<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $2.5 million </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $12.4 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American musical - romantic comedy film directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds . It offers a lighthearted depiction of Hollywood in the late 1920s, with the three stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to "talkies". </P> <P> The film was only a modest hit when first released . Donald O'Connor won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor--Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America Award for their screenplay, while Jean Hagen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress . But it has since been accorded legendary status by contemporary critics, and is frequently regarded as the best movie musical ever made, and the best film ever made in the "Freed Unit" at Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer . It topped the AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list and is ranked as the fifth - greatest American motion picture of all time in its updated list of the greatest American films in 2007 . In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry . In Sight & Sound magazine's 2017 list of the 50 greatest films of all time, Singin' in the Rain placed 20th. . </P>

When does singing in the rain take place