Every Singin' in the Rain reference in Babylon

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Babylon.

It's no secret that Damien Chazelle loves Singin' in the Rain. The director has often cited Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's 1952 classic as one of his personal favorites, and when it came time for him to direct his own lavish movie-musical, 2016's La La Land, he was heavily influenced by Kelly's iconic tap-dancing and vibrant dream ballets. La La Land star Ryan Gosling has even said that while filming, they would watch Singin' in the Rain "every day for inspiration."

But with Chazelle's latest film, the 1920s-set Babylon, the director takes his fandom a step further. Not only does Babylon cover the same subject matter as Singin' in the Rain — charting Hollywood's seismic shift from silent films to talkies — but it's packed with winking allusions and references to the beloved movie-musical. Singin' in the Rain isn't the sole inspiration for Babylon: Chazelle previously told EW that he carefully studied silent film classics like Sunrise, Wings, The Docks of New York, and The Passion of Joan of Arc, and his characters are inspired by real-life actors like John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, and Joan Crawford. But Babylon and Singin' in the Rain share a lot of DNA, and every other scene seems to invite comparison, from familiar-sounding lines to carefully selected costume choices.

To be clear, both films couldn't be more different in tone. One is a candy-colored musical where Gene Kelly cheerfully tap dances in a thunderstorm; another is a hedonistic epic stuffed with orgies, cocaine, and a literal waterfall of elephant poop. Chazelle himself has described his version as an "almost darker companion piece" to Donen and Kelly's classic, and in a recent interview, he told Slashfilm that he wanted to look "at the period in a different way" and fully capture the "insanity" of pre-Code Hollywood.

Still, the similarities are striking. Some of them are blink-and-you'll-miss-it nods that you'll only catch if you've spent too much time watching TCM. Others are designed to be more obvious — to the point where Babylon literally ends with a flash-forward to the 1950s, as a character pops into a theater to watch (you guessed it) Singin' in the Rain on the big screen.

Here, EW rounds up all the ways that Babylon pays tribute to (or borrows from) Singin' in the Rain.

Scott Garfield/Paramount; Everett Collection Margot Robbie in 'Babylon,' Jean Hagen in 'Singin' in the Rain'

Two silent starlets

Perhaps the most obvious parallel is between Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont and Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy. It's no accident that the two have similar last names: Both are glamorous actresses who find fame in the silent era — only to fall from grace as Hollywood shifts its attention to younger, shinier objects that are easier on the ears. Much of Nellie's career emulates Lina's: In one scene, a vocal coach tries to help Nellie curb her unrefined Jersey accent, a joke copied from Lina's iconic diction scene. (Watching Babylon, you half expect Robbie to deliver a shrill "And I can't stand 'im!") There's also an extended sequence where, like Lina, Nellie tries to adjust to filming with newfangled audio technology, to disastrous results. (More on that in a minute.)

With her bleach-blonde curls and shrieking voice, Lina is the cartoonish villain of Singin' in the Rain, and Hagen earned one of the film's few Oscar nominations for her dialed-up, nasally performance. Robbie is just as over the top, but she plays Nellie with far more sympathy, turning her into Babylon's flawed but tragic heroine. Still, Chazelle drives the point home later in the film, as Manny Torres (Diego Calva) directs Nellie in a scene from a French period piece. Nellie's costume is almost identical to Lina's look in The Dueling Cavalier, right down to the towering powdered wig and carefully placed beauty mark. The kicker? Lina and Nellie read almost identical lines, each wooing a love interest named "Pierre."

Brad Pitt vs. Gene Kelly

Paramount Pictures Lukas Haas, Brad Pitt and Spike Jonze in 'Babylon.'

If Robbie is the Lina Lamont of Babylon, then Brad Pitt is the film's Don Lockwood. Pitt plays silent icon Jack Conrad, who, like Kelly's hero Don, finds himself unsure how to navigate Hollywood's overnight shift to sound. Don finds his second wind by singing and dancing, while Jack struggles to adjust. Both films have a scene where Don/Jack throw out the script, replacing a lengthy romantic monologue with an arm kiss and a repeated "I love you, I love you, I love you." And just to make the comparison even more obvious, there's a brief sequence where Jack literally performs a bouncy, on-camera version of "Singin' in the Rain." (The song itself was a 1920s hit, long before either film hit theaters.)

Party hard

Hollywood has long been fascinated by the debauchery and excess of the '20s, and both films capture the era's rowdy party scene, albeit in radically different ways. Both Babylon and Singin' in the Rain kick things off with a raucous shindig, hosted by industry heavyweights. The earlier film, of course, has a decidedly tamer vision of 1920s depravity, where maybe the most scandalous thing that happens is Debbie Reynolds jumping out of a cake. (She also accidentally smashes a second, smaller cake in Hagen's face.) In Babylon, that party scene stretches for about 20 minutes, featuring enough nudity, drugs, and explicit sex to make a Hays Code-era censor's head explode.

Roll sound

Perhaps the most explicit nod to Singin' in the Rain comes about halfway through Babylon, as Robbie's Nellie shoots her first scene with sound. Everything that can go wrong does, as Nellie and the crew struggle with microphone placement, accidental interruptions, and flubbed lines. It's also a near beat-for-beat retread of one of Singin' in the Rain's most comedic scenes, where Lina and Don attempt to shoot a scene from their French Revolution romance, The Dueling Cavalier. All that's missing is Robbie shrieking, "I can't make love to a bush."

A fitting finale

Now, let's say you've never actually seen Singin' in the Rain, and you've just sat through three hours of references and allusions that went over your head. Luckily for you, Chazelle wants to make sure there's no doubt in your mind when you leave the theater — so Babylon ends with a literal supercut of footage from Singin' in the Rain. That's right: The film ends with a flash-forward to the 1950s, as Calva's Manny wanders into a surprise showing of Singin' in the Rain. As he stares up at the screen in wonder, Chazelle cuts between Manny's flashbacks and actual footage from the film he's watching, just to make the comparison extra clear.

Babylon is in theaters now.

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