The French philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard once said that no matter how many times he had watched it before, he couldn’t sit through the musical numbers of Singin’ In The Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952) without feeling his heart pounding in his chest. This is precisely the reaction I get when watching The Band Wagon.

Though released the following year and conceived primarily as a vehicle for an ageing Fred Astaire, The Band Wagon took a much more traditional approach to the musical comedy than Singin’ In The Rain, which was more of a compilation of stunningly rendered musical pastiches than a musical in its own right. In The Band Wagon, a pretentious egotistical director (Jack Buchanan) is hired by an ageing hoofer (Astaire) to direct a Broadway musical with ballerina Cyd Charisse. That’s it.

Whilst it owes a number of things to Singin’ In The Rain (a pair of writers (Comden and Green), the idea to bet heavily on Cyd Charisse’s dancing (inspired by the stunning ballet cameo she offers in Singin’ In The Rain) and the general all round raising of the stakes), what makes The Band Wagon stand out from its predecessor is an effortless chemistry and lightness of touch which seems to have been entirely fortuitous. Whilst Singin’ In The Rain had a tendency to get a bit po-faced about “the biz” and the characters’ “careers”, it is as though the participants in The Band Wagon are rejoicing in their appreciation of the innate superfluousness of the genre. Astaire’s character is washed up, knows it and in case he forgets it, the first reel rams it down his throat. But he doesn’t turn out not to be, he just finds out how to make do. The inspired addition of British classical actor Jack Buchanan to the cast as the arthouse prig Jeffrey Cordova (said to have been unkindly modelled on polymath Jose Ferrer) paints the entire production with a topcoat of class.

I feel it is right that the first SMIC is deliberately uncomplicated and direct, in that it takes the adjective ‘sublime’ at face value. What is put on the screen is sublime because it looks and feels sublime, it does not require deep understanding or analysis to make it so. There are two contenders for SMIC status in this picture. I will leave readers to discover the climactic ballet ‘Girl Hunt’ for themselves, for as stunning as it is, it represents an attempt to outdo Singin’ In The Rain which, whilst successful in this regard, doesn’t quite achieve the poetry of its competitor or the sheer fusion of mise-en-scene with medium which a SMIC must do – it must exist for the camera. The technicity of the camerawork in the “Dancing in the Park” sequence (also referred to as “Dancing in the Dark”) is practically indistinguishable from that of the dancers. The context is simply that Astaire and Charisse have found, whilst mounting their disastrous musical production, that they are from different worlds and are struggling to find much in common. But when he joins her for a walk in the park, not a word needs to be exchanged.