Under contract at MGM and assigned to the studio’s famed Freed Unit, the twenty-five-year old Stanley Donen, in his first film as director – a credit he shares with Gene Kelly – captures the exuberantly youthful energy of three sailors on a one-day pass in New York City. The film’s famous opening, shot on iconic locations at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and Rockefeller Center, immediately distinguishes the film from previous Hollywood musicals through its dynamic emphasis on movement – both of the camera and of the actors within the frame – and through the use of musical numbers that emerge directly from the story, qualities which would become Donen trademarks.