UNIVERSITE SAINT ESPRIT KASLIK

Faculty of fine arts

Department de Cinema and Television

Project In The Course Of FLM 620

Theory of sound in film

Presented By

Edward Tannous

Singing in the rain

Presented For Dr. Josef Chemaly

KASLIK
2020-2021
 Gene Kelly’s and Stanley Donen’s singing in the rain is arguably one of
the best, if not the best, musicals in cinema history. It brilliantly took us back to
two decades back to the 20’s when sound was first introduced to film, and added
great musical numbers and a wonderful study of sound in film.

The film revolves around a famous actor Don Lockwood, played by Kelly
himself, and his co-star the beautiful Lina Lamont. As beautiful as she is, Lamout’s
voice was horrendous, she could not sing could not act and she could barely talk
without sounding ridiculous. Lockwood meets an inspiring theatre actress, Kathy
Selden, who he falls in love with after they had a rough start at first; that love
gave us the two most iconic scores in the film “Singing in the rain” and “Good
morning”. Due to Lamout’s jealousy she tries to get Selden fired but it did work
and because of Selden good voice she ended up dubbing for Lamout in the film
that they shot. The film was such success that Lamout refused to give credit to
Selden for the dubbing because it would ruin her career but in the end her
cockiness came back to bit her because as she was giving a singing live it was
revealed that Selden was the start the whole time.
 Singing in the rain highlighted the differences that sound brought to the
film industry, and it did it by showing the effort it takes from transforming a silent
film to a talkie. At first the actors could not cope with the microphones placement
it sound was coming and going depends on the direction the actors spoke, even
when they attached the microphones to their clothes the actors still couldn’t
reach the microphones completely. The second issue was the script at first the
actors were able to say whatever they wanted, no one was there to know but
now every word that was said was going to be heard.

In the film, before Lamout spoke, they were always trying to prevent her
and as a spectator I didn’t know why but as soon as she opened her mouth and
her voice came out, it was like the voice did not belong to her body. She was a
beautiful, seductive, bourgeoisie lady and her voice was that of a present it was as
if someone else was speaking; which was pointed out by one of the producers of
the film. If it was like her voice and body were not in sync, her mouth was moving
and sound was coming out but you could not tell that her voice was coming from
her. And it was for that exact reason the audience laughed as soon as they heard
her voice.
 One other thing I like was the flash back the occurred in the film that was
caused by Lockwood’s telling the story of how he became an actor with Cosmo.
As soon as he spoke into the microphone, him telling the story, his voice, gave us
a window for a flash back.

And one final thing I wanted to mention is the first time they showed the
first talkie. After “The jazz singer”, which was mentioned a generous amount in
the film as a throwback to the first talkie, the studio owner decided to turn their
next production into a talkie. In the first showing the sound was horrible and they
showed it in a beautiful way. The voice disappeared when the actor no longer
faced the microphone, the background was noisy and all sort of things was heard
and when there was technical difficulties the sound was no longer sync. That
scene where the sound was horrible in the film, within the film, was a sound
masterpiece in the film itself.