Cinema: New Picture, Jan. 2, 1950

On the Town (MGM) brings airy imagination and solid showmanship to the kind of movie that needs it most: the musical. The film avoids such standard cine-musical trappings as hothouse splendor, the lumbering backstage story and the curious notion that the script ought to give performers a pseudo-logical excuse to burst into song & dance. Instead, by combining a fluid cinematic approach and slick Broadway professionalism, Co-Directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen have turned out a film so exuberant that it threatens at moments to bounce right off the screen.

Adapted by Adolph Green and Betty Com den from their own stage hit of 1944, On the Town is still the story of three sailors on a 24-hour fling in Manhattan. Chip (Frank Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) quickly team up with a pretty man-eating cab driver (Betty Garrett) and a man-crazy anthropology student (Ann Miller). Meanwhile, Gabey (Actor-Director Kelly) scours the town looking for his ideal: Miss Turnstiles (Vera-Ellen), the girl-of-the-month on the subway posters.

The three couples sing, dance and clown uninhibitedly against the freshest backgrounds yet exploited by a cinemusical: actual New York landmarks shot on location in Technicolor. In the opening sequence, while the sound track pulses with the three sailors’ exultant verses of New York, New York (“A wonderful town”),* the camera carries them from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Rockefeller Center, dovetailing the sights into an exciting flow that piles up both momentum and atmosphere.

On the Town’s pace slows noticeably only once: toward the end, a clumsily inserted (though well designed and danced) ballet recapitulates most of the story. After that, things pick right up with a lively chase across the Brooklyn Bridge to Coney Island.

Despite the lapse, the picture leaves its fleetly traveled route strewn with ingratiating performances, serviceable tunes and clever lyrics, first-rate dances (especially Vera-Ellen’s Miss Turnstiles Ballet) and lighthearted comedy, including a neat spoof of Manhattan nightclubs. It also leaves a happy impression that M-G-M has hit upon a bright new idiom for cine-musicals and a bright new directing team that knows how to use it.

*Somewhat watered down from the stage version: New York, New York (“A helluva town”).