the logistical, financial, creative and personal, and no single issue stands out as decisive. Preston Ames is reputed to have dissuaded Kelly from thinking that Paris offered the same possibilities as New York - 'have you tried dancing on cobblestones?' he apparently said - while M G M executives voiced concerns that Kelly dancing his way through a series of Parisian locations risked looking like a duplication of On the Town: 'On the Town in berets', as Stephen Harvey has suggested. 42 Kelly, in turn, cited the rigours of filming on location with a fragile and inexperienced debutante: Leslie Caron 'wasn't strong enough to shoot and dance a whole day' he claimed, 'and if you go to a city, you just can't afford to shoot only for two or three hours'. 4 3 Minnelli, ever attentive to the design intensity of his musical world expressed concerns about how the autumn climate would impact on the image he wished to evoke: Paris as winter approached would hold less visual appeal on screen than the much vaunted 'Paris in the Spring' (this was also a determining factor in the decision to shoot Brigadoon in Los Angeles rather than Scotland). It also proved more difficult than anticipated to obtain

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permissions to film on the sites that Lerner had identified in his script. And the ambition of the ballet was clearly a major consideration: Minnelli recalls Then we started to think of the ballet. Gene and I saw a lot of locations stills. The actual streets would be so difficult to control and so difficult to make a ballet in, so finally it was decided we could do just as well here.44 Closer to home, family issues meant Minnelli could not easily take off for a location shoot in Europe: Garland was ill and fragile after her sacking from M G M , and their young daughter needed to be looked after. More significant perhaps, even if they were not explicitly recorded, were the practical and ethical questions of filming in a city still recovering from the trauma of war. Paris in the years immediately following the liberation did not correspond in any way to the romantic haven beloved of literary Americans, and posed very specific problems as a potential cinematic location. New Yorker correspondent Janet Flanner, who lived in Paris from the 1920s till the 1960s forensically documented life in Paris in the winter of 1944-5 and through the severe winter of 1946-7, and revealed how it was a desperate and unstable city, slow to recover from the war and occupation. 45 Flanner's dispatches described continued rationing, poverty and starvation in the city, regular power shortages, black marketeering, political unrest and - once the euphoria of the liberation of the city had worn off - increasing antiAmericanism: the peacetime presence of American GIs in France went quickly from being a welcome relief to a source of enormous tension to the French, with accusations of a different kind of 'occupation' increasingly bandied about in the domestic press. To have flaunted the resources of MGM's 'Magic Factory' on the streets of the city, at a time when economic recovery was the overriding diplomatic priority for the Marshall Plan administrators (not least with regard to nurturing growth in the depleted French

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cinema industry), would have been an insensitive move, and a crass error of judgment. The Culver City backlot thus became the default location for the production.

Backlot Paris In 1951, Minnelli had never actually visited Paris and so his visual sense of the city was entirely influenced by artistic, rather than geographical sources. His francophilia, however, was longstanding, and with An American in Paris he had the collaborators and resources to fully elaborate a stylised conception of France and Frenchness that had long been apparent in his work. In 1934, when he was producer and director at Radio City Music Hall in New York, he had devised a series of exotic stage sets for the hit show Coast to Coast. Harvey notes that having visited none of these places except via books, painting and travelogues, Minnelli imagined them with a sort of wide-eyed chic ideally suited to the huge Music Hall stage [...]. But it was the Riviera set that really left them breathless. Punctuated by white cut-out palm trees, the Dufyesque set anticipated the look of his American in Paris ballet by fifteen years.46 Preston Ames, the art director, certainly felt that Minnelli 'had everything preconceived in his head', 47 and that his Paris would be an amalgam, rather than a replication of elements of the city. Minnelli drew inspiration from the clippings and photographs he had accumulated in a vast 'Paris' file throughout his career, as well as from the French literature and art that he so admired. Both his method and his purpose were clear to his team: 'Paris' should be compelling rather than authentic; it should be striking, memorable, even 'haunting' in its visual force. As he put it: A film that means anything at all [...] is made up of hundreds of hidden things. Things that the audience may not be aware of unless it's pointed out to them but nevertheless help to involve them and haunt them a little.

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Otherwise, they see and forget as soon as they leave the theatre, and that's what you're always trying not to have happen.48 Minnelli was assisted in the research phase of the project by a 'details man': Alan (sometimes Alain) Antik, a former French army and intelligence officer who had fled France early in the occupation. In a letter to Arthur Freed, Antik had made a spirited pitch for the job of technical advisor, drawing attention to: my absolute knowledge of Paris, France and every detail concerning authenticity of settings, people and customs. To that effect, I would also like for you to consider me in helping Mr Lerner in going through the script; eliminating any possibility - which may affect realism, which I am sure you desire ... I am sure that the French audiences, press and authorities would be pleased to know if I would be actively participating in your production, for I am quite well known there.49 Antik, who had lived in Paris as a young man, in the fourth-floor apartment of a building in Montmartre, surrounded by nightclubs and cabarets, was initially contracted by Freed to manage the second unit in France. But he remained at Culver City until the end of the operation, taking responsibility for tempering what he saw as some of Minnelli's more fanciful ideas about the French capital. As news of the production spread, Minnelli found additional support from other interested French parties: the French National Tourist Office in New York sent him a copy of a 16mm film entitled Tourist France, while Air France provided a promotional film called Flight to Paris. Random unsolicited offers of assistance regularly arrived at the studio, such as that from Peter Groen, a fluent French speaker who had lived in Paris before the war, and was now resident in California. The official press book intriguingly credited Mariette Andrews, previously a historical consultant on Minnelli's Madame Bovary, as the film's 'technical adviser on all things French'. But although Andrews is briefly seen as a news vendor (credited as Marie

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Antoinette Andrews) in a scene with Oscar Levant, her contribution seems to have been eclipsed by Antik's and lost from all records. Robert Vogel in the international department of M G M oversaw the accuracy of signage within the film, insisting that any errors would be detrimental to the studio's professional integrity when it came to the foreign distribution of the film. He insisted that the research department be consulted on all proposed use of written text and French dialogue in the film.50 One of the great strengths of the production was, then, the support Minnelli received from a creative team, many of whom, like Antik, had lived and trained in Paris. The firsthand knowledge of the city meant that contributors in all areas of the production could be proactive in shaping the vision of the city on the backlots and soundstages at Culver City. MGM's two backlots were a renowned treasure trove of standing sets, some expressly dedicated to 'European' decor. The original 'French District' on Lot 1 was established as early as 1925, growing from a single structure to a whole Gallic-themed village with shingled rooftops, courtyards, balconied avenues, winding exterior staircases and gabled windows. An American in Paris brought this design into the present day, making use of second-generation sets on Lot 2. In purely pragmatic terms this presented huge advantages, as the backlot in this period was not a billable expense for in-house productions. Freed's initial choice for art director on the project was the Italian Gabriel Scognamillo, who had worked with Renoir on La Chienne (1931) and with Lubitsch on The Merry Widow (1934), and would go on to be the art director on the Paris-set musical Lovely to Look At (1952). The job went instead to Preston Ames, a Paristrained architect who had lived in the city for five years until leaving to take up a position in an architect's practice in San Francisco. Ames had lost his job in the Great Depression, and drifted south to Los Angeles, where he was taken on by Cedric Gibbons as a company draftsman. By 1946, after a decade learning the ropes of studio design, Ames had worked his way up to the coveted position of art

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director, and An American in Paris was one of his first senior commissions. Part of the attraction of the project for Ames was precisely the opportunity to draw on his experiences of living in Paris: I had no fears about doing those things which I had known in Paris - the streets and the quais and the cafes. It was a kind of built-in thing. I was psyched and ready for it. I had no fear. I was ready to go.51 The programme notes from the Hollywood premiere held at the Egyptian Theatre on 9 November 1951 suggest that Ames's personal experience inflected many aspects of the film's design, noting for example that 'Ames had been a Beaux Arts student in Paris himself, from 1927 to 1932, living in a Latin Quarter room closely suggestive of the one occupied by Kelly in the story'. 52 The process of designing the sets on An American in Paris followed the norms for studio-based films of the era. Ames and Minnelli first collaborated on the layout, putting their ideas down in sketch form, and mapping the spaces of the film as completely as possible. At art department meetings, the practical requirements were established in the light of the script, and all the master sets made up into scale models. Working drawings were then drafted to establish the dimensions, elevations and materials for a given set, and Ames used these for the basis of the estimated budget for the film. The final detailed drawings were authorised by the production office, in this case by Cedric Gibbons and Walter Strohm, and finally put into production at the 'Mill', a vast complex of workshops on the M G M site filled with some 3,200 artisans and skilled labourers. Each department - carpentry, plastering, painting, electrical - was required to create its particular element of the set to a specific deadline and within the restrictions of the allocated budget. Perhaps surprisingly given its scale, the design costs on An American in Paris - a total of £142,606 - were significantly less than for other M G M films of comparable ambition and design complexity. The Wizard of Oz> for example, used thirty sets at a cost of

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$187,879; Meet Me in St Louis had forty-one sets at a cost of $210,488; Ziegfeld Follies, forty-eight sets at $350,098; and Show Boat, thirty-one sets at $156,030. Furthermore, the M G M art department records confirm the overall efficiency of the film in relative and comparative terms: it was one of the biggest projects of the era in terms of picture footage (161,036, surpassed only marginally by Show Boat at 162,424), but the cost per square foot of production was among the lowest - a modest $0.72 per square foot, less than major films like On the Town and Singin' in the Rain, and substantially less than minor films of the era such as The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and Watch the Birdie (1950). Many of Minnelli's other films - including The Pirate, Brigadoon, The Band Wagon actually cost more to produce in relative terms than the seemingly extravagant An American in Paris, while offering much less in financial returns. The centrepiece of the decor was Jerry Mulligan's Left Bank street, variously imagined in scripts and reviews as the Rue St Severin or Rue de la Huchette in Paris, but identified in the film as the fictional Rue Chambord. This was an elaborate integrated set very much on the European model pioneered in France in the 1930s by Lazare Meerson; the kind of large-scale set admired by Minnelli in La Kermesse heroique (1935) and the French poetic realist films of the late 1930s. 53 Meerson's influential philosophy of set design, later adopted by his assistant Alexandre Trauner in his work with Marcel Carne (Le Quai des brumes [Port of Shadows, 1938], Le Jour se leve [Daybreak, 1939], Les Enfants du paradis [Children of Paradise, 1945]), was that decor was more than mere background to dramatic action; rather it was a crucial performative element of the film with a privileged relationship to the narrative. Minnelli and Ames's conception of the Paris decor can be understood as taking its cue from designer Leon Barsacq's assessment that: a film set, in order to be a good set, must act. Whether realistic or expressionist, modern or ancient, it must play its part. The set must

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present the character before he has even appeared. It must indicate his social position, his tastes, his habits, his life style, his personality. The sets must be intimately linked with the action.54 This abstract strategy, in which the set is a manifestation and extension of the principal character's subjectivity, is clearly in evidence at the beginning of An American in Paris. The film opens by asserting the primary realism of the city via a series of highangle shots of Right Bank landmarks, only to move us swiftly and definitively into a visibly constructed Left Bank set. The sites we see are all located in the area identified by historian Harvey Levenstein as a two-square-mile 'well-demarcated American tourist zone on the Right Bank of the Seine'; 55 an area of Paris replete with monuments, wide boulevards, luxurious hotels and department stores. This area, extending north of the river, was historically the hub for American tourists in Paris; the place where wealthy non-French speakers would seek out accommodation and the company of fellow

'This Is Paris'

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travellers, but would experience little in the way of meaningful contact with native Parisians. It would have been an area entirely familiar to a man of George Gershwin's standing in the 1920s; but it is too aspirational and impersonal a location to house a modest expat GI, and Jerry will only 'revisit' it when he is invited into Milo's suite at the Ritz Hotel. The omniscient perspective in the travelogue sequence reinforces Jerry's separation from the reality and tangibility of the geographical, historical city. Like us, he is awestruck by the vision we are complicit in his desire to 'just look at it!' - and as a character, he is dwarfed by the enormity of it. It is only with the dissolve into the street set at the end of the sequence that the texture and scale of the city begin to cohere with Jerry's guiding voice. The striking transition from real to artificial signals Paris's reconfiguration as a place of artistic creativity and imaginative potential specific to the experience, talent and desires of Jerry Mulligan. It is a city re-ordered as pure visual quotation, a dramatic space that corresponds primarily and entirely to the main character's conception of the world. We know and accept that it will only ever be as durable as the character it envelops. In the era of On the Town, the deliberate artifice is striking: the street set is a monumental presence, an attention-grabbing spectacle rather than subordinate background element. The excess of style initially jars, but quickly reassures: it is not 'real', but 'poetically realist', with the iconography and architecture signifying authenticity, while the embellishment and accentuation convey the lyricism of the popular Paris of cinematic lore. Indeed, the opening recreates precisely the shift from location to set in two emblematic Parisian-set films of the 1930s: in Rene Clair's Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris, 1930) a mobile view of the smoking chimney stacks of the Epinay district shifts seamlessly into a travelling shot that descends into the Epinay studio courtyard where the narrative action will unfold. Again, in Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight (1932), a Parisian district comes gradually to life, as the syncopated activities

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of the community ease us from location to set. The use of this trope in An American in Paris embeds us in a world which privileges cinematic storytelling above realism. This expansive set - where we stay for seventeen minutes and to which we return regularly in the course of the film - is the film's holding space, a place of safety for the protagonist somewhere between the 'real Paris' of the opening travelogue and the extravagant painted Paris of the ballet finale. The potential 'intoxication' of the opening - the sense of wonder inspired by the city laid out before our eyes - and which will be reasserted at the conclusion across the numerous 'sites' of the ballet, is temporarily held at bay by the artifice of the source set. Paris, for all the immensity of the set, is repackaged on an individual scale: our focus is redirected from the dazzle of the city laid out as a whole, to the more intimate experience of what it feels like to be an ordinary American in Paris. The Rue Chambord in the 'old quarter'

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This establishing and key narrative set was constructed on Lot 2, at the intersection of areas known as Waterfront Street, Church Street and Church Alley, looking down towards Brownstone Street. The norm with such set-ups, would be to use a single small street or a backing on a studio lot and tie it in with a set on an indoor stage, so the scale and integrated quality of this 'set-complex' is unusual. As cinematographer Alfred Gilks describes Directly across from the wide entrance of the cafe, a street extended straight away for a block to another cross-street, parallel to our foreground street, which extended a full block for the cafe on one side and half a block on the other.56 More substantial than a series of decorative backdrops and dance platforms, the spatial layout of the set suggests an interconnected world. Continuous dramatic and dance action play out uninterrupted within the visual field, while secondary action in the furthest plane gives a sense that this takes place in a an authentically inhabited world. For Jerry Mulligan, the set sees Paris styled as penetrable, coherent and legible: a place where he can move and circulate with authority and confidence. As Gilks stresses The authenticity and visual impact of the cafe interior in the beginning of the picture are due to the fact that the photography was planned to encompass the action, comparable to several scenes or takes, into one continuous take. Cuts were avoided wherever possible; also the very natural action in the street in the background, such as people passing by, traffic moving in the streets, et cetera, added to the authenticity we were aiming for. This all had to be planned from the camera point of view in order that the full scope of both scene and action could be captured with a naturalness that frequent cuts cannot make possible.57 The street set was the most expensive in the film, budgeted at $12,000 but coming in under budget at $11,000. There was an acute

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The integrated street set

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attention to small detail within the set dressing: from the type, colour and combinations of the vegetables on the stalls in the street, and wine barrels in the yard behind the Cafe Huguette; to the imported champagne glasses, the ventilation grills and a fountain where dogs could drink. Given the scale of the project, it is notable how little reliance there was on special effects to enhance the Parisian decor. The film is bookended with two key interventions in the form of Newcombe shots, a technique pioneered by Warren Newcombe at M G M , in which additional space is suggested by using camera set-ups that match matte-painted glass to the sets. The first of these is seen when Kelly is glimpsed from the street sitting at his bedroom window: in fact, the set did not extend that high in reality. The second is on the Montmartre stairway in the film's closing moments. The device used to create the effects was developed at M G M by a matte painter called Dupy, who also won an Academy Life in the 'old quarter'

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Award that year for his ' D u p y Duplicator'. As Preston A m e s explained The details of this operation are quite complicated, but be satisfied in knowing that the Dupy Duplicator allowed us to finish the picture as we had planned, using our one staircase from Kismet and a six- by five-foot painting of Paris. On the screen, Kelly and Caron run up three flights of stairs and embrace in front of a landscape that is a 180-degree view of Paris by night. This whole operation - the running up the steps, bringing the film back into the studio, and rephotographing it in front of the painting of Paris - I imagine took three or four weeks. 58 Although the budget for these t w o shots w a s greatly exceeded (the estimate w a s $ 5 , 0 3 5 and the final costs were $ 1 1 , 4 3 5 ) , this w a s a relatively modest expense in relation to the overall expenditure o n sets. After the street set, the major costs w e n t o n the quayside Jerry appears at his window

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($9,972), the theatre ($9,223) and the Beaux Arts dance hall ($8,614). Ames's skill was such that he only exceeded the budget by 2.5 per cent (the budget was $79,000 for the book against final costs of $81,000). But these costs were dwarfed by the costs of the ballet decors, huge painted canvases that were both massive in scale, and intricate in their replication of small detail. The ballet decors finally cost $49,000, some 30 per cent over budget, with the Place de la Concorde decor the most expensive single set on the production at $26,000. As a provision for only seventeen minutes of a 113-minute film, this was quite unprecedented. Indeed, at close to half a million dollars, the final costs of the ballet alone were equivalent to a modest feature film in the era. The ballet decor was essentially a series of painted canvases, whose design and execution were overseen by George Gibson, the head of scenic art at the studio. M G M had some of the finest and largest paint frames among the studios, with an innovative multilevel The Kismet stairs become Montmartre

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feature that allowed the production of immense canvases. Gibson, an experienced art specialist, described An American in Paris as 'the one that tested all of us and put us in the crucible', 59 as regards scale, but also for reasons of directorial vision. Minnelli had a reputation as a perfectionist, and was notoriously impatient with those sent to work with him, throwing out whole sets rather than compromise his vision.

An American's Paris The Paris designed for An American in Paris is a carefully crafted space, one predicated on prior recognition - both ours as spectators and Jerry Mulligan's as the francophile apprentice artist. It is deliberately shaped to be the place we recognise from the postcards, whether or not we have ever visited: a city where artists display their work in the shade of Sacre Coeur; where lovers walk by the Seine, where chic women shop for perfume and where statuesque showgirls dazzle in elegant nightclubs. Like Jerry Mulligan, we are required to be dazzled, but not alienated or challenged by what we see: history, geography and architecture are thus knowingly and comfortingly collapsed into visual quotation. This Paris, then, is a place that is reordered by an attention to style, a city perpetually in a state of artistic potential; it is above all a mobile and multilayered canvas. Held in tension between architectural and decorative authenticity and abstract idea, this Paris is knowable and legible precisely as a cliche, and our sympathetic collusion in its visual coding is key to its success. By the late 1940s, if American cinema had become beholden to a cliched idea of Paris, it was in part taking its cue from the firsthand accounts of its foreign correspondents, student GIs and excited young travellers. An American in Paris taps wholly into these contemporary perceptions of Paris: it comforts, reassures and persuades audiences at home of the beauty, culture and charm of the city, and of the welcome place of America and Americans in it. By the same token, it appeals to French sensitivities by deflecting the focus from any overtly political frame of reference, leaving only an affirmation of the compatibility and complicity of France and America. Contemporary

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politics are a vague undercurrent in the figure and presence of the exGI in the city, but his function is to be as passionate an advocate for Paris and its traditions as any French resident. Importantly, Jerry Mulligan is an informed admirer, someone who understands the French language, customs and artistic heritage, but poses no threat to them: he is a mediocre artist, an enthusiastic amateur basking in the light of a 'superior' European civilisation. He is, however, an excellent dancer whose Charlie Chaplin impersonation, like his 'cowboy' and 'Hopalong Cassidy' in the 'I Got Rhythm' number is enthusiastically welcomed by the locals as evidence of the pleasures American culture can offer France. The cross-cultural love affair between Jerry and Lise will bridge national differences, and facilitate 'rapprochement'; but most importantly, the love affair will remain in Paris: Lise will ultimately not leave for America with a Frenchman, but will stay in Paris with a Francophile American. For all its surface simplicities then, An American in Paris is an outward-looking film, whose vision of Paris seems to offer a model of consensus around some of the deep tensions of the era.

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4 Camaraderie, Community and Romance A community of buddies and rivals The film opens to the sound of a Gershwin medley and a set of credittitle cards with a tricolour fleur-de-lis motif visible in the top lefthand corner. As the name Vincente Minnelli fades from the screen, Paris appears before us in all its landmark glory. The first thing we see is a marble statue of the God Mercury astride his winged horse Pegasus. As the camera pans left, we recognise this as the Place de la Concorde and the statue as one of the famed Marly horses that decorate this ornate Parisian square. Without preamble, we find ourselves in a deeply symbolic place at the very core of modern French history and diplomatic relations with the world: a square where kings, queens and revolutionary leaders were executed; where the Nazi command made its headquarters during the occupation; where American GIs marched in full battledress when the city was liberated in August 1944; and in 1951, the home of the US embassy and Marshall Plan administrators in France. A travelogue-style montage, in which one view dissolves dizzyingly into the next, opens the city up to our eyes. First we see the Obelisk, Paris's most ancient and strange monument, a structure that once marked the entrance to the Temple at Luxor. Beyond, we glimpse the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, then one of the Place de la Concorde's baroque fountains; in the background is the Rue Royale leading to the Church of the Madeleine. We are tourists, scanning the surface for familiar sites, but our eye moves on without a chance to linger, one vision blending into the next before the first has been entirely erased. The attractions unspool before us: the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens, the Gamier Opera, the Alexandre III Bridge, the Arc de Triomphe, the Pont Neuf, the He de la Cite. There is no sign of modernity - no Eiffel Tower or outlying quarters - and no hint of

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wartime damage or 1950s urban neglect: just the reassurance of Paris as timeless, historic and perennially elegant with its solid, monumental, familiar landmarks. This is a Paris we recognise, and which is somehow as we have always known it to be. Order is brought to bear on this intoxicating spectacle in the chummy voice of Gene Kelly, who announces himself as our resident guide and mediator: This is Paris, and I'm an American who lives here. My name's Jerry Mulligan, and I'm an ex-GI. In 1945 when the army told me to find my own job, I stayed on. And I'll tell you why: I'm a painter. All my life that's all I've ever wanted to do. And for a painter, the Mecca of the world for study, for inspiration and Monumental Paris

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for living, is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it. No wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother if you can't paint in Paris, you better give up and marry the boss's daughter. Kelly's monologue, spoken over the images, gently enables a shift from the exotic reality of the famed city to the fairy-tale world of his 'Paris'. This is a city that he controls - 'We're on the Left Bank now. That's where I'm billeted. Here's my street' he declares - and the camera seems to respond, stabilising and giving us time to take in the view. As Kelly, the star, and 'this star called Paris' merge, so the texture of what we see is transformed: the primary realism of the location footage gives way to the artifice of a clearly constructed film set. The known place cedes to a more magical cinematic spacer the space of the fairy-tale MGM musical that has Gene Kelly at the heart of it. He continues: The past couple of years I've gotten to know practically everyone on the block, and a nicer bunch you'll never meet. Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here, but it sounds better in French. I live upstairs. No, no, no, not there .... One flight up. Voila! As Jerry continues to speak, the camera leaves the street and begins to tilt up the facade of the building. Where the horizontal axis revealed a busy street full of people in motion - a news vendor, a street sweeper, a florist, a priest on a bicycle - the vertical axis gives us a glimpse of the lives of its residents, such as a pair of lovers embracing in a first-floor room. With the set now animated on multiple planes, it has the necessary substance, depth and atmosphere for Jerry finally to be seen. With the word 'Voila!' he is revealed sleeping peacefully in his art-filled garret. Jerry rises from his bed in a charming and meticulously choreographed scene that indicates the simplicity of his life in Paris. As he gets up and prepares his breakfast, he moves around the tiny attic room like a dancer, gracefully shifting furniture around with

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seemingly casual, everyday gestures, his movements rhythmic and precise in this ultra-confined space. His goofy interplay with the local children Etienne, Maurice and Jacques ( T m their man because I give them American bubble gum') further stresses his status as a modern American hero: a 'regular guy', blessed with confidence, friends and time on his hands. As Jerry reflects on the many 'very good friends' he has in Paris, another voice takes over: that of Adam Cook, who is similarly tracked through an upper-floor open window - 'No, that's not me he's too happy' - before being revealed sitting at his piano in the attic room nextdoor to Jerry's. He tinkles a few bars of Gershwin on the piano, and offers a more laconic perspective on the pleasures of the city for an ex-pat American: he likes Paris because it's a place 'where you don't run into old friends ... although that's never been one of my problems'. As he muses that he did, in fact, once have a friend in the city, the voice of that friend, Henri Baurel picks up the thread: Voila! Jerry Mulligan

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we see the street and all its activities from this new point of view as Henri walks towards the Cafe Huguette greeting all the neighbourhood residents in his 'old quarter'. We see a man admire himself in a street mirror - 'No, that's not me, I'm not that young' and his face is then replaced with that of Henri. The succession of voiceovers offers a verbal equivalent of the traditional 'passed along song' of the musical, establishing each character's relevance to the world they inhabit, and to each other, and showcasing briefly the skills and talents with which they are associated in the story. Jerry is an artist who moves balletically, Adam is a sedentary musician and Henri is an expansive showman: on arrival at the cafe he throws his arms wide and sings a verse of 'Nice Work if You Can Get It' to alert Adam to his presence below. The individual men are efficiently linked as a threesome, a standard lineup of the musical genre. Their parallels and affinities are established in both form and content: each is heard before being seen, and in A local American hero

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Introducing Adam; introducing Henri

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each case our first view of them is delayed by a brief shot of a figure with a quality absent from their own characterisation: romance in Jerry's case, happiness in Adam's, youth in Henri's. The direct address, structural repetition and similarities in presentation draw us fully and quickly into their world: we are solicited by their voices, allowed entry to their intimate world by an inquisitive camera, made to feel slightly embarrassed when we misidentify them, and are amused by their wit, charm and talent when we get it right. But principally we are reassured: the sequence establishes the camaraderie of the male trio, and affirms them as manifestations of a Gershwinian imagination: the Paris they inhabit is an energetic, dynamic and interconnected place, organised to the sounds, rhythms and joy of George Gershwin's music. This, then, is Paris styled as a refuge for male artists, a village boasting a close community of neighbours, easily navigable, and a place where creative expression is the fabric of everyday life. For the Americans, it is also a place far removed from the responsibilities and obligations of home: somewhere to be temporarily 'billeted' so one can escape marrying the 'boss's daughter'; a Paris where you can know everyone on the 'block', and where an American is safe from judgment and criticism. As Adam tells us 'one time I ran out of fellowships and had to go to work for a living. I had to stop because I discovered I was liking it and I didn't want to become a slave to the habit'. Both Jerry and Adam are like adolescents on an extended holiday in the city; destined for employment, marriage and stability back home, they prefer to take their chances in a European playground. This immaturity is highlighted in the film's first ensemble number 'By Strauss', which takes place in the Cafe Huguette. As Jerry heads out to sell his paintings at Montmartre, he stops by the cafe to borrow some money from Adam, and makes the acquaintance of Henri. Beginning in conversational style, Henri, as the arbiter of European taste, disparages the jazz music favoured by Adam, and insists instead on the pleasures of 'old Vienna'. Jerry and Adam, mock-outraged, defend their modern American music, but make a

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great show of their comparative cultural 'youth', goofing around, aping the formality of 'old European' regimented behaviours and calling out random words in German. Their boisterousness comically defuses any lingering menace that the German language might still contain for French and Americans in these post-war years, normalising it as a routine element of a comic exchange. They are persuaded in the course of the song of the virtues and fun of Henri's style - 'How can I be civil when hearing this drivel?' declares Henri; 'Ja, ja, ja: give us oom pah pah' the two Americans respond - and the consensus spreads to other members of the cafe community, who are brought into the dance as players and spectators. Henri mimes playing the violin while Jerry grabs a red gingham tablecloth, and dons it like a woman's headscarf. With a wiggle of his behind, he becomes a female dancer, whom Henri leads round the cafe tables in a twirling Viennese waltz. The elderly florist and Mathilde, the cafe patronne, watch and laugh at the antics, until Henri suddenly pulls the latter, a stout, graceless figure, into an inelegant dance with him. Georges, the cafe owner is comically set up as 'the Emperor', while the male and female participants bow low in mock homage. At this, Kelly's eye is taken by the poise of the florist whom he gently solicits as his partner. Harmony and grace are introduced into the number as the two dance for the pleasure of the gathered audience, moving out of the cafe and into the street outside. Kelly then redeems the cafe patronne from her initial parody, by inviting her to join them, taking the role of gallant cavalier to the two older women who dance with unbridled joy. The number culminates in a final pose, that unites Adam, Henri, Georges and the two women. As they all raise their arms in triumph, the audience in the street applaud enthusiastically. The number gives each male character an opportunity to display his particular talent - Henri leads the singing, Adam plays the piano and Jerry leads the dance - the talent that will define them as the film develops. But here, the farcical tone, the dressing up, the larking about and the showing off to a delighted audience of elderly

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residents and local children, simply reinforces the sense of a world from which adult responsibility is absent. Through music, words and dance, the possibilities of harmony between nationalities, cultures, generations and musical styles have been asserted. Towards the end of the film, a parallel number takes place with the same principal cast and in the same location. The number, "S Wonderful', is structurally similar, and uses the same technique of integrating foreign-language exclamations ('formidable!', 'exceptionel!') into the song. It develops from the conversation of the three men round the table as Henri gives Jerry advice about how to get his girl, with the comedy stemming this time from Adam's manic behaviour as he processes the revelation that his two friends are in 'By Strauss'

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love with the same woman. Henri and Jerry shake hands and walk in synchronised steps through the cafe to the street. As before, the cafe crowd beams as the dance unfolds: Jerry is back in his element - a simple life without complications or worries - the life that Paris represents to him. Although they are costumed as opposites (Henri formal in his suit and tie, Jerry casual in his white slacks, sweater and baseball cap), they are parallel figures whose engagement in the dance is complementary: Henri, in keeping with his European reserve, dances with little more than a buoyant stroll, then stands back to sing and whistle as Jerry improvises with decorative flourishes. The dance ends with them reaffirming their friendship through a second handshake, after which a soaring crane shot "S Wonderful'

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expresses the plenitude and scale of their shared joy. It is a hugely affirmative number, stressing the camaraderie which is necessary for the film's romantic denouement to make sense. As with 'By Strauss', the raised arms, the attendant audience and the sheer command of space, point forward to the ballet's euphoric conclusion on the Place de la Concorde. And in each case, as in the finale, Jerry is positioned literally and figuratively at the heart of the Parisian community.

Lise and Milo: women outside the community The film's opening section contains one other musical number, which introduces the character of Lise, and situates her as a presence in the minds o f - but at a spatial remove - from the male characters. The opening credits have already proposed Leslie Caron as the female lead, placing her name (preceded by the words 'and introducing') second in the title sequence immediately after Kelly's. We are primed to accept her as Kelly's leading lady; however, the plot aligns her with Henri Baurel, her fiance, whose first task is to describe her to Adam. Where the three males are established as vocal and active, and are invested with subjectivity and character autonomy, Lise is initially featured as a silent and solitary figure, contained by male commentary and perspective. She is visualised through a mirror, initially reinforcing her association with Henri, who was also first seen in the street mirror. But this regular Minnelli motif is significant in that it complicates her initial romantic allegiance: the gilt-edged frame of the mirror also resembles the frame on a painting (like the one we see immediately above Jerry Mulligan's bed in our first full shot of him). But removed from the diegetic world of the Parisian cafe, Lise for now, exists only in the realm of the male imagination: as a vision, an idea, a beautiful image and a potential work of art. This implied superficiality is rendered in her incarnation as an embodiment of descriptive terms expressed in dance. She appears, as if conjured up by the words of Henri, in a series of decors, each conceived in a specific period style: baroque, Victorian, Louis XVI, modern, Jacobean and Biedermeier. In each, Lise wears an outfit and

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'Embraceable You'

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adopts a dance style consistent with the trigger description: enchanting, exciting, sweet and shy, vivacious and modern, bookish and gay. The music, Gershwin's 'Embraceable You', plays over all the scenes and provides structural unity, varying in tone and tempo according to the mood evoked. It is slow and languorous in the mauve-and-pink Victorian-sexy scene, but jazzy and uptempo in the red-and-white modern-Charleston scene. The underlying point is that Lise - and by extension every woman - is unfathomable to the male mind: the more they try to reduce her to a single, simple definition, the more each new version of her complicates their previous understandings. Yet her gamine character shines through as she smiles, winks and waves at the camera, actively playing to her audience. The final shot brings five of her 'personalities' together in a five-part screen pattern: her complexity is stressed, as is her skill and versatility as a dancer. Her energy, childlike glee and her cheeky wave to camera before she takes a bow set her up as an ideal foil for Lise takes a bow

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the worldly, genial Kelly, and affirm her appropriateness as his putative dance partner. The scene establishes Caron as young and playful, while - as with her male counterparts - her maturity will surface later in the film. Her compatibility with Kelly is deferred by the narrative: they will not meet till much later in the film, by which time Jerry will have been ensnared by Milo, the film's only unambiguous 'adult' figure, whose advances he learns to tolerate, but does not welcome. When Lise and Jerry finally meet in the Cafe Flodair, some thirty minutes into the film, we are primed for a dance encounter that will underline their compatibility, if not yet the possibility of their romantic love. However, Jerry comes across as a tiresome, overbearing character: his chat-up lines are brash and his banter forceful rather than engaging. He employs deception to obtain Lise's phone number in spite of her annoyance and embarrasses Milo by ignoring her in front of her friends. He uses subterfuge to compel Lise to dance with him, but all pleasure is denied as the two execute an awkward social dance on a crowded dance floor. Our desire for a display of their union is thwarted, and postponed until a later point in the film, when Jerry is a degree more chastened, and more genuinely charming in his courtship of this young, unworldly Frenchwoman. Only at that point will the harmony of their love be apparent, and be able to be expressed in dance and song. Milo is introduced in the next scene, on a Montmartre street where Jerry displays his paintings. Just as Lise's compatibility has been stressed, so Milo's incompatibility is highlighted in her construction as 'opposite' to Lise in all ways: she is tall, accessorised, aloof - and American. Milo is first seen outside an art shop looking at a painting of Degas ballerinas: like Lise, she is associated with the dance, but merely with the artistic and monetised image of dance rather than creative expression. Her subsequent appearance in her Ritz Hotel suite echoes the presentation of Lise in the ornate environments of the mirror scene but, unlike Lise, Milo remains definitively of the 'real' Parisian world: her wealth is on display in her

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limousine and personal chauffeur, her elite residence and her tailored 'New Look' suit. She takes control of the transaction when she purchases two of Jerry's paintings, and impresses him with her social capital. Her single-minded confidence matches Jerry's: where he is rebuffed by Lise when he persists in his unwelcome attentions, Milo brushes off his 'you must be outta your mink-lined head' with a laugh and an appeal to adult reason: 'I'm not trying to rob you of your precious male initiative'. Milo's function in the film is to provide Jerry with the temptations of success. She uses her wealth to court him, promote him and be with him, but the threat she poses is that of compromise. Like his friends in the cafe, we can see that Jerry is too mediocre a painter ever to succeed on his own terms: when the film opens he has never actually sold a painting before, because to have done so would mean entry into an adult world of commerce and competition. With Milo's attentions, however, Jerry risks exposure: both his gendered Milo, art collector

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identity and his artistic talent are threatened by her autonomy, and his relationship with her is thus characterised by an undercurrent of cynicism, tension and inauthenticity.

Jerry and Lise: romance outside the community Jerry and Lise are paired by their shared physicality and dance expertise, but they are opposites in almost every other way. Where Jerry lives in a sparse, cramped attic room, Lise is seen dining in Henri's spacious, sumptuous apartment; Jerry sells his artworks on a Montmartre street corner, while Lise attends to rich customers in an upmarket perfume shop near the Opera. Linguistically, she seems insecure in her command of English, and is at a disadvantage when it comes to his brash confidence: 'With a binding like you've got, people are gonna want to know what's in the book' he declares. 'Honey, I'm no enemy' he retorts when she shyly confesses she has only been out with friends before. 'Making fun with me' she pouts, leading him to conclude that he doesn't know whether she's 'a girl of mystery or just a still water that doesn't run deep'. The single most compelling difference between them, however, is their nationality: his bubble-gum-dispensing American wise-guy persona sits awkwardly with her subdued bourgeois Frenchness. He, of course, as a GI, represents the active liberation of her country; she, on the other hand, is the passive victim of war and occupation. Jerry has come from America to France to seek fame in the art world; Lise is to leave France for America to be the wife of a touring stage star. But their place in the world is remarkably similar and is what draws them increasingly together: while Jerry is in thrall to Milo for the opportunities she can offer his career, Lise lives under a sense of obligation to her kind benefactor. In the course of the film, both must break away from their protectors and establish their independence in order to finally come together as mature lovers. Jerry aggressively pursues Lise until she agrees to meet him at night at a cafe near the river. The Quai de la Tournelle, in the shadow of an illuminated Notre Dame Cathedral and the Pont de

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L'Archeveche becomes the site of a number of illicit meetings, in which the pair grow closer and finally declare their mutual love. The set where their meetings take place is unusually spare in the context of the rest of the film's spaces and lacks the elaborate detail found elsewhere in the film. It offers a high degree of pictorial realism, but also the simplicity and spaciousness of a dance platform, to which the illuminated Notre Dame Cathedral lends a gothic atmosphere consistent with the secretive, transgressive nature of their tryst. This meeting provides the evidence we have been waiting for of the couple's fundamental compatibility, in the form of a subdued, almost melancholic ballet duet. The scene begins with the two coming down some steps onto the quayside, where they are far away from prying eyes. They shyly take hands, and Jerry offers Lise some candy. As they begin to relax with each other, Jerry amuses Lise with stories about how Americans live, while she listens rapt and flattered by the compliments he pays her. She distractedly begins to hum the tune to 'Our Love Is Here to Stay', the song Jerry sang to her when she danced with him under duress in the Cafe Flodair. Taking his cue from her memory, Jerry picks the song up, and serenades her as she moves across the set. The song declares what is now certain: the inevitability and permanence of their love: It's very clear, our love is here to stay Not for a year, but ever and a day The radio, and the telephone and the movies that we know May just be passing fancies, and in time may go. But oh my dear, our love is here to stay. In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, They're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay. As the verse ends, he leads her into the dance. At first tentative and shy, she seems to try to escape his hold, but is drawn back in by him. Increasingly her mirroring of Kelly becomes more assured as she grows comfortable with him: she holds him in return, taking his hand

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'Our Love Is Here to Stay'

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and laying her head on his shoulder in gentle intimacy. The dance is low and slow, and is rendered in very subtle pans and tracking shots: there are no leaps or expansive moves on the part of either the dancers or the camera, but rather a sustained closeness in which the bodies of the two remain central, as if magnetised by their proximity to each other. Dressed in white, with a little black waistcoat and bowtie adding definition to the outline, Lise is the light at the heart of the composition: our eye is instinctively drawn to her in the darkness of the scene, echoing the hypnotic pull she exerts over Jerry. Light falls on the dress, emphasising the shapes made by her arms and legs, while Jerry, in dark clothes, seems to retreat into the darkness. Their suitability for each other is no longer in doubt: the indefatigable clown has been calmed, and the shy girl roused. As they willingly embrace, they are a single element in the frame, perfectly shaped and united as they walk away from the camera and into the shadows, oblivious to everything but each other. Their relationship thereafter is glimpsed in three fragments all centred on the Cafe Bel Ami/quayside site. The first scene is of Jerry painting Lise's portrait as she holds a red flower; the second sees them take a taxi from the Bel Ami to the Cafe Huguette, from which Lise flees when she recognises it as one of Henri's regular haunts; and the third is on the quayside when Lise confesses that she is to be married to Henri and the relationship comes to an abrupt end. The piecemeal nature of the narrative is frustrating for the viewer, who is not shown the development of the relationship. But this is consistent with the underlying reality of their situation: that neither is being honest with the other, and that neither is free to be with the other for more than a stolen moment. It also underlines their narrative exclusion from the community structures equated with pleasure and transparency elsewhere in the film.

The Beaux Arts Ball: fractured community The five lead characters are brought together for the first and only time in the film's final dramatic set piece: the black-and-white Beaux

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Arts Ball. Devastated by the news that Lise is to marry Henri, Jerry seeks out Milo, and cynically determines to blot out his loss with a night of debauchery: 'it's jet-propelled New Year's Eve' he promises 'and everybody in Paris will be there'. Milo's relief at this sudden shift in his affections only further underlines just how real her feelings are in comparison to his; her vulnerability is obvious, as a clearly self-interested Jerry finally seems to invite her to be part of his world. But the dishonesty that motivates him is reflected in the mood of deception and instability that prevails over the whole sequence. The dance-hall setting, for example, seems to anticipate a musical interlude, but there is no song or dance initiative on the part of the principals. Such social dancing as there is seems forced and reluctant, and the promised extravaganza materialises as little more than chaotic crowd movement. The costumes seem to promise fun and a shift into the fantastic, but in fact, everyone remains very much in character: Henri is formal and tailored, almost regal in his cape, turban, pearl buttons and elaborate belt, while Jerry is disguised as the harlequin, an outward jester whose costume masks inner sadness. Adam's costume - a white cowboy outfit complete with Stetson reinforces his American identity, while similarly suggesting a gaiety that is at odds with his morose character. Milo and Lise are both in white dresses: Milo's is short, sexy and chic, adorned with luxurious fur, while Lise's satin and tulle ballerina robe is girlish and bridal, as befits the sudden announcement by Henri that they are to be married the next day. The sequence is structurally and tonally out of kilter with the concluding conventions of the musical: where consensus and reconciliation would be the norm, the book of An American in Paris ends with the separation and increased isolation of the main characters. The dramatic revelations come fast at this dance where no one is inclined to dance: Adam lets Milo know that she is setting Jerry up for a fall with his exhibition, confronting her with the implications of her own blind self-interest. Jerry lets himself be

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Enforced gaiety at the Beaux Arts Ball

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introduced to Lise by Henri, and acknowledges the news of their impending marriage as 'very romantic'; but he immediately confesses to Milo that he is a 'fake' in the midst of all the frivolity. Milo has no option but to retreat back behind her armour of sophisticated restraint: 'I think I need some champagne', she whispers, and leaves before her dignity can be subject to further assault. Lise seeks Jerry out to say a final goodbye, and they embrace one final time, but the farewell is definitive, and the dialogue raw and deeply sorrowful. Hidden behind a pillar, Henri overhears the couple's declarations of regret, and realises how far he has been deceived by his fiancee and his friend. The body of the film thus ends with a painful transparency that leaves no one untouched, and unsettles the generic stability for which it seemed destined. The failed desires and casual deceits of the four romantically linked characters have been brutally exposed, while Adam's carefree complicity is recast as wilful cruelty. It is a particularly downbeat conclusion within the conventions of the musical, with each character suffering a seemingly definitive setback, and no further dramatic opportunities available to them in which to redeem the situation.

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5 The Ballet Paris as dance stage Without the ballet finale, An American in Paris may have remained just another routine MGM musical, but the inclusion of a seventeenminute pure dance sequence just at the point when the dramatic narrative resolution would be expected made it different. As the book of the film draws to a conclusion in an atmosphere of loss and despondency, the locus of the action shifts from the diegetic Paris in which Jerry and Lise have been brought together and forced apart, to Paris as an abstract projection of Jerry's emotional state, in which the only possible dramatic action is dance. As Jerry looks out over the nocturnal city, and contemplates his life without Lise, he realises that Paris for him has been irrevocably changed: he came here to nourish his creativity in a space free of adult obligations, but Paris has only confirmed his destiny in the form of romantic love. 'Paris has ways of making people forget' suggests Lise, as they stand on a Montmartre balcony during their aching farewell at the Beaux Arts Ball; but the realisation is too much for Jerry: Paris? No. Not this city. It's too real and too beautiful to ever let you forget anything. It reaches in and opens you wide and you stay that way. I came to Paris to study and to paint because Utrillo did and Lautrec did and Rouault did and I loved what they created and hoped something would happen to me too. Well it happened alright. Now what have I got left? Paris. Maybe that's enough for some but it isn't for me any more. Because the more beautiful everything is, the more it'll hurt without you. Jerry's rejection of Lise's words of comfort highlight the sudden insufficiency of the city as a barometer of his emotional state. Without Lise, Jerry's Paris is as provisional and fragile as the incomplete

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charcoal sketch of the Arc de Triomphe that he abandons in anger a colourless, textureless place, forever half-finished and halfexperienced. Following their conversation, she joins Henri in a taxi for Le Havre, and leaves Jerry alone on the balcony at the Beaux Arts Ball, where his despair is amplified by the all-encompassing artificiality and inauthenticity of the staged party going on inside. Art and love however, cannot be so easily destroyed. The wind whips up the black and white confetti lying on the balcony, and the two parts of Jerry's torn picture are blown back together. Pensive, he looks straight to camera, and with a dissolve, finds himself transported into the very drawing he created a few minutes earlier. He is startled to find himself within a vision of the city which he himself has authored, and in which he is no longer a juvenile clown in harlequin outfit, but an adult man in the sober black-and-white garb of the professional dancer. The only colour in the frame is a pinprick of red from a rose on the ground in the middle of the shot, an almost Jerry alone on the balcony at the Moulin de la Galette

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imperceptible reminder of the flower held by Lise in her unfinished portrait. As Jerry bends to pick it up, the backdrop is flooded with vivid colour, splashes of blue and red appear, synchronised to the beats of the music. The image thus springs to life, reordering Paris as a psychic space; an immersive, limitless artistic canvas that corresponds to Jerry's emotions and worldview, in which the desires and obstacles of the narrative will be relived and resolved. Jerry moves off to the right to find himself on the Place de la Concorde, that precise space onto which the film originally opened. The layered itinerary of the film is now in the final stages of completion: the real space, held in our mind's eye first by photography and then by decor, has now been fully rendered as art. The square is no longer a pristine tourist landmark, held at arm's reach from the protagonist, but a vast and disordered composition in which he has his place. Unlike the Paris of the main film, it is an excessively cosmopolitan space, filled with exotic figures Jerry inside his own drawing

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clad in shades of red, white and blue. Some of them, like the midinettes and the Spahi in his white turban and blue burnoose actively evoke subjects from nineteenth-century French art. In this busy, noisy, profoundly artistic city, Jerry experiences total physical freedom, and is able to negotiate his way through obstacles: strident red female figures who, like Milo, obscure his search for the fragile waif in white. Jerry briefly catches a glimpse of Lise, smiling at him, and holding the red rose. She dances near the Concorde fountain, and he rushes to join her; but she disappears without warning. The rest of the ballet follows the pattern of this first segment, as aspects of the pair's previous encounters and experiences are reinterpreted in dance. Jerry pursues Lise across a much larger city than the one he has left behind, a city in which the art of Renoir, Utrillo, Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Dufy provides a continuous, ever-merging backdrop. In each space, Lise appears in a different guise: ephemeral and balletic in the Renoir flower market, carefree and playful in the Rousseau park, passionate and sultry on the Dufy fountain. The different moods and character types, and the different dance styles recall and expand the 'Embraceable You' number from the film's opening. For Jerry, she is as enigmatic and elusive as ever, too easily swallowed up by the sprawl and chaos of Paris. As in their stolen moments by the Seine, she never remains in his arms for very long: in the flower market she seems to evaporate, leaving him only the consolation of a bouquet of flowers, with a red rose at its centre. At one point, Jerry is comforted in his loss by the company of four servicemen, 'buddies' from home, avatars of both Adam Cook and Kelly's genial companions from myriad other films. They provide a welcome interlude from the emotional turmoil, accompanying him in an energetic tap routine, that most American of dances. In American male company, Jerry's cockiness and confidence are temporarily reaffirmed, and the film's character trajectories are reset to zero: when he spots Lise dancing with complete ease and joy in the Rousseau scene, we seem to be back

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in the Cafe Flodair. He singles her out from her company, draws attention to himself as he tries to impress with his dance skills. As previously, she resists at first, before letting herself enjoy both the foreign dance and the cheeky flirtation. Jerry in turn adapts what he does to her style, and they begin to mirror each other. As the dance reaches its climax, their respective tap and en pointe steps become increasingly co-ordinated, harmoniously fusing modern American and classic French styles. The scene is festive, celebratory: their differences have been resolved though the dance, and Lise can now accompany Jerry on the rest of his journey. That the obstacles to romance have been overcome is confirmed in the opportunity they have next to lose themselves in a moment of Lise disappears from Jerry's arms; Jerry finds solace in male company; dancing again in the shadow of Notre Dame

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erotic intimacy. Alone on the fountain, the pace slows, the light dims, and the latent sensuality of their Seine quayside duet is finally given full expression. Their seduction is mutual, evoking the deferred lovemaking of their romance. Their bodies are held together in ornate poses, that merge and become one with the sculptures around which they dance. They are finally definitively one with the fabric of the city, organic elements rather than characters, artistic compositions of light, colour and movement. The mood shifts again: now that each has adopted the characteristics of the other, and proved their compatibility, they can begin to enjoy the attractions and pleasures of the city that were denied them in the main body of the film. The 'gay Paree' of the belle epoque is celebrated in tableaux vivants of paintings by Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. Both Lise and Jerry delight in merging with the artistic source, becoming Chocolat and Jane Avril respectively through costume and pose. Their existence as referents of art, music and dance is now complete, their complementarity affirmed by their shared appropriation of the city's cultural heritage. The cafe set-ups of these two scenes again take us back to the earlier film, and the euphoric cancan unites the diegetic population in ways that echo 'By Strauss' and "S Wonderful', this time placing Lise in the position that musical convention demands: centre frame. As they return to the Place de la Concorde, the euphoria that has been established is now translated into a public world, and their union is boisterously celebrated by the ballet ensemble. In spatial terms, the film effectively comes full circle, ending where it began. For a brief moment everything disappears again, and Jerry is once again alone on the empty fountain: echoing his abandonment on the balcony at the Moulin de la Galette. But this is simply a hiatus before confirmation of the romantic fulfilment occurs - as it must - in the 'real world' of the film. Jerry finds himself back on the balcony, where again he holds the red rose associated with Lise. But now that her place in his world, and her ability to share it with him are assured, their love can be openly acknowledged. No further dramatic

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Deferred lovemakine

Dance as sculpture

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS I 93 Immersion into the world of Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec

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elaboration is required: both Jerry and Lise have found their place in the city and the subsequent conclusion where they are reunited on the Montmartre steps is a mere formality. The ballet episode, then, has allowed Paris to shift from being naive and whimsical, to being a space that reflects the new-found maturity of the romantic leads. The final image of the film shows them walking down the steps towards Paris, which is laid out in its majesty before them; a vast cityscape of light poised to envelop and sustain them. Many critics and commentators found the content and design of the ballet remarkable, but suggested that the freestanding and abstract qualities of the segment were out of step with an otherwise structurally coherent film. In his Foreword to Knox's The Magic Factory, Andrew Sarris questioned the shift in tone that seems to occur when what he describes as the 'chaotic' Beaux Arts Ball cedes to the 'rainbowish American in Paris ballet', when black and white becomes colour and when 'real' gives way to fantasy: 'Despite the conventionally happy ending of romantic reconciliation between Kelly and Caron, the film ends in a somber, downbeat mode that I have never been able to explain or evaluate or even attribute' he suggests. 60 In the same vein, Joseph Andrew Casper has argued that the last quarter of the film is 'uneven and disconcerting', principally because the ballet provides a distraction from, rather than a resolution to, the narrative motor of the film, which he deems to be the question of Jerry's artistic life. While Jerry's emotional investment in French art is clarified and unambiguously reinforced by the vision of Paris that is conjured up once Lise has left him, the narrative logic of the film inexplicably seems to shift: Jerry goes from wanting to be a painter like his heroes, to being just another romantic lead in a musical in pursuit of the ideal woman. For Casper, this section 'throws the entire film out of kilter', and leaves the spectator with a feeling of dissatisfaction. 61 For the majority of critics, however, this bifurcation in style and mood is where the film's authorship is affirmed. The ballet sees the

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film shift gears from the superficial and comic to the emotionally and aesthetically rich, and as such bears Minnelli's signature. As Beth Genne has explained: Visually, the ballet repeats (in a more elaborate form) ideas from Minnelli's previous film dance-drama sequences: the expansive, dreamlike space, the freewheeling mobile boom camera (more active than ever before), and the delineation and dramatization of each section by contrasted colour lighting. The color and lighting effects are subtler, varied and more impressive than in any of the previous Minnelli 'ballets', and they make this film a landmark in color cinema. [...] The sets and costumes of this dance-drama are the embodiment of Minnelli's theories about the expressionistic, personalityrevealing function of decor.62

The creative process In fact, as we have seen, the outline for the ballet was intact from the beginning of Lerner's involvement as screenwriter, even though detailed planning was only worked out once the shooting of the book was concluded. A major influence on the decision to include such a lengthy dance sequence was Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, which Minnelli and Kelly had much admired. The film starred Moira Shearer as a prima ballerina, and featured a sixteen-minute ballet performance as part of the central storyline. Minnelli's film was seen in some quarters as shamelessly imitating The Red Shoes, but the connection between the two was essentially a pragmatic one: the success of the first with American audiences was crucial in persuading MGM studio executives of the commercial viability of the second. However, Minnelli and Kelly's conception for their film differed considerably from the British example: both had fantastical elements, but where the first took place on stage in a theatre, as a logical and integrated episode in a backstage melodrama, An American in Paris had no prior rationale for such a digressive spectacle. And Minnelli's was more lavish and ambitious in content and design: more varied in its range of dance styles, more meticulous

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in its attention to the environment in which the dance takes place, and more daring in placing the dance outside the parameters of the main plot-driven story. It was a gamble, and as Johnny Green recalls 'everybody thought Arthur and we were out of our ever lovin' minds, that you could take a picture of this kind and suddenly, at the end, for seventeen minutes, make a ballet'. 63 In fact, both Minnelli and Kelly had been building up to a project of this kind throughout their careers. Minnelli had already staged ballets many times, both on Broadway (Balanchine's Death in the Afternoon), as well as in some of his previous film work (Yolanda and the Thief'[1945]). Kelly's directorial role in On the Town had seen him include an extended ballet in which he starred. This was their opportunity to collaborate more closely, with a more extensive dance troupe, and the privilege of working from an internationally respected orchestral piece arranged by some of the top musicians in the cinema industry. For a long time, the ballet was no more than a vague idea with very little structure other than that it would take place in parts of Paris painted by the artists admired by Jerry. Minnelli argued that it was important that this not be a new storyline in the film as this would be bewildering for the audience. His conception of the episode was that it would be 'a jumble [...] a kind of delirium' 64 reflective of Jerry's state of mind as he contemplates his loss. The ballet, then was to be an extension of Jerry's emotions about the place in which he finds himself and the way it has made him feel. He is overwhelmed, unstable, confused, but also at times ecstatic; he is in a place he loves totally, but which has been suddenly rendered strange. Bound up with this is a sense of why he came to Paris in the first place - to paint, imitate the masters he so admires - and it is within their mimetic framework that his psychological dislocation is given expression. The complete ballet script approved by Kelly and Minnelli on 6 September 1950 sets out in detail how the ballet should express Jerry's state of mind in both dance content and decorative form:

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In essence the entire ballet is a representation of a painter thinking about Paris - what the city means to him, the effect it has on him and the trials, frustrations, joys and attending miseries that accompany his life in Paris, and his falling in love. The entire ballet should suggest not essentially a fantasy but more a half fantasy, that half real world which makes things even more real. So, in the piece we must try to accomplish choreographically, dramatically, and scenically what the great impressionist painters accomplished in their medium through the use of color and light and forms. [...] The decor of the ballet will be its most distinguishing feature as to uniqueness and originality, for each individual scene will be done in the styles of different painters which we will denote in the synopsis of the libretto. Because the script itself concerns an artist, the ballet visually should reflect an artist's viewpoint and both the scenery and the costumes should be done so that they seem painted.65 The ballet thus takes place in a space imagined as Paris, rather than a mimetic Paris, because Jerry's desire for Lise is inseparable from his experience of being a painter inspired by the city; he sees art everywhere. Lise too is a subject for art: he paints her portrait in secret away from Milo's jealous eyes. The logic of this is a structural feature of the musical genre according to Rick Altman in which 'objects, places, words, tunes, positions - everything becomes coloured with the other person's actions and values'. 66 The ballet was a huge gamble for the studio. It cost more than half a million dollars for only seventeen minutes of screentime, and pushed the overall costs of the production over the $3 million mark; this at a time when $1.5 million was the norm. It required the services of the art director, fifteen designers from the MGM art department, twenty-five painters from the scenic department and thirty sculptors and plasterers throughout a six-week period of preparation. It featured 120 dancers, with costumier Irene Sharaff providing some 300 costumes in total. The sets filled two of the studio's largest soundstages, while a third stage was turned into a vast wardrobe for the costumes.

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Sharaff was part of a new creative team brought on board specifically for the ballet. Like others on the creative crew, she had lived and worked in Paris, moving there from New York's Civic Repertory Theatre when it closed following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. 'Paris' she says 'was like a glorious birthday almost every day [...] The world of the Paris theatre and of the Cirque d'Hiver and Medrano made Broadway and the Civic seem old-fashioned'. 67 While the majority of the costuming for the film was allocated to Walter Plunkett (who designed 200 costumes for the Beaux Arts Ball) and Orry-Kelly, Sharaff's was a more extensive design role, and she worked closely with Kelly and Minnelli on the narrative, choreography and decor of the ballet, as well as leading on costume. She, for example, conceived of the connecting motifs of the Red Furies, and the procession of marching firemen who lead Jerry from place to place across the city as the ballet progresses. Ames transcribed her sketches into versions that the scenery workshop could use, but notes what they were up against with the scale of their ambition: 'It was a monumental request. We were asking to do something that had never been done before, and for big money'. 6 8 Another new member of the team was cinematographer John Alton, who had impressed Minnelli during the shoots of Father of the Bride and Father's Little Dividend and who had developed a singular reputation for his lighting work. Alton brought experience of working in studios all over the world, including Joinville in France, but An American in Paris was his first colour project. His low-key 'painting with light' approach, which minimised rather than flooded the set, was deeply unpopular with studio crews, but offered the degree of nuance - seen when Lise and Jerry dance on the fountain that Minnelli sought, but had not found with Alfred Gilks. The design method for the decor was imitative, using identifiable works of art as source material. The studio artists, under the direction of George Gibson, worked from small reproductions, drawings and scale models to create vast canvases

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with a three-dimensional quality. The Dufy Concorde was the first set to be tackled and also the largest and most expensive set of the entire film, with closing costs of $26,071. The sculpted fountain alone cost $9,500 according to an interim budget memo. The backdrop was immense: close to 40-feet high and 250-feet wide, with the asphaltcovered stage floor and the painted muslin backing coloured to look continuous, and so extend the sense of three-dimensional space on screen. The challenge came in the detail: the calligraphic delineation of space, the washed-out quality of the watercolours, the 'accidental' daubs of colour in the frame. As Gibson recounts: This is alright doing it on a sketch which might run 40 inches long and about 20 inches high. But when we got into painting the backing proper, you realise that we couldn't rely on these happy accidents. It all had to be done on this huge scale because you see, this darn backing we painted on was 35 or 40 feet high, maybe 250 feet long. The happy accidents that existed in the original sketch had to be painted absolutely on our enormous canvas. All the accidents had to be literally drawn. The feeling of watery wash and all of these things had to be consciously done.69 The same question of artistic nuance arose with the Pont Neuf set, in which a 12 x 6-inch reproduction of a Renoir painting had to be captured on a 100 x 30-foot canvas: tiny brushstrokes had to be rendered as 3-4-feet long lines. The Lautrec Opera set brought complications in the form of texture requiring the paint to be cut with plaster in order to give it the characteristic appearance of an oil painting. In this case the backings had to be painted flat rather than on paint frames as the Textone plaster needed to create the textured effect of heavy, swirling brushstrokes was too viscous and heavy to set on the vertical.

Dance as resolution of difference As Altman has demonstrated, the Hollywood studio musical is one of the most balanced and tightly structured of genres, in which the love

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story is the driving motor, and its happy outcome is predetermined by convention and structure. Within this framework, he suggests, the plot depends 'not on the stars falling in love, nor even on their marriage, but on the resolution of their differences'. 70 An American in Paris adheres to this pattern: Lise and Jerry are typical 'parallel stars of opposite sex and radically divergent values' 71 who are progressively brought to a state of union, in which their differences sexual, national, artistic - are overcome. In the course of the film, they shift from being opposing, to complementary characters, each accommodating themselves to the other, so that each becomes more like the other. However, the narrative and dramatic parallelism on which the musical relies, where the leads are repeatedly paired in terms of screentime and mirrored scenes, is less apparent in An American in Paris than many other musicals: Kelly receives more than double the screentime of Caron in the film, and his is a more substantial role as a singer and dancer. Thus their fundamental compatibility is not tested in ways that consistently reassure that the predetermined outcome will indeed be reached. Indeed, when Lise leaves a broken-hearted Jerry on the balcony at the Beaux Arts Ball, it is as if the film has indeed acknowledged its own defeat as a musical, imposing a sentimental, moral conclusion that repositions the film as melodrama. But the ballet is crucial to the structure of the film, creating a space in which the underlying anguish and hysteria of the separation - the failure of the film to assert its own conventions - can be played out. The psychic terrain of the romance is heightened by its relocation in French art, in which Jerry is the agent and Lise the object of desire. She is the central element of this world, hinted at in everything and everyone he sees, before becoming fully present as his dance partner. The relative invisibility and passivity that has characterised her in the body of the film is overcome through the dance, in her ability to match Jerry's vitality, his mobility and his joy at being transformed. When the two dance, arms raised in celebration on the fountain, to what seems the entire population of the city, she

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owns Paris every bit as much as he does. She is affirmed as his worthy counterpart, and the preordained outcome is satisfied. The ballet then fulfils the promise of the only other paired dance in the film, when Jerry and Lise dance in secret on the nocturnal quayside under the lights of Notre Dame Cathedral. 'In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble/They're only made of clay' sang Jerry, 'But our love is here to stay'. In the dreamlike world of the ballet, all that is tangible and material has indeed crumbled, and all that remains are fragments of images and emotions. Their love prevails in a realm beyond the real, in a timeless world of pure art.

The euphoric conclusion on the Place de la Concorde

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6 Promotion, Reception, Legacy On Sunday 23 September 1951, more than 250 members of the Academy had to be turned away from the Academy Theatre on Melrose Avenue, where a pre-release screening of An American in Paris took place. 72 The screening was part of a new 'motion picture seminar' forum instituted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1951 to enable Award-voting members to see 'outstanding' new films before they went on general release. Film screenings were followed by a discussion, in which the audience was given an opportunity to put questions about the production directly to the film's artists and technicians. An American in Paris, only the second film to be shown in the new series, boasted the presence of some twenty of the major creative team - including Minnelli, Freed, Lerner, Kelly, Green, Gibbons, Ames and Sharaff - and the discussion was moderated by actor Ronald Reagan. Reagan and his party were so impressed that one of their number, the producer Robert Arthur, later wrote to congratulate Freed: Dear Arthur, A good part of the enjoyment of something wonderful is 'gumming' it over afterwards, After seeing An American in Paris the other evening, Goldie, Ronnie Reagan, Nancy Davis and I ambled over to Chasen's and spent the next two hours in the most pleasant 'gumming' session since South Pacific73

The promotion campaign for the film's general release was imaginative and extravagant. Omar Ranney, writing in the Stage & Screen column of the Cleveland Press noted that in his offices at least, 'some sort of record has been broken for press agent stunts of longest duration'. 'In the day's mail, from Loew's Theaters, I have received a French beret' he begins. 'It is the latest of a series of

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"surprises" that have come to my desk in the last few days'. This onslaught began with a bevy of Parisian models, parking themselves handsomely on the drama desk. There were four of them, and their appearance caused the closest thing we've had to a panic in the editorial room since Sabu strolled in one day a few years ago leading an elephant.74 The week continued with visits from 'a pretty girl in a frilly ballet skirt, serving hot coffee and doughnuts', a dancer who 'practically stopped the presses while she ran through a ballet routine in the city room of all places' and other random visitors in 'ooh la la ballet skirts' dispensing cake and boutonniers from a French flower cart. Ranney was impressed with the efforts, but didn't need to be convinced: 6 An American in Paris is, at this writing, by far the year's best material [...] Kelly gives as fine a performance as he has ever given'. Local audiences for the first run agreed: at the Stillman Theatre in Cleveland the film did an astonishing 355 per cent of normal boxoffice business in its first seven weeks, and over 200 per cent at venues in Boston, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. 'There is every reason to believe that when it goes into the neighborhoods and the small town houses, the reaction to it will be almost as good as in first run houses' wrote Velma West Sykes in a December issue of the industry magazine Box Office.75 Music shops, travel companies and European banking offices decorated their windows with images from the film and life-size cut-outs of Kelly and Caron in full dance flight: 'You too can be an American in Paris by flying Sabena Belgian Airlines' claimed a notice in the Wall Street window of the BelgianAmerican Banking Corporation. Three gala premieres were held in the latter part of 1951. The first of these was in London on 26 August 1951, where the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square was decked out with a six-foot model of the Eiffel Tower in blue and pink hydrangeas. British audiences loved the film, to the extent that an internal memo a few weeks later

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recorded that 'the sum total of first three weeks is biggest three weeks for any one picture in the history of the house'. 7 6 At the New York premiere at Radio City Music Hall on 4 October 1951, hostesses gave away Bourgeois perfume in bottles shaped like miniature Eiffel Towers. Another vast floral arrangement in the shape of the Eiffel Tower was sent by the French State Tourist Department, bearing a ribbon stating 'Greetings from the City of Paris'. Crowds extended round the block to see the film, and it was considered that the opening day was 'phenomenal in view of the fact that no one left their television set and the World Series'. 77 The Hollywood premiere took place at the Egyptian Theatre on Friday 9 November 1951, with the famous forecourt converted into a Parisian street, complete with a flower market, newsstands, pavement cafes and artists' studios. Edwin Schallert, the LA Times critic, saw this as a splendid display of industry confidence: Among premieres this was a real conquest in proving that under the right circumstances these events may still rival the historic past. The turnout of picture celebrities, the fanfare that went with the first screening, and all else, evidenced that gala days can be effulgently renewed.78 Following its success at the Academy Awards ceremony on 20 March 1952, the film arrived in France, and it opened the Cannes Film Festival on 25 April 1952. Both the film, and Gene Kelly's visit to France to promote it at Cannes were the subject of much press attention, but it was the summer before the film went on general release in France. French critics fell over themselves to find ways of defining the exceptional qualities of the film, coining neologisms like 'balletofilmmusicaP and 'musifilmdanse\ and talking about the finale's 'cboregrapbicocinematograpbique' qualities. Gene Kelly featured on the cover of the new journal Cahiers du Cinema in July 1952, and the caption that accompanied the image drew attention to the 'dazzling' quality of the ballet. Although Claude Mauriac writing in the Figaro litter aire did not like the artifice of the film, he was

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moved by the images of the Place de la Concorde, which had temporarily disappeared from view on the Paris landscape while the square underwent traffic planning, declaring them to be more realistic than anything else in the film.79 Part of the pleasure in the film for the French was precisely the enchanted nature of the representation of the capital city: on 8 July 1951 Paris had celebrated its bimillennium, and that summer had seen an extravagant programme of exhibitions, concerts, artistic salons and sports events. The illuminated buildings in the city, some of which had been in darkness since 1939, and newly curated exhibitions of works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and the Fauvists bolstered the popular vision of the city seen in Minnelli's film. It seemed to express the same optimism and pride in the city's recovery, and audiences and critics were sensitive to, and appreciative of the affection and sympathy at the heart of the film. The film had its detractors: Lindsay Anderson writing in Sequence at the end of 1951 took the view that 'there is an unevenness about the whole entertainment that seems to betray a divided, or at least an incomplete conception'. 80 But in general, in France, Britain and the USA alike, the consensus was that the film surpassed all others in capturing the spirit and popular imagination of the city and its people. The ABC Film Review in the UK featured Caron on its cover in November 1951, describing her as 'a bewitching new screen personality'. The Hollywood Reporter declared that The art direction of Cedric Gibbons and Preston Ames leaves no doubt that they approached this story with the utmost affection. Their Parisian interiors make you want to buy a steamship ticket, fly, float or walk to the enchanting City of Light [...]. It has some of the most beautiful photography of Paris ever put on film. It's a feat of transportation more directors should learn when they're lucky enough to be working on the spot.81 When Arthur Freed was awarded the prestigious Legion d'honneur on 24 March 1953 for his 'many contributions to making French

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culture better known to the American and international public', it was the crowning glory of the film's achievement: even the French state was content to acknowledge how emblematic the film was of all Hollywood loved about France.

Legacy The massive painted backdrops of the ballet decor did not survive beyond the next few MGM productions. It was routine practice to reuse the canvases for other projects, and the backings were simply painted over as needed in the art department. In 1974, when the Culver City assets were sold off, the remaining props, costumes and other memorabilia from the film were dispersed at auction. In 1978, a fire at Eastman House in Rochester, NY destroyed two reels of the original negative, and it was 1992 before the restoration of the 35mm print was completed, then released by MGM and Turner Entertainment. In 2010, work began on a further restored 60th anniversary re-release, and the film played once again at Hollywood's Chinese and Egyptian Theatres. Rumours of a stage production of An American in Paris have long been in the air, with speculation as early as 1989 that a Broadway adaptation was imminent. It was reported that Contracts for the rights, from the Gershwin estate and Turner Entertainment company, which owns the 1951 Academy Award-winning film, have just been signed and work is underway on a revision of the original screenplay, for which Alan Jay Lerner won an Oscar. [...] The plan is to open the show in London late this year or early in 1990, depending on theatre availability, with a cast that is likely to be a mixture of American, British and French.82 But it would take another two decades before such a project would become a reality, and fittingly, the first stage production was a French-American co-production, which opened at Paris's prestigious Theatre du Chatelet in November 2014, and transferred to the Palace Theatre in New York in March 2015. The 10 million euro musical

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production was an unprecedented collaboration between three international companies - the publicly funded Theatre du Chatelet, the Pittsburgh CLO and Broadway development company Elephant Eye Theatrical. It was directed and choreographed by leading British dancer Christopher Wheeldon, and the roles of Jerry and Lise were taken by Robert Fairchild of the New York Ballet and Leanne Cope of the Royal Ballet in London. The producers Jean-Luc Choplin, Stuart Oken and Van Kaplan were adamant from the outset that, while they intended to pay homage to a film that all admired, their plan was to create a new theatrical work that would use Lerner's script and characters only as a springboard. Accordingly, the stage version of An American in Paris, authored by Craig Lucas, shifts the story back in time by a few years to the moment of the French liberation. The story begins with Jerry Mulligan as a GI at the end of his active service, who makes a decision to stay in the city when he becomes smitten with young ballet dancer Lise Dassin. He finds his way to a boarding house, where another ex-serviceman, Adam Hochberg, is already a resident. Adam, who has been discharged from the army following injury, works as a piano accompanist at the Chatelet Ballet School, where Madame Baurel - Henri's bourgeois mother - is a trustee. Adam too is in love with Lise, but does not realise that she is about to be engaged to Henri. The story is more sombre and historically anchored than in the film: at one point the stage is filled with Nazi flags, a woman with her head shaved is humiliated by a crowd, and power-cuts interrupt social gatherings in the cafe. Issues related to the experience of war are woven into the drama; in particular, the Baurel family are revealed to be Resistance heroes, who have courageously sheltered Lise in Paris in full sight of the Nazi authorities. Lise's obligation to a much younger and more eligible Henri is rooted in her status as a Jewish orphan, rescued by the Baurels when her parents the family's loyal servants - were captured and executed. The characters are all brought together by Milo Davenport, a Peggy Guggenheim-styled patron of the arts, who commissions a ballet in

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which Lise will star, and for which Adam will compose the music. She also insists that Jerry, her budding artist protege, design the decor. The narrative force of the show, then, is the development of a ballet in which all the main characters have a narrative investment: as performers, musicians, creators, designers, producers. The ballet is thus tne centra

l component of the story, connecting and motivating the various characters, and allowing them to come to maturity as artists and as a group. The play, like the film, uses only Gershwin music, and like their predecessors, the creative team had their pick of the Gershwin back catalogue. They opted to retain some of the original numbers as set pieces, notably T Got Rhythm', "S Wonderful' and 'I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise'. Other background numbers such as 'Liza', 'The Man I Love' and 'But Not for Me', and new numbers like 'Soon' (1927), 'Beginner's Luck' (1937), 'Fidgety Feet' (1926) and 'They Can't Take That away from Me' (1937) were developed as solos and duets appropriate to the narrative arcs of Lise, Milo and Adam. 'Our Love Is Here to Stay' becomes an ensemble number sung by the whole company as the show opens and closes, and the instrumental pieces were also expanded: 'Concerto in F' was retained, and 'Second Prelude' (1926) and 'Second Rhapsody' (1931) were added. While the backstory is unarguably more substantial than in the original film, the conception of Paris as a product of the artistic imagination remains at the heart of the project. The scenery, designed © Theatre du Chatelet - Philippe Apeloig

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by Bob Crowley, consists of large cut-out shapes that are constantly in flux, almost as if they are themselves part of the dance. Jerry's sketching of the city is seen in huge video projections that flood the decor, and give a sense of his spontaneous processing of what he sees around him as he comes to know the city. The walls that evoke the austerity of the newly liberated streets become incrementally more colourful as the show progresses, until the stage is flooded with a Mondrian-inspired colour palette in the final ballet. As in Minnelli's film, Paris gains full expression as an amalgam of music, dance and decor; as the unconscious, externalised projection of the talents, emotions and desires of its main characters. The affiliation between the two works is a powerful testimony to the enduring achievement of the 1951 creative team, and the inventive template they established for imagining the city.

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Conclusion As Donald Knox rightly states in The Magic Factory', a film as successful as An American in Paris was not produced in a vacuum: 'In 1950 MGM made 16 cartoons, 12 "Traveltalks", 9 "Pete Smith Specialities", 8 "People on Parades", 104 "News of the Days", and 41 features, one of which happened to be An American in Paris'P It was precisely because of the sheer number of films turned out by the studio that ambitious projects like this one could see the light of day: and of course 'the good ones would pay for the bad ones'. 84 But in its directorial vision, and alignment of timing, talent and tools, the film stands apart from the rest. As George Gibson stated We had done musicals before in various stages, but all the talent that we had was in the process of development. With An American in Paris, we began to reach an acme, a top spot, a point where all the talent was really working together. The several pictures afterwards - Band Wagon, Singin' in the Rain - we maintained our peak, but, the more we improved, the less the business needed us [...]. The business changed, and people began making pictures in real places. There was less need for the making of motion pictures as the years have gone on.85 An American in Paris was certainly one of the best, most ambitious and most memorable of the MGM films of this period, and it bears the weight of its history both as an exemplar and an exception to the musical production of the era. On the one hand, it is the sunniest and most vital of musicals, brimming over with the experience of being young and abroad in Europe in the 1920s. It harnesses the energy of Gershwin's Paris, the years in which he met Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Poulenc, and translates this into image and movement. It uses impressionistic images of the work of Impressionist and

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Fauvist painters to illustrate a musical poem about how an American flaneur experienced the sounds and atmosphere of Paris. It joyfully relocates this experience to a contemporary world, full of familiar American types: the ex-GI, the wealthy heiress, the Helen Hokinson society woman, the Paris correspondent and visiting magazine illustrators, the impresario and the third-year college girl. These Americans penetrate Paris in different ways, but somehow offer a full appreciation of the city: from the down-at-heel Latin Quarter and the high-end Ritz, to the streets of Montmartre where aspiring artists of all nationalities ply their trade, and the Montparnasse nightclub where black American musicians play nightly ( T m big in France' Louis Armstrong sings to Bing Crosby in High Society [1956]. 'The French love what they call Le Jazz Hot'), via the chic Folies Bergeresstyle nightclub where the French bourgeoisie rub shoulders with affluent tourists. Like all musicals, the film is ultimately inclusive, freeing its cast from the strictures of the world they should be living in, and transporting them en masse to an exotic, faraway, Utopian locale. But it also completely captures the confidence of a certain kind of American mood in the early 1950s. As Michael Wood has explained it, this is a moment in the musicals before a loss of faith in the social and political spheres finds expression in a deepening 'darkness in the dance': To see An American in Paris is to take off into time-travel, to fall through a time-warp into a lost zone of American confidence and enthusiasm, into a forgotten age of hubris and innocence, one in which David Riesman could write that he thought we were living in 'one of the great cultures of history' comparable to the Athens of Pericles.86 It is nevertheless an unusually dark musical, marked by abrupt shifts in tone, and a melancholic air when Gene Kelly is not performing his trademark song-and-dance numbers. To see American high spirits stilled and tamed by classical French culture in the form

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of painting and dance seems to go against the grain of this most popular of American genres. Perhaps the film could never fully rise above the sense of sorrow implicit in the premature death of its inspirational source George Gershwin? The man and his music had a deep personal meaning for so many of the film's creative crew, and the nostalgia they so clearly enjoyed, and which gave such energy to the project, somehow never fully transcends the sadness of his loss. The film's singular achievement, however, is surely its celebration of the powers, joys and possibilities of cinematic art in America in the 1950s. Just as Jerry Mulligan is drawn to Paris because it is the Mecca for painting, so An American in Paris confirms that 1950s Hollywood was indisputably the world's Mecca for cinema. Over a lingering final shot of Paris by night, this most outward-looking of post-war films film proudly declares its national affiliation in the closing credits: 'The End. Made in Hollywood, U.S.A. by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer'.

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In the years that followed, Hollywood became increasingly infatuated with Paris. Throughout the 1950s, films about the American experience of travelling to Paris (April in Paris [1952]; Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [1953]; Paris Holiday [1958]); of being in love in Paris (Les Girls [1957]; Love in the Afternoon [1957]; Silk Stockings [1957]) or of being transformed by Paris (The Last Time I Saw Paris [1954]; Sabrina [1954]; Funny Face) vied for screentime with nostalgic tales of the belle epoque period (Moulin Rouge [1952]; Gigi). French stars such as Danielle Darrieux, Leslie Caron, Fernandel and Louis Jourdan became household names, adding Gallic legitimacy to a range of Trench'-set films, and Chevalier's comeback as a veteran charmer was assured with Gigi. These films all owed an incalculable debt to An American in Paris for definitively establishing the template for Hollywood's narrative and visual engagement with the knowability and transformative potential of that most magical of European cities.

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Notes A note on sources Donald Knox's oral history book, The Magic Factory: How MGM Made An American m Paris (1973) is an inevitable work of reference for any contemporary scholarship on the film. Knox conducted h u n d r e d s of h o u r s of interviews with people who h a d worked on the film, from the stars to the designers to the backroom staff. He used An American in Pans as a case study to trace as fully as possible 'the decision-making circuitry t h a t went into the act of producing a single studio film' (p. xv) and in doing so produced a comprehensive account of the film's production history. If I rely on his book as a primary source, it is because it remains definitive, and a unique archive t h a t we are fortunate to have in the public domain. My research involved the extensive consultation of archive d o c u m e n t s at the Margaret Herrick Library Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles and at the University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library, Los Angeles. Archives consulted include the Turner MGM Script Collection (Herrick), MGM Art D e p a r t m e n t Records (Herrick), Curtis Harrington Papers (Herrick), Vincente Minnelli Papers (Herrick), Press Clippings (Herrick), Arthur Freed Collection (USC), MGM Collection (USC). In some cases t h e s a m e information a p p e a r s in m o r e t h a n one archive. Given the small format of the BFI Classics book, I have opted to synthesise m u c h of the fine detail on dates, budgets and minor script

variations for ease of reading. I have therefore only included the reference information for archive d o c u m e n t s w h e n content from t h e m is directly quoted in t h e text. 1 Donald Knox, The Magic Factory: How MGM Made An American in Paris (New York, Washington and London: Praeger, 1973), p. 193. 2 Vincente Minnelli with Hector Arce, I Remember It Well (London: Angus and Robertson, 1974), pp. 228-9. 3 Alan Jay Lerner quoted in Mark Griffin, A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010), p. 136. 4 Bosley Crowther, 'An American in Paris, Arrival of Music Hall, Has Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in Leads', New York Times, October 1951 (Minnelli Papers, File l.f-2, Herrick Library). 5 David O. Selznick letter to Arthur Freed, 2 September 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 6 William Hogan quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 182. 7 Sherwin Kane, 'An American in Paris', Motion Picture Daily, 28 August 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 8 Minnelli with Arce, I Remember It Well, p. 215. 9 Preston Ames quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 206. 10 Seymour Peck, review in Compass, October 1951 (Minnelli Papers, File l.f-2, Herrick Library). 11 Minnelli with Arce, I Remember It Well, p. 229. 12 Versions of Lerner's screenplay, and notes relating to a m e n d m e n t s , are

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available in the Turner MGM Script Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library, and in the USC MGM Collection. 13 Dore Sharey quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 56. 14 Johnny Green q u o t e d in ibid., p. 154. 15 Green quoted in ibid., p. 156. 16 Green quoted in ibid., p. 90. 17 MGM Pressbook accompanying An American in Paris (Herrick Library). 18 Alan Antik quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 84. 19 Leslie Caron quoted in ibid., p. 63. 20 Ibid., p. 105. 2 1 Emily Torchia quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 62. 22 Caron quoted in ibid., p. 97. 23 Leslie Caron commentary. An American in Paris. Two-Disc Special Edition DVD. Disc One. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. 1951; Burbank: Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2008. 24 Caron quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 95. 25 Anon., 'Cette j e u n e fille sera celebre cette annee', Paris Match no. 168, 31 May 1952, p. 35. 26 Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 84. 27 Nina Foch quoted in Griffin, A Hundred or More Hidden Things, p. 142. 28 Minnelli quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 138. 29 Antik m e m o , 5 July 1950 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 30 Minnelli with Arce, I Remember It Well, p. 229. 3 1 Antik quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 80.

32 The Marshall Plan was an Americanfunded European economic aid p r o g r a m m e t h a t was in operation for four years from April 1948. 33 Introduced in 1944, this was officially known as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act. 34 Art Buchwald, I'll Always Haue Paris: A Memoir (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996), p. 8. 35 John Stanton, 'The New Expatriates', Life, 22 August 1949, pp. 75-87. 36 Ibid., p. 84. 37 Buchwald, I'll Aliuays Have Paris, p. 3. 3 8 Antik, m e m o , 17 May 1950 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 39 Inside MGM, 29 May 1950 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 40 Minnelli quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 60. 4 1 Gene Kelly fan club letter 2 November 1950 (http://genekellyfans. com, accessed 6 January 2015). 42 Stephen Harvey, Directed by Vincente Minnelli (New York: Museum of Modern Art and Harper Row, 1989), p. 98. 43 Kelly quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 61. 44 Minnelli quoted in ibid., p. 60. 45 Janet Flanner (Genet), Paris Journal Volume 1: 1944-55 (ed. William Shawn) (San Diego, CA, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965) (originally published as articles in the New Yorker). 46 Harvey Directed by Vincente Minnelli, p. 30. 47 Ames quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 60. 4 8 Minnelli quoted in ibid., p. 59.

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49 Antik m e m o , 10 December 1949 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 50 Robert Vogel. Correspondence. 25 April 1950 (MGM Art D e p a r t m e n t Records, Folder 11, International Department). 51 Ames quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 4. 52 Hollywood invitational premiere programme, 9 November 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 53 See Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris and Sarah Street, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (Amsterdam: A m s t e r d a m University Press, 2007) for a full discussion of the design work of Meerson, Trauner and others from this period. 54 Leon Barsacq, Caligari's Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions (Boston, MA: New York Graphic Society 1976), pp. 125-6. 55 Harvey Levenstein, We'll Always Haue Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930 (Chicago, IL and London: Chicago University Press, 2004), p. 54. 56 Alfred Gilks quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 101. 57 Gilks quoted in ibid., p. 102. 58 Ames quoted in ibid., pp. 168-9. 59 George Gibson q u o t e d in ibid., p. 14. 60 Andrew Sarris, Foreword to ibid., p. xi. 61 Joseph Andrew Casper, Vmcente Minnelli and the Film Musical (South Brunswick, NJ and London: A. S. Barnes &Yoseloff, 1977), p. 70. 62 Beth Genne, 'Vincente Minnelli and the Film Ballet', in Joe McElhaney (ed.), Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment

(Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 2009), pp. 229-51. 63 Minnelli quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 45. 64 Ibid., p. 139. 65 Complete OK ballet script by Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly, 6 September 1950 (Turner MGM Script Collection, Box 86 A-680). 66 Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 22. 67 Irene Sharaff, Broadway and Hollywood: Costumes Designed by Irene Sharaff (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976), p. 74. 68 Ames quoted in Knox, The Magic Factory, p. 145. 69 Gibson quoted in ibid., p. 153. 70 Altman, The American Film Musical, p. 20. 7 1 Ibid., p. 19. 72 Inside MGM newsletter, 8 October 1951. 73 Robert Arthur letter to Arthur Freed, 27 September 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 74 O m a r R a n n e y 'American in Paris Needs No Drum-beating, But Gets It', Cleveland Press, 26 September 1951, p. 38 (Minnelli papers, File 4, Herrick Library). 75 Velma West Sykes, Box Office, 8 December 1951. 76 Robert Vogel m e m o to Arthur Freed, 19 Sept 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 77 Anon., internal m e m o , u n d a t e d 'Records the opening day's gross at Radio City Music Hall as $20,555 (compared with $22,160 for Show Boat

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and $20,432 for The Great Caruso) (Minnelli papers, File l.f02, Herrick Library). 78 Edwin Schallert, 'American in Pans Hits Glamor Peak', LA Times, 10 November 1951 (MGM Collection, Box 2, USC). 79 Claude Mauriac, 'Un Americain a Paris', Figaro litteraire, 9 August 1952 (Minnelli Papers, File 4, Herrick Library). 80 Lindsay Anderson, 'Minnelli, Kelly and An American in Paris', Sequence, New Year 1952, pp. 36-8.

8 1 Anon., '"Paris" Top Musical Show', Hollywood Reporter, 28 August 1951 (Minnelli Papers, File 4, Herrick Library). 82 Anon., 'American on Broadway', New York Times, 13 January 1989 (Clippings File, Herrick Library). 83 Knox, The Magic Factory, p. xvii. 8 4 Walter S t r o h m q u o t e d in ibid., pp. 204-5. 85 Gibson quoted in ibid., p. 197. 86 Michael Wood, America in the Mouies: Or 'Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind' (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1975), p. 149.

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Credits An American in Paris USA/1951 Directed by Vincente Minnelli Produced by Arthur Freed Story and Screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner Director of Photography Alfred Gilks Film Editor Adrienne Fazan Art Directors Cedric Gibbons Preston Ames Music by George Gershwin Lyrics by Ira Gershwin ©1951. Loew's Incorporated Production Companies produced by Loew's Incorporated a Metro-Goldywn-Mayer picture Ballet Photographed by John Alton Technicolor Colour Consultants Henri Jaffa James Gooch

Special Effects Warren Newcombe Irving G. Ries Montage S e q u e n c e s by Peter Ballbusch Set Decorations Edwin B. Willis Associate [Set Decorator] Keogh Gleason Gene Kelly's Paintings by Gene Grant Costumes Designed by Orry-Kelly Beaux Arts Ball Costumes Designed by Walter Plunkett Ballet Costumes Designed by Irene Sharaff Make-up Created by William Tuttle Hair Styles Designed by Sydney Guilaroff Musical Direction Johnny Green Saul Chaplin Orchestrations Conrad Salinger Choreography by Gene Kelly Recording Supervisor Douglas Shearer

uncredited Director (Lise Introduction Dance Sequence) Gene Kelly Associate Producer Roger Edens Production Manager Walter Strohm Unit Managers Jay Marchant J. J. Cohn Assistant to the Producer Lela Simone Secretary to the Producer Helen Wendt Production Secretary Mary Milligan Production Assistant Jane Loring Researcher Kenton Andrews MGM Legal Department Rudi Monta Assistant Directors Edward Woehler Alfred Raboch Hugh Boswell 2nd Assistant Director Fletcher Clark Script Supervisor Grace Dubray Technical Director Alan Antik Camera Operator Al Lindsley Lane

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Gaffer Wes Shanks Electrician Sid Moore Key Grip Richard Borland Technicolor Technician Henry Imus Stills Photography Frank Shugrue Property Master Harry Edwards Assistant Properties Stanley Hutchison Lead Sculptor Henry Greutert Painter Frank Wesselhoff Make-up Artist Robert J. Schiffer Wardrobe Charles M. Zacha Vicki Nichols Costume Jeweller Joanjoseff Editorial Supervisor William LeVanway Editorial Supervisor (The American in Paris Ballet) Gene Kelly Assistant Film Editor Edgar Hartzke Orchestrations Albert Sendrey Benny Carter Robert Franklyn Wally Heglin Skip Martin

Musicians Jakob Gimpel Jack Marshall Milton Raskin Jack Teagarden Samuel Albert Alex Alexander John Boudreaux Alec Compinsky David Crocov Max Gralnick Saul Grant Glen Johnston Sol Kindler Arthur Maebe Peter Mercurio Si Zentner Soundtrack 'Our Love Is Here to Stay' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Gene Kelly; 'By Strauss' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Gene Kelly, Georges Guetary Mack McLean; 'Fascinating Rhythm' music: George Gershwin, performed by Oscar Levant; Tra-la-la (This Time It's Really Love)' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Gene Kelly Oscar Levant; 'I Got Rhythm' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Gene Kelly a n d children; 'I'll Build a Stairway to

Paradise' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, Buddy G. DeSylva, performed by Georges Guetary; "S Wonderful' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Gene Kelly, Georges Guetary; 'Nice Work if You Can Get It' music: George Gershwin, lyrics: Ira Gershwin, performed by Georges Guetary; 'Embraceable You' music: George Gershwin, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra; 'The American in Paris Ballet' music: George Gershwin, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra; 'Strike Up the Band' music: George Gershwin; 'Third Movement' from 'Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra' music: George Gershwin, performed by Oscar Levant a n d the MGM Studio Orchestra; 'But Not for Me' music: George Gershwin, performed by Benny Carter and His Orchestra; 'How Long Has This Been Going On?' music: George Gershwin, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra; 'Someone to

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Watch over Me' music: George Gershwin, performed by Benny Carter and His Orchestra; 'Oh, Lady Be Good' music: George Gershwin, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra; 'I've Got a Crush on You, Sweetie Pie' music: George Gershwin, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra Assistant Choreographer Alex Romero Assistant Dance Director Carol Haney Sound Mixer StandishJ. Lambert Re-recording Mixer William Steinkamp Sound Editor Van Allen James Titles Pacific Title Story Consultant Lillie Messenger Stunt Double for Gene Kelly Russell Saunders MGM Director of Publicity Howard Strickling MGM Vice-President of Publicity Howard Dietz Unit Publicist Emily Torchia

Trailer Producer/ Narrator Frank Whitbeck CAST Gene Kelly Jerry Mulligan, American artist Leslie Caron Lise Bouvier, perfume saleswoman Oscar Levant Adam Cook, pianist Georges Guetary Henri 'Hank' Baurel, Lise's fiance Nina Foch Milo Roberts, Jerry's patroness uncredited Eugene Borden Georges Mattieu, Cafe Huguette owner Martha Bamattre Mathilde Mattieu Mary Young old flower lady ('By Strauss' number) Ann Codee Therese, hotel waitress George Davis Francois Hayden Rorke Tommy Baldwin Paul Maxey John McDowd, impresario Dick Wessel Ben Macrow

Don Quinn Adele Coray honeymoon couple Lucien Plauzoles Christian Pasques Anthony Mazzola 'bubble gum' boys Charles Bastin smiling young man Jeanne Lafayette Louise Laureau nuns Captain Garcia man at shutters Charles T. Millsfield man with books Louise Colombet woman with cats Alfred Paix postman Leonard A. Mazzola young man at mirror Noel Neill American girl looking at Jerry's paintings Nan Boardman maid John Eldredge Jack Jansen, newspaper illustrator Anna Q. Nilsson KayJansen Albert Pollet man at table Wanda Lucienne woman on phone Madge Blake Edna Mae Bestram, customer at perfumerie

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Albert D'Arno George Dee waiters Art Dupuis Milo's chauffeur Peter Camlin artist Marie Antoinette Andrews newspaper vendor Sam Strangis Herbert Winters G.I.s Dudley Field Malone Winston Churchill, painter Louis Laurent bearded painter Greg McClure rugged G.I. Leo Mostovoy Jack Chefe Maya Van Horn Isabel La Mai Monique Chantal Michele Lange audience members Ralph Blum Jr Viola Daniels Susan Cummings patrons at Flodair Cafe Andre Charisse patron at Flodair Cafe/dancing partner Ruth Lewis Judy Hall girls at ball Dino Bolognese Paul De Corday bartenders

Mary Menzies Svetlana McLe Florence Brundage Dee TUrnell Janet Lavis Sheila Meyers Phyllis Sutton furies Alex Romero Ernest Flatt William Chatham Dickie Humphreys dancing G.I.s Sue Casey Meredith Leeds Ann Brendon Marietta Elliott Mary Jane French Mary Ellen Gleason Patricia Hall Judy Landon Marilyn Rogers Jean Romaine Beverly Thompson 'Stairway to Paradise' dancers David Carlin strongman Monica Bucky Janine Bergez Marie Franchise Jeannine Ducasse Numa Lapeyre girls Peter Troiekouroff Claude Guy Andre Guy Rene de Loffre Yves Troendle Pierre Plauzoles boys

Anne Belle Rasmussen Madeline Gradin Joan Anderson Linda Heller Pamela Wells David Kasday John Gardner Dennis Ross Richard Robinson children in ballet Pat Simms Betty Hannon Marian Horosko Shirley Lopez Betty Scott Eileen Locklin Lila Zali Dick Lerner Don Hulbert Harvey Karels Bob Chase Bert Madrid Ralph Madlener Richard Landry Robert Ames Ray Weamer Rudolph Silva Stephen Kirchner Eric Freeman Allan Cook John Stanley Tommy Ladd Felice Basso Rodney Bieber Albert Ruiz Ricky Ricardi Eugene Faccuito Roy Ossorio Ralph Del Campo Ricardo Gonzales Bob Mascagno

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Jack Harmon George Ellsworth Dorothy T\ittle Linda Scott Marilyn Russell Bonnie Menzies Gloria DeWerd Dorothy Ward Carol Risser Jetsy Parker Jean Harrison Shirley Glickman Pat Volasko Pat Dean Smith Melba S n o w d e n Joan Bayley Carli Elinor Charles Mauu dancers in ballet Mack McLean baritone singing voice double for Oscar Levant Jeanne Coyne dancer stand-in Note Opening title card following the m a i n cast reads

'And Presenting The American in Paris Ballet' Production Details Principal photography filmed from 1 August 1950 to 15 September 1950; 'The American in Paris Ballet' finale filmed from 6 December 1950 to 8 January 1951; retakes filmed from 2 April 1 9 5 1 - f i l m e d at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (Culver City, California, USA). 2nd unit b a c k g r o u n d s and establishing shots filmed from 2 to 22 S e p t e m b e r 1950 in Paris (France). Budget: $2,723,903. 35mm, 1.37:1; in colour (Technicolor); s o u n d (mono - Western Electric Sound System). MPAA: 14898.

Release Details US theatrical release by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on 11 November 1951; New York City premiere on 4 October 1951; Los Angeles premiere on 9 November 1951. r u n n i n g time: 113 m i n u t e s 15 s e c o n d s / 1 0 , 1 9 2 feet UK theatrical release by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; London premiere on 26 August 1951. BBFC certificate: U (no cuts), running time: 113 m i n u t e s 20 seconds / 10,200 feet UK theatrical release (digital restoration print) by BFI Films on 28 October 2011. BBFC certificate: U (no cuts), running time: 113 m i n u t e s 22 seconds / 10,203 feet +0 frames Credits compiled by Julian Grainger

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Bibliography An American in Paris (1951) production archives. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles. Vincente Minnelli Papers Correspondence 1950-2 (various). Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly, complete ballet sequence, 6 September 1950 (7 pages). Notes; crew and cast lists; estimate of added costs for the ballet number, 9 November 1950; note with shooting dates and crew changes for ballet sequence; notes from Irene Sharaff for dance sequence (3 pages). Anon.,' "Paris" Top Musical Show', Hollywood Reporter, 28 August 1951. Seymour Peck, 'An American in Paris Shoots the Works ...', Daily Compass, October 1951. Correspondence: File l.f-2. Technicolor Collection Shot-by-shot continuity 1951. Turner MGM Script Collection N a m e changes (i) n a m e s submitted for clearance from Alan A. Antik, 17 May 1950 (2 pages); (ii) script n a m e changes from Legal D e p a r t m e n t (R. Monta), 24 May 1950 (1 page). Continuity breakdown by Jane Loring, 12 June 1950; script by Alan Lerner, 24 July 1950 (13 pages and 9 pages). Screenplay sections by Alan Antik, Jane Loring, Vincente Minnelli, 25 July 1950 (65 pages). Montage: (i) m o n t a g e by Peter Ballbusch, 18 August 1950 (5 pages);

(ii) French translation of m o n t a g e by Peter Ballbusch, 18 August 1950 through 21 August 1950 (4 pages). Alan J. Lerner, An American in Paris (1951), various script versions, including outline, 14 November 1949 (15 pages); outline, 9 December 1949 (3 pages a n d 9 pages); t e m p o r a r y complete screenplay, 20 February 1950 (105 pages); t e m p o r a r y complete screenplay, 8 May 1950 (97 pages); complete composite OK screenplay, 12 June 1950 through 18 September 1950 (approx. 280 pages) [with 20 March 1951 retakes by Arthur Freed]; narration, 10 January 1951 (2 pages). Dialogue-cutting continuity by Adrienne Fazan (editor), footage and music, 13 August 1951 (99 pages and 15 pages). International broadcast music, run 12 February 1952 (8 pages). List of musical compositions used, 21 February 1952 (6 pages). MGM Art Department Records Picture footage and cost per square foot, 1950 (Folder 3). Robert Vogel. Correspondence, 25 April 1950 (Folder 11). Charges on Newcombe shots, 30 April 1951 (Folder 28). Analysis of Newcombe shots (Folder 28). Chronological outline of Art Director's work (Folder 73). Flat Files MGM Site plan: Lot 2. An American in Paris (1951) production archives. Cinematic Arts Library,

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University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

MGM Collection, Box 2 MGM Pressbook: An American in Paris. Antik, A., letter to Freed, 10 December 1949. Vogel, R., internal m e m o , 25 April 1950. Antik, A., internal m e m o , 17 May 1950. Inside MGM, 29 May 1950. Antik, A., letter to Freed, 5 July 1950. Selznick, D. O., letter to Freed, 2 September 1951. Arthur, R., letter to Freed, 27 September 1951. Vogel, R., m e m o to Arthur Freed, 19 September 1951. Inside MGM, 8 October 1951. Hollywood invitational premiere programme, 9 November 1951. Scholarly works Affron, C. and M. J. Affron, Sets in Motion: Art Direction and Film Narratiue (Princeton, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). Altman, R., The American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). Ames, P., An American in Paris' and 'The Ballet', Production Design, vol. 1 no. 9 October 1951. Anderson, L., 'Minnelli, Kelly and An American in Paris', Sequence, New Year 1952,pp.36-8. Anon., 'Cette j e u n e fille sera celebre cette annee', Paris Match no. 168, 3 1 M a y - 7 J u n e 1952, p. 35. Anon., 'Un Americain a Paris', Radio, Cinema,Television, 21 February 1960, pp. 47-8.

Babington, B. and P. W. Evans, Blue Skies and Silver Linings: Aspects of the Hollywood Musical (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985). Barsacq, L., Caligari's Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions (Boston, MA: New York Graphic Society, 1976). Beevor, A. and A. Cooper, Paris after the Liberation: 1944-49 (rev. edn) (London: Penguin, 2004). Bergfelder, T., S. Harris and S. Street, Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema (Amsterdam: A m s t e r d a m University Press, 2007). Bingen, S., S. X. Sylvester and M. Troyan (Foreword by Debbie Reynolds), MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot (Solano Beach, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2011). Bitsch, C. and J. Domachrchi, 'Entretien avec Vincente Minnelli', Cahiers du cinema no. 74, August-September 1957, pp. 4-13. Blair, B., The Memory of All That: Loue and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris (New York: Knopf, 2003). Buchwald, A., I'll Always Have Paris: A Memoir (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996). Burdeau, E., Vincente Minnelli (Nantes: Capricci, 2011). Caron, L., Thank Heaven ... My Autobiography (London: JR Books, 2009). Casper, J. A., Vincente Minnelli and the Film Musical (South Brunswick, NJ and London: A. S. Barnes & Yoseloff, 1977). Cerra, J. L., Culuer City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004).

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Cerra, J. L. and M. Wanamaker, Movie Studios of Culver City (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011). Cook, P., 'An American in Paris', in Mandy Merck (ed.), America First: Naming the Nation in US Film (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 105-22. Crowther, B., 'An American in Paris, Arrival of Music Hall, Has Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in Leads', New York Times, 5 October 1951. De Baecque, A. (ed.), Paris vu par Hollywood (catalogue d'exposition) (Paris: Flammarion, 2012). Delia Vacche, A., Cinema and Painting: How Art Is Used in Film (London: Athlone Press, 1996). Domarchi, J., 'Un Americain a Paris', Cahiers du cinema no. 64, November 1956, pp. 35-6. Douglas, E., 'The Musical: A Film Speciality', ANC Film Reuieuj, June 1952, pp. 30-1. D'Yvoire, Jean, 'Un Americain a Paris', Radio, Cinema, Television, 10 August 1952. Fallon, J., 'Versatile Gene Kelly', ABC Film Reuierujuly 1952, p. 3. Feuer, J., The Hollywood Musical (2nd edn) (London: Macmillan, 1993). Flanner, J. (Genet), Paris Journal Volume 1: 1944-55 (ed. William Shawn), (San Diego, CA, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965) (originally published as articles in the New Yorker). Fordin, H., MGM's Greatest Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996). Genne, B., 'Vincente Minnelli and the Film Ballet', in Joe McElhaney (ed.),

Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment (Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 2009), pp. 229-51. Griffin, M., A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010). Harvey, S., Directed by Vincente Minnelli (New York: M u s e u m of Modern Arts and New York: Harper Row, 1989). H. P., 'An American in Paris', Monthly Film Bulletin vol. 18 no. 212, September 1951, p. 323. Kane, S., 'An American in Pans', Motion Picture Daily, 28 August 1951, p. 1. Karnow, S., Paris in the Fifties (New York: Times Books, 1997). Kelly, G., Letter to fan club, 2 November 1950 (http://genekellyfans.com, accessed 6 January 2015). Kelly, G., 'Corns on My Feet', ABC Film Reuieiu, February 1952, p. 24. Kelly, P. W, G. Kelly, V Minnelli, A. Freed, A.J. LernerJ. Green, S. Chaplin, M. Feinstein, P. Ames, I. Sharaff, L. Caron, N Foch, 'Commentary'. An American in Paris. Two-Disc Special Edition DVD Disc One. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. 1951; Burbank: Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2008. Knox, D, The Magic Factory (with Foreword by Andrew Sarris) (New York, Washington and London: Praeger, 1973). Kuisel, R., Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1993).

AN A M E R I C A N IN PARIS

Laclos, E, 'Vers le musifilmdanse', Cahiers du cinema no. 14, July-August 1952, pp. 51-2. Levenstein, H., We'll Aliuays Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930 (Chicago, IL and London: Chicago University Press, 2004). Levy, E., Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer (New York: St Martin's Press, 2009). Masson, A., Gene Kelly (Paris: Gallimard, 2012). Mauriac, C, 'Un Americain a Paris', Figaro Iitteraire, 9 August 1952. McElhaney J., Vincente Minnelli: The Art of Entertainment (Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 2009). Minnelli, V, with H. Arce, I Remember It Well (London: Angus and Robertson, 1974). Myrsine, J., 'Gene Kelly: Auteur de film et homme-orchestre', Cahiers du cinema no. 14 July-August 1952, pp. 34-8. Naremore, J., The Films ofVincente Minnelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Payne, C, 'Gene Kelly in An American m Paris: Introducing Leslie Caron', ABC Film Reuieu;, November 1951.

Ranney, O., 'American in Paris Needs No Drum-beating, But Gets It', Cleveland Press, 26 September 1951, p. 38. Schallert, E., 'American in Paris Hits Glamor Peak', Los Angeles Times, 10 November 1951. Schwartz, V, Its So French1. HoIIyiuood, Paris and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Sharaff, I., Broadway and Hollywood: Costumes Designed by Irene Sharaff (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976). Stanton, J., 'The New Expatriates', life, 22 August 1949, pp. 75-87. Theatre du Chatelet, 'An American in Paris' p r o g r a m m e (Paris: Mairie de Paris, 2014). Wanamaker, M., Hollywood 1940-2008 (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009). Weinberg, H. G., 'Lettre de New York', Cahiers du cinema no. 5, September 1951, p. 45. Wood, M., America in the Movies: Or 'Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind' (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1975).

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