Plot
Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly), an American World War II veteran, is now an exuberant expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend, Adam (Oscar Levant), is a struggling concert pianist who is a longtime associate of a French singer, Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary). A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is more interested in Jerry than his art. Jerry remains oblivious to her feelings and falls in love with Lise (Leslie Caron), a French girl he meets at a restaurant. Lise loves him as well but she is already in a relationship with Henri, to whom she feels indebted for keeping her safe during World War II. For most of the film Jerry is unaware of Lise's relationship with Henri.
Eventually Jerry learns that Lise is in love with him but is marrying Henri the next day. He invites Milo to a masked ball that night. At the raucous masked ball, with everyone in black-and-white costumes, Milo learns from Adam that Jerry is not interested in her, and Henri overhears Jerry and Lise saying goodbye to each other. When Henri and Lise drive away, Jerry daydreams about being with her all over Paris to the tune of the George Gershwin composition An American in Paris. His reverie is broken by a car horn, the sound of Henri bringing Lise back to him. They embrace as the Gershwin composition (and the film) ends.
Read more about this topic: An American In Paris (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)