The growing pains, the lead-footedness, and the outright gaffes of early sound moviemaking are bullyingly mocked in a movie that is itself a faultless display of cinematic and choreographic razzle-dazzle. One of the most thoroughly satisfying of the MGM musicals, most thoroughly of all during the dance number where Donald O'Connor dances straight up the walls. With Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds; co-directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen. (1952) — Duncan Shepherd