”Well of course we talk, don’t everybody?” | Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

It would seem that good musicals require good partnerships to succeed, and if that is true then the best partnership of all time is arguably that of Gene Kelly, co-director Stanley Donen, and producer Arthur Freed. In one combination or another these filmmakers collaborated at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer on some of the most extraordinary feature films ever made. Of their films, Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the most popular and almost certainly the best.

I don’t really ascribe to the idea that there can be a singular best anything in the world but when pressed to name ‘the best movie ever made’, in the absence of a more definitive choice, I generally pick Singin’ in the Rain.

This is the audio version of an essay first published at www.fictionmachine.com.