Restored ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ at Nuart

If you missed seeing the 1952 “Singin’ in the Rain” at the Hollywood Bowl in August, 1990, you’ll have another chance to see it in restored form when it begins a one-week run Friday at the Nuart. A fresh viewing only confirms its stature as one of the greatest of all musicals, co-directed and co-choreographed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. Its evergreen songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed (the film’s producer) are set off by Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s script, which is one of the wittiest ever written for a musical, a knowing, affectionate satire on Hollywood at the time of the chaotic talkie revolution in the late ‘20s. Stars Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor have long been justly acclaimed; the comic revelation is the late Jean Hagen as the gorgeous, imperious silent star with a voice that makes Jimmy Durante’s sound Shakespearean in comparison.