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“You’re nothing but a shadow on film, not flesh and blood!”

Early in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) meets Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) when he hops into her car. They exchange some fabulous back-and-forth dialogue about the nature of celebrity and authenticity before parting ways. Don is entranced by Kathy’s nonchalance toward his fame, and spends the next several scenes desperate to see her again.

Later in the film, Don discovers Kathy’s snubbing of his acting was a farce, and she’s actually a big fan. They stand outside the film studio when Don finds himself desperate to convey how he feels about her. Unable to do it there, he takes her inside the studio, turns on the lights, switches on a fan, reveals a backdrop, and puts her on a prop ladder.

“This is the proper setting!” he exclaims. “A beautiful sunset, mist from the distant mountains, colored lights in the garden. A lady is standing on her balcony, in a rose trellised bower. Flooded with moonlight, we add 5,000 kilowatts of stardust, a soft summer breeze - and - you sure look lovely in the moonlight, Kathy.”

To her, Don sings “You Were Meant For Me,” professing his love in a completely false, fabricated environment - the one in which he feels comfortable. Don’s an actor, after all, and every relationship he’s ever forged has been on the screen, in pantomime. He needs this type of setting to be able to confess his feelings. As he sings, non-diegetic music plays. We hear an orchestra that doesn’t exist accompany his words. Lighting changes occur with nobody controlling them. They dance and cultivate the beginning of something authentic within something make-believe.

It’s beautifully contrasted against the scene in The Dueling Cavaliers, the movie-within-the-movie, where Don and Lina (Jean Hagen) are delivering spoken lines for the first time. Don replaces his dialogue with a repetition of “I love you” said ad nauseum. He can say it a million times over when protected by the falsity of cinema. Doing it in reality is such a challenge that he had to fall back on that same phoniness to get the message across.

Later, Don sings the title song “Singin’ in the Rain” after leaving Kathy’s apartment and kissing her goodnight. In this moment, he’s simply dancing with glee at the discovery of true love, and takes to cajoling down the rain-soaked road with a piece of musical whimsy that remains a cinematic icon all these years later.

“From where I’m standing, the sun is shining all over the place.”

The road setting, within the context of the film, is a real place. But as Don cavorts along the road and sidewalk, swings from the lampposts and splashes in puddles, the extensive choreography and performance value of the act insists he’s treating the area as a stage. While it is a real environment to Don’s character, he dances upon it as if performing, and is again accompanied by non-diegetic instrumentation that can’t possibly exist. His behavior remains that of an actor, but he’s moved his performance from the comfort of a Hollywood studio and into the real world; much to the chagrin of the passers-by who look at him with a great deal of confusion.

This scene marks the midpoint in transitioning Don’s concept of love from something written in a script to something felt in the heart. The segue completes towards the end of the film when he confirms his love for Kathy publicly, at the premiere of The Dueling Cavalier, by singing “You Are My Lucky Star.”

The song is sung at a moment of pure public honesty, entirely within the realm of reality. It’s spontaneous and authentic. He starts the song standing on the theater stage, in front of a huge crowd, then steps off into the aisle. The visible orchestra is shown to start playing, providing a diegetic musical source for the number, contributing to its sense of reality. Don doesn’t dance or command the setting as with the first two numbers. Instead, he takes Kathy on stage by the hands, where the camera sticks to their faces before cutting away to the film’s final shot - a billboard showing the two of them starring in “Singin’ in the Rain.”

There’s a connection between choreography, setting, and music that allows Don’s facade to break down over the course of the film. In the beginning, he’s protected by artificiality, so great at conveying fake emotion that even Lina thinks he’s genuinely in love with her. As the story evolves, it allows his phony, cinematically-based love to transition from the hollowness of cinema to reality, and cements itself in the heart of another real person instead of moviegoers.