Brooklyn chorus girl Hayworth becomes a big star when she is put on a magazine cover and is torn between a glittering Broadway career and life with the roughneck choreographer (Kelly) she really loves.
A creaking plot is made bearable by gorgeous colour, the even more gorgeous Hayworth, some oddly unsentimental and unsettling flashbacks with her playing her character's turn-of-the-century grandmother, energetic support from Silvers and the fabulously hatted and cynical Eve Arden, and one stand-out Jerome Kern song (Long Ago And Far Away) in a fair-only score.
The movie approaches magic in its dances, with Kelly staging several wonderful routines - including the famous Alter Ego turn, in which Kelly dances with his own reflection - and finding, in Rita, a perfect partner. Her voice may have been dubbed (by Martha Mears), but she did all her own moves.