An American in Paris – review

Here is a film for which you might need a sweet tooth. It is a little sugary and theatrical and perhaps it has dated less well than other classic Hollywood musicals. But there is charm and a kind of willed American innocence. Gene Kelly plays Jerry, a former GI who stayed on in Paris after the Liberation to be an artist of the most quaintly chocolate-boxy sort: he finds himself taken up by an infatuated sugar-mummy patron (Nina Foch) at the same time as he falls for a beautiful gamine (Leslie Caron) considerably his junior. The most distinctive things about the film are possibly Caron's personae-montage at the beginning, which showcases her virtuoso dance moves, and the final fantasy sequence, which resolves (a little hurriedly) the emotional obstacles to their love. An exotically contrived romance.