In It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Gene Kelly plays Ted Riley, a former soldier who, with two army friends played by Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd, reunites in New York ten years after the Second World War. Co-directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, the musical follows the three men as they discover how much they, and the city, have changed.
Kelly’s dancing, including a famous sequence on roller skates, is inventive and joyful, and the film’s more bittersweet tone sets it apart from earlier Kelly musicals. It is a fitting late musical for Kelly, looking back at friendship and at the passage of time.
