An American in Paris

Generic photo of Sacre Coeur there, from my trip last spring. Best I could do. 

So there's currently a series of filmed musicals doing the rounds of British cinemas; Kinky Boots (really not our thing), Titanic (someone thought it was a good idea to make a musical about the Titanic?), 42nd Street (also so not our thing for different reasons) and An American in Paris. We have been bombarded with trailers for these every time we've been to the cinema since Christmas and I wouldn't have taken a lot of notice except that I've never seen the original film of An American in Paris and the dancing in the trailer looked wonderful. So I suggested we go, and we did. 

Musicals are a bit weird aren't they? I've been struggling over the last few days to try and put my finger on exactly why I should think musicals are weird but accept opera at face value and I finally did. It's because  the dialogue in musicals is so stilted. It's there to carry on the plot and tee the audience up for the next big song, but it conveys only information and not emotion. In this a musical is different from a play, where the dialogue does both jobs, and opera where the music does both jobs, or at least the words and music  are so closely aligned that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.  Musicals break that old adage of writing, 'don't tell, show' because in a musical the dialogue is all about the telling. 

That said, and leaving aside such minor details as my inability to understand what on earth the three leading men saw in the leading lady, a simpering cipher with, in this case, a mouthful of teeth and a bit of an edge to her vocal tone, and the way the actor who was called upon to be New York Jewish just couldn't do the accent, and the constant self preening of the man who was Henri who spent most of the time looking at the audience rather than his co-performers, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because the dancing was indeed wonderful and a joy to watch. It made me smile and really, that's a good thing in itself.