And Nellie's plot is straight out of Singin' in the Rain, as she tries to enunciate as an aristocrat in a talkie. The tone-deaf reference to that movie recurs awkwardly through the rest of Babylon. Chazelle shows the 1930's Hollywood of studio power and control to be brutal and cruel. But Singin' in the Rain's version of the transition to talkies is cheerful, and to some of us, sappy, the opposite of the ruthlessness Babylon has just exposed.
