It is fantastic the way he moves, he is a fantastic dancer, I would evan go as far to say that hes better than Fred Astaire. The way he swings his legs is almost unrealistic and the speed looks like its set on fast forward, but the incredible thing is that its all real. Does anyone agree with me?
shareI do indeed. :)
shareI totally agree with you! Gene Kelly is amazing!! He is a dancing god! I have never seen Fred Astaire, but i know for a fact that i loooooove Gene Kelly! :D
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Who wouldn't agree with that? :)
I *love* Kelly in everything he did.
But I must say that whoever wrote the part of Jerry Mulligan - and expected it to be appealing (at least to female audiences) - must have been either drunk or a redneck with 100% Neanderthal ancestry. Throughout the film, Jerry's behaviour towards Milo is so ghastly that it's almost parodic. (If it IS a parody, then it's just not very clear in its objective, hence unsuccessful.)
It's a good thing that Lise never actually witnessed his rudeness to Milo, or it would make her character just as unsavory as his.
And speaking of Lise... I really REALLY wish she were played by Audrey Hepburn. (Though there were other good choices, too.) Leslie Caron is very fine - but not in this role. Not in my opinion, that is.
I think Gene Kelly is the greatest male dancer. I am a huge Ginger Rogers fan and I have always felt that when Fred Astaire dances with her, he has to keep up. I love Fred but Gene is better in my opinion.
share"I think Gene Kelly is the greatest male dancer. I am a huge Ginger Rogers fan and I have always felt that when Fred Astaire dances with her, he has to keep up."
That's just ridiculous, Fred Astaire was a huge dancing star on Broadway and Ginger Rogers was just a leading comedienne with a reasonably decent voice. She was never an exceptional dancer. Rita Hayworth with Fred in "You Were Never Lovelier" and Cyd Charisse in "The Band Wagon" both demonstrated that Astaire could do even more impressive dancing on screen when partnered with a better dancer than Rogers. Not that Rogers was bad, just that I think you're grossly exaggerating. Look at the success Astaire had on Broadway, he was considered the white Bojangles.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
Fred Astaire for the win. I feel like Gene Kelly always looked a little...should I say, fruity? when he danced. I guess you could say he looked like he was "floating" when he tapped but with his bulging muscles and shirts that were two sizes too small he always looked out of place. Astaire's stuff just seems so effortless in his tailcoat and you just got the feeling that he was a dancer, and he was here to dance.
Also, my husband looks like a very young Astaire. So I guess I'm biased.
They had different styles. Astaire was very graceful, classical and smooth, and Kelly was more athletic and modern.
But if they were alive, they would probably say what the great Mikhail Baryshnikov said: the Nicholas Brothers were the greatest dancers he had ever seen. Here they are in what Fred Astaire called the best dance number ever filmed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBb9hTyLjfM
"But I must say that whoever wrote the part of Jerry Mulligan - and expected it to be appealing (at least to female audiences) - must have been either drunk or a redneck with 100% Neanderthal ancestry. Throughout the film, Jerry's behaviour towards Milo is so ghastly that it's almost parodic. (If it IS a parody, then it's just not very clear in its objective, hence unsuccessful.)"
Geez you're on the imdb, why don't you bother learning something before you post? It was written by Alan Jay Lerner, the same guy who wrote "My Fair Lady" and "Gigi." If you've seen either of those films as well then you should already understand that Alan Jay Lerner was trying to make a statement about the character. This is not just supposed to be a light fun musical, it is also a character study and the theme concerns gender roles and gender identity just like in "Lady." In fact it's widely known that the director Vincente Minnelli and producer Arthur Freed asked Lerner to write a character that would be similar to Gene Kelly's character in "Pal Joey". Read some things about "Pal Joey" and you will find out that Joey is even more unsavory than Jerry -- and the show was a big hit on Broadway that made Gene Kelly into a star. Just because the writer shows a male character who's not entirely "chivalrous" doesn't mean that the writer is advocating the character's perspective. I swear sometimes people watch movies from the 1950s as if the writers and the audiences of that time were little children. This is a very sophisticated story. It's not even a parody. Milo and Jerry both use each other, it's hardly as one-sided as you imply. Remember the scene after Jerry speaks to Lise in the bar and Milo explodes with jealousy? Think about the way Milo shows Jerry off to her rich friends -- the sex doesn't even matter to her as much as the implication of sex, the idea that she can project to her friends that she is sleeping with a young sexy artist. Milo isn't in love with Jerry any more than Jerry is in love with Milo. If she was shown to be some kind of saintly romantic then Jerry's treatment of her would be really disconcerting, but as it is what we have is a more complex picture of a relationship in which both partners are using the other for ends that have little to do with the "proper" business of romance. Likewise with Lise and her lover, the singer, you have a relationship that has nothing to do with love but more with respect and mutual admiration, a totally different kind of "mistake" than the one Jerry and Milo are making but equally dangerous. Jerry's rudeness isn't a sign of sexism or an inherently flawed character -- like most men he lashes out at his woman when he's frustrated with himself.
Plenty of people don't understand "My Fair Lady" either and they say "oh, these writers are naive." No, it is the audience that is naive in this case because they either lack the knowledge or the perspective to understand what these images and messages meant to the audience in the 1950s. You could easily argue for example that Henry Higgins is a DISGUSTING character, completely mysoginistic, and how can anyone possibly relate to this character with his anti-feminist attitudes? How could Eliza fall for him? If she had only heard how he talks to his male buddy about her, she would never have fallen for him would she? See, this kind of thinking is navie at least as far as applied to these stories because it doesn't get beneath the surface at all.
"And speaking of Lise... I really REALLY wish she were played by Audrey Hepburn. (Though there were other good choices, too.) Leslie Caron is very fine - but not in this role. Not in my opinion, that is."
Leslie Caron can dance circles around Audrey Hepburn, and she can sing too.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
Yes. Gene is tops :)
'I guess I'm the girl nobody remembers'
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And speaking of Lise... I really REALLY wish she were played by Audrey Hepburn. (Though there were other good choices, too.) Leslie Caron is very fine - but not in this role. Not in my opinion, that is.
But my original reason coming here:
When I was watching Gene dance, I was so stunned by it. I began to wonder WHY it's so much different than all the other dancers I've seen, and I realized what it was. He taps. When some people tap, it's just so hard and brutal. But Kelly was able to do it so light and fluid. He was so, so amazing.
Previously Breakfast_At_Tiffanys534
"It's funny that you mentioned that. Because Leslie Caron played Gigi. Audrey was the original Gigi, on Broadway. I always wondered why Audrey never played Gigi in the movie. Maybe she had gotten older? I never knew why."
Probably because there never was an original Broadway version of "Gigi" much less did Audrey Hepburn who never appeared in a Broadway show in her life star in it.
[p.s. edit -- not so -- thanks for the correction below]
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
"It's funny that you mentioned that. Because Leslie Caron played Gigi. Audrey was the original Gigi, on Broadway. I always wondered why Audrey never played Gigi in the movie. Maybe she had gotten older? I never knew why."
Probably because there never was an original Broadway version of "Gigi" much less did Audrey Hepburn who never appeared in a Broadway show in her life star in it.
Funny, I never noticed this thread before. funkyfry must be thinking that there was no "original Broadway version" of the Lerner & Loewe musical Gigi, and somehow discounted Anita Loos's non-musical version, which Audrey Hepburn played on Broadway and Leslie Caron played in London. It was Caron who suggested to Lerner that Gigi would make a good musical.Probably because there never was an original Broadway version of "Gigi" much less did Audrey Hepburn who never appeared in a Broadway show in her life star in it.Not true FunkyFry, Audrey Hepburn starred in the 1951 Broadway play of Gigi
thanks, to both of you actually -- I didn't remember posting that, and I learned about the Audrey Hepburn version sometime last year. Of course the reason I hadn't heard of it was like you said, that it was not a stage version of the Lerner/Loewe musical show.
I coulda just checked ibdb.com though instead of being lazy. Or maybe I hadn't heard about it yet. At any rate apologies for my brusque and inaccurate comment.
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'
Tribeca-4, please tell me how Fred Astaire was "psychotic". I always thought he was one of the classiest gentlemen in Hollywood.
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when i was a kid he was my idol
and i still like him.
he was multi talented
http://www.paragsankhe.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obyBXBH9Kbk
No I don't agree with you about Gene Kelly. Fred Astaire is by far the better dancer.
shareI love Gene Kelly but I wouldn't say he's better than Fred Astaire. I would say he made a couple movies that in and of themselves are better than most of his movies. But Astaire has an edge on Kelly for a number of reasons -- first of all when it comes to Gershwin (we are on the "American in Paris" board after all), Gene Kelly did some justice to the songs but Fred Astaire was friends with Gershwin back in the 1910s and collaborated with him on several musicals as well as several film musicals. You can't beat "Slap that Bass" for example, a unique collaboration of the two artists.
At any rate as has been noted many times before (including by the artists themselves) they were very different dancers, Kelly more athletic and Astaire more graceful. Kelly simply cannot do as much for a partner as Astaire. Look at how much better Astaire's dances with Cyd Charisse were in "The Bandwagon" than Kelly's in "Brigadoon."
Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'