  It's early Wednesday morning and I felt like making a quick comment on perhaps my favourite movie of all time. I've been going through my video collection watching one movie a night until I've watched my entire collection. I came to An American In Paris with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. I have seen this movie hundreds of times and I never get tired of it. This movie works on every level. Great choreography from Kelly. Great direction from Vincente Minnelli.
And great score by the Gershwin brothers. Those who are not aquainted with this 1951 best picture winner, the story is about an American painter (Kelly) struggling in Paris after WWII. He meets a girl (Caron) while out with a new friend (Nina Foch) who wants to sponsor his painting ambitions. This sponsor is in love with Kelly. The girl and Kelly fall in love. But this girl is also in love with a French singer (Georges Guetary) who happens to be a friend of Kelly's.
Of course none of the lovers know any of this until the end. There are wonderful dream sequences showing the ambitions of Kelly and his pianist friend (Oscar Levant). The pianist is privy to the information that Kelly and the French singer are in love with the same girl in one of the funniest scenes ever to be put on film. If you want to be introduced to musicals, I suggest An American In Paris . It proves musicals are anything but dull.
I guarantee you'll be looking for more Gene Kelly movies after seeing him in this movie. I can say with great conviction he was the greatest entertainer ever to enter Hollywood and the best dancer ever to make a movie. From movie appreciation to writing appreciation. I have picked up a rather large volume from the library containing 65 of the best short stories from the master short story writer W. Somerset Maugham. I plan to write short stories and sell them to magazines I figure I should study only the best. I've read a couple stories tonight and have thoroughly enjoyed them. I like Maugham's writing style. He's a cross between the very succinct and punchy prose of Hemingway and the content and plot development of a Graham Greene or Edgar Allen Poe. It's a very nice combination. 
