An American In Paris (1951)

Team Movie Meats history was made on Monday for two reasons: one, the group watched its first musical Best Picture winner, An American In Paris, and two, the group included Special Guest Christian!!! The film stars Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan, an American World War II veteran who is now a struggling painter in France. Jerry and his artwork are sponsored by a proper blonde named Milo, but Jerry only has eyes for French dancer Lise, who is dating Hank. In other words, all four of them would have to make their Facebook relationship status read, “It’s complicated.”

When Jerry narrates the start of the movie and says, “This is Paris, and I’m an American who lives here,” that really helped us understand the meaning behind the title, so that was much appreciated. As things progress, Lise is at first disgusted by Jerry and his refusal to accept her distaste for him. All that changes, however, when he makes the hilarious gesture of pretending to drink perfume in front of her, and from then on she is love-struck. No really, it was that easy. So Lise and Jerry see each other a few times behind Milo and Hank’s backs, putting the viewer in a very awkward position. After all, Milo is a genuine person who offers her services to help Jerry’s career, and Hank is a sweet and very talented singer who saved Lise’s life during WWII. Meanwhile, Lise is cheating on her fiancée and Jerry is using Milo to make Lise jealous. So naturally, we’re supposed to root for Lise and Jerry to end up together.

Luckily we get distracted by plenty of singing and dancing. You may recognize some of the classic songs such as, “I Got Rhythm” and “S’Wonderful,” which appear in movies that pre-date An American In Paris. Still, Hank is a wonderful singer, Kelly’s entire performance is flawless and Lise is an excellent dancer, though TMM’s Nick and Jimi found her so unappealing they had to dock points from their final scores. Do you agree?

OK, so that’s what she looked like last December at age 79, but she still has the same sass! Girrrrrrrrl!

                                                                                                                          

Anyway, there are plenty of entertaining scenes in the movie. Most of them involve Gene Kelly dancing, but his piano playing buddy Adam also has his moments, especially when he learns Jerry is dating Hank’s fiancée. But Milo’s obsession with Jerry gets a bit scary at times, specifically when she weeps about Jerry leaving her when they had met a whopping eight hours earlier. When he agrees to participate in an exhibition she sets up, Milo exclaims, “I would have died if you said no,” prompting TMM’s Nick to add, “I would have eaten your children!”

Since you have only had 50 years to see the ending we will not spoil it, but be aware that you will have to sit through a 16-minute ballet with no singing/dialogue (yes, 16 godforsaken minutes) before reaching arguably the most rushed and unexplained resolution of all-time. Other than that, they nailed it. The ballet scene cost $500,000 to create, which nowadays would be in the upwards of $40 billion, and while TMM’s Tracy enjoyed it, she also stated it was “as if someone thought of a 16-minute dance and thought they had to bullshit a movie around it.” So there’s that.

An American In Paris was nominated for seven Oscars and took home five, beating out A Streetcar Named Desire for Best Picture. Kelly received an Honorary Academy Award “in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” Well deserved. A very weird honor, but well deserved.

So the Academy done felt it, but how did Team Movie Meats feel about An American In Paris?

JIMI: (0.34 Acting + 1.41 Visuals + 1.0 Wow + 0.28 Story + 0.52 Enjoyability) = 3.55

TRACY: (0.51 Acting + 1.82 Visuals + 1.67 Wow + 0.38 Story + 1.78 Enjoyability) = 6.16

RACHEL: (0.65 Acting + 1.79 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.4 Story + 0.5 Enjoyability) = 5.09

TAD: (1.0 Acting + 1.45 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.15 Story + 1.0 Enjoyability) = 5.35

NICK: (0.633 Acting + 1.63 Visuals + 1.75 Wow + 0.1 Story + 0.4 Enjoyability) = 4.513

CHRISTIAN: (0.6 Acting + 1.7 Visuals + 1.7 Wow + 0.11 Story + 0.51 Enjoyability) = 4.62*

FINAL: 4.78

*As our special guest, Christian’s score accounts for 5% of the final score.

Interesting score notes: For the first time, Tad did not have the lowest score – in fact, he had the second-highest … Special Guest Christian’s final score was the closest to the Final average, off by just 0.16 … Jimi, who currently has TMM’s record-high score of 8.26, has now broken the record of the lowest score with a 3.55. When asked to elaborate, he paused and said, “I really didn’t like this movie.” … Five of the six members gave a high Wow factor, including Rachel, who was most wowed by Kelly’s “tornadoes, hello!” … Special Guest Christian’s high Visuals score was summed up when he said “some of it looked goodish.” … And why did Nick, a man who likes almost all movies, give it a 0.4 Enjoyability? “I felt like I’ve been had by the ending, and I don’t appreciate it.”

FAVORITE LINE: “You need radar to get through all this smoke!” (Kelly … or someone in the club, anyway. This was an odd line because, really, there was not much cigarette smoke at all.)

RANDOM VISUAL: The really old woman dancing with Gene Kelly in the first musical number. Very talented, but what the hell was she doing there in the first place?

MOVIE MEAT: Escargot with melted American cheese.

TIME OF DEATH: 11:06 PM on January 17, 2011

NEXT UP: Dances With Wolves (1990), selected by Nick