Okay so only two more winners left from the 50's. So let's move to only one left with An American in Paris.
Plot: Jerry is a WWII veteran who decided to stay in Paris to try to gain a reputation as a painter after the war. A society woman named Milo takes him under her wing as support for his art, but is actually interested more in him personally then his art much to his ignorance. Meanwhile he falls in love with a woman named Lise whom he met at a restaurant. Lise begins to love him too, but is also in a relationship with a French singer named Henri who is also an associate of Jerry and his friend Adam.
Okay I'll be honest. The story did turn out to be way more development then I thought. Because when I first looked into the cover, I thought it was going to be just this very simple romantic movie about a guy who moves to Paris and just happens to fall in love with some woman. Which...yeah it kind of is, but it's not quite as simple. I didn't even know it was a musical, but here we are, and all in all it's a nice film altogether. It has a nice cast with Gene Kelly just before he did Singin' In The Rain and is also Leslie Caron in her debut, the story is very nice, the romance was interesting, and it had some pretty good musical numbers. The songs that stand out the most would be I Got Rhythm, Tra-la-la (This Time It's Really Love) and 'S Wonderful. I Got Rhythm just helped top off how fun it was for Jerry trying to teach the little kids english, Tra-la-la (This Time It's Really Love) was...just plain fun, and 'S Wonderful is the most recognizable of all the songs. I've heard it plenty of times over the years and not only is it nice to know part of where it came from (it originated in a musical called Funny Face back in 1927, but it also was included in this film among a couple of others.) And they performed that particular song very well. Heck I kind of wanted to sing along, they pulled it off that well for me. Now this film is without its flaws. But if there's one issue I really had, it's how it did have moments where it focused more on just the big musical numbers then on the actual story. Which most of the time is alright what with it being a musical and all, but it did have a couple of moments where it was just all about the music for quite an amount of time. My main example for this is the An American In Paris ballet during the very end of the film. It felt a little too long for me and I think the focus on it kept us from getting a really well thought of ending - because without spoiling anything, I thought they could've done the ending a lot better.
And that's my review for An American in Paris. It has a fun cast, memorable music, a good story that all around makes it another enjoyable musical film from among the films that won best picture.
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