An American in Paris

Not sure how this won best picture. Definitely one of the biggest upsets for best picture. No one expected it to win.  My biggest problem with the movie is that the last 20 minutes of the film have no dialogue and is mostly dancing. I don't have anything against musicals but I like it when the music moves the movie along. There are a bunch of parts where there are musical interludes that have nothing to do with the movie. If you cut out the miscellaneous musical parts the actual story part of the movie will probably be less then one hour. And if it wasn't for my cat and dog fighting I probably would have fell asleep during the last 20 minutes like the first time I watched the movie.

The movie is about An American (Gene Kelly) an artist living in Paris. He is a poor artist living in a small studio when he meets a wealthy lady who becomes his benefactor but then he falls in love with a younger girl who he doesn't know is engaged to someone else. Gene Kelly's dancing is amazing and is one of the best parts about the movie, but his acting is not that great and the story itself just isn't enough to keep it interesting. The technical aspects of the movie is pretty good for the time. Really made great use of color and music. It probably was one of the best technical movies of the year and maybe that's how it won.

Other movies from 1951 that in my opinion are better then An American in Paris.
Strangers on the Train
The African Queen
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Place in the Sun also won six awards but not best picture the second most wins for a movie that didn't win best picture(Tied with Star Wars which also got six). Cabaret holds the record with 8 wins but lost Best Picture to The Godfather,

Other Facts
Second color movie to win best picture Gone With the Wind was the first in 1939. That's 12 years between them.
Humphrey Bogart won his first and only Academy Award for the African Queen
Rashamon won the special award for Best Foreign Language Film (and was better then An American in Paris).
A Streetcar Named Desire was the first movie to win three awards for acting(even with Marlon Brando's loss to Humphrey Bogart)

By The Numbers
Ranked number 68 on AFI Best Movies of all time in 1998 and didn't make the list in 2008
A Streetcar Named Desire ranked number 45 in 1998 and 47 in  2008
A Place in the Sun ranked number 92 in 1998 and didn't make the list in 2008
The African Queen ranked 17 in 1998 and 65 in 2008



And if you want to see some good movies from 1951
These would have been my picks for the 5 Best Picture nominations.
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