TSPDT - Stanley Donen


	"It would seem that if Donen is to be involved in good movies in the future, it will be more as a genial catalyst than as a creative force. Donen seems too much the congenital team player ever to display a marked individuality, and the Donen "touch" remains as elusive as ever...Still, if a director acts as a pleasant enough catalyst long enough, he may come to be accepted as a creator if only in the most passive form permitted the claim of creation." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

	"Donen's oeuvre demonstrates a reaction against the presentation of musical numbers on the stage, choreographing them instead on the streets of everyday life. It is this combination of a visual reality and a performing unreality (a performing reality is some type of stage that is clearly delineated from normal, day–to–day activity) that creates the tension inherent in surrealism. Donen geared the integrated musical towards the unreal; our functional perception of the real world does not include singing and dancing as a means of normal interpersonal communication." - Greg Faller (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)

	"A dancer and choreographer on Broadway, Stanley Donen came to Hollywood and made a spectacular success of staging numbers for MGM musicals, working with Gene Kelly on four films...His solo work includes the exuberant Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Funny Face (1957), notable for their visual quality." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

	"Directs energetic, adventurous, muscular musicals (Singin' in the Rain, 52; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, 54). His more recent comedy and suspense films are laced with exotica and wit (Surprise Package, 60; Charade, 63)." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

	"If we remade Singin' In the Rain today, when Gene Kelly sings in the rain I think he'd be looking around to make sure he wasn't going to get mugged." - Stanley Donen