Depiction of Two Films

Lies and Talkies: Singing in the Rain vs. Sunset Boulevard

Long before the self-reflexive, pastiche ethos of postmodernism that is popular today, films like "Singing in the Rain" and "Sunset Boulevard" used the medium of cinema to critique the false nature of Hollywood and to critique the medium of film itself. Both the films "Singing in the Rain" and "Sunset Boulevard" chronicle the rocky transition of Hollywood from a purely silent and image-based means of generating a creative pictorial reality to a talking and slightly more realistic version of 'real life.' But while "Sunset Boulevard" shows this supposed transition was really a lie -- talking pictures are no more real than silent life, "Singing" in the Rain was more hopeful in its presumption that talking and even singing movies could be slightly more realistic than the silent epics of costume balls and far-off lands.

"We had faces then," says Norma Desmond as she watches a younger version of herself slink across the silent screen of the movie theater she has installed in her decaying Hollywood mansion, comparing the fantasy glamour of the Hollywood past with the more drab Hollywood present. This quotation is supposed to indicate to the viewer how deep Norma has sunk into madness -- she cannot conceive of herself, or any human being as having a real face unless it is properly portrayed on a movie screen. As the score from the film swells in the background, Norma rises in a darkened room, lit only by the light of the film projector that unkindly highlights her older, real-life face. Her gestures seem theatrical and forced, even though they are of Norma herself, and not a director's creation like her image on the screen. Still, in Norma's view her own filmed image and the false lies of screenplays are superior to the reality, a lie that is perpetuated by the Hollywood system, the structure of "Sunset Boulevard" suggests.

The lack of realism in the Hollywood machine is also evident in "Singing in the Rain," as in "Sunset Boulevard." The movie idol played by Gene Kelly begins the musical opining to the Hollywood press, with a flattering full-on camera angle that makes him look smooth and polished. He is talking of his childhood as it meshes with his cultivated screen persona -- however the viewer is shown flashbacks of what the star's real life growing up was like. Really, this gentleman was born poor and spent most of his days hoofing away, learning his trade dancing for pennies in saloons. The myth vs. The reality generated by the studio system is highlighted through this juxtaposition of flashback and present, also called the Kuleshov effect whereby a viewer associates apparently disconnected shot -- the dancing young boy becomes Kelly early on in the viewer's mind, although this side of the matinee idol is not immediately seen in the film. The fact that this popular actor's even lovelier female co-star has a coarse voice incommensurate with her blonde confection-like appearance adds to the humor generated by the falseness of the film industry.