It’s not that he directed nothing but musicals—I will go to bat for Charade any day of the week—but the fact that we don’t really have musicals as much anymore is probably why there’s not much place for directors like Stanley Donen these days. Of his twenty-eight movie credits, a considerable portion of them were musicals, often big-budget Technicolor ones. Including, of course, his best known film, Singin’ In the Rain.

It’s not surprising, of course, since he got his start as a choreographer. He worked with Gene Kelly. What caused their falling out depends on whose story you get, of course, but they did scintillating work together. I’ve always fallen on the Kelly side of the Kelly-Astaire divide, and no one captured Gene Kelly’s dancing the way Stanley Donen did. There was something astounding to their work together, something you’d never see in any other movie.

Oh, he worked with Astaire, too, though Funny Face is probably the movie of his that I’ve seen and like the least. He worked with any number of greats, some of the best names of Hollywood. Most of the great dancers of the ’50s and ’60s did at least one movie with Donen—he also directed the “Dancing on the Ceiling” video for Lionel Ritchie, if that’s more your speed. He directed the great little thriller Charade and the trying-to-be-Charade Arabesque. A fine list of films, even if they aren’t all greats.

I miss big-budget Technicolor musicals. Okay, I haven’t seen La La Land, I grant you. But I don’t think it’s quite what I’m missing. I love movies with scope and grandeur and light and colour. I mean, I love a lot of movies, but it’s one of the two genres I want most to bring back, if I controlled what movies got made. They’re escapist fare, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little escapism, and they’re easier to adapt to changing standards of acceptable social behaviour than escapist fare with lots of guns, which seems to be most of what we get these days. Though goodness knows I wouldn’t stop superhero movies’ getting made, if I were in charge of things.

As I was researching this article, I came across something online called “Stanley Donen Is Still Alive.” Which he is. He’s 93. He’s not making movies these days. But he is still alive, and he is one of a handful of links left back to a time that is long gone by. He’s exactly the sort of person I started writing this column for.