He was not seen in the 2019 Oscars in memoriam, but the American director Stanley Donen does not need obituaries to be remembered, his films serve as a tribute. The Filmoteca de Catalunya knows this, proof of this is its cycle dedicated to Donen's cinema which, leaving aside the director's best-known musicals (Singing in the Rain), will reveal the elegance and grace of the filmmaker: Charada, Two on the road, The staircase or With the face of an angel, among others.
He directed and co-directed some of the biggest Hollywood musicals ever made, shiny, pompous, golden, but Donen is so much more than that. While it is true that the director of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers declared himself a lover of dance and musical staging - let us remember that moment in 1997 when he received his honorary Oscar dancing and singing Cheek to Cheek: "I have no words to express what I feel, and in the cinema when that happens they sing: 'Heaven, I'm in heaven...'” -, he also directed sophisticated comedies, heartbreaking romances and ingenious thrillers. What do they have in common?
Let me clarify it with one of its most iconic scenes: It's raining. It rains with vitality. Gene Kelly (smile, trench coat, hat) sings in the rain like there's no tomorrow. He declares life something contagious, Donen's signature: terrible desire to live served with elegance and grace.
His 29 films, 12 of them musical, represent a cocktail (with lots of bubbles, foam and olives) loaded with inventiveness and brilliance. And that is due, in part, to his usual accomplices, great celebrities of the moment such as Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman or Yul Brynner.
All those stars aligned to form a constellation full of romantic, suspense, erotic and dramatic comedies that the Filmoteca cycle claims, this time, above the well-known musicals, except On the Town, It's Always Fair Weather and Funny Face (A Face with an Angel) that will be screened on the occasion of the director's centenary.
It is said that elegance is an eternal joy. Or at least it is when there is good sewing in its construction. The fabric is not everything, the shape must be represented with subtlety. Beauty must be known, one as sharp as the needle that is threaded. It is known that Stanley Donen had the hands of a tailor.
