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Musical film
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The musical film is a film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The songs are used to advance the plot or develop the film's characters. A subgenre of the musical film is the musical comedy, which includes a strong element of humour as well as the usual music, dancing and storyline.
The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical.
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Encyclopedia
The musical film is a film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The songs are used to advance the plot or develop the film's characters. A subgenre of the musical film is the musical comedy, which includes a strong element of humour as well as the usual music, dancing and storyline.
The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery which would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if there is a live audience watching. In a sense, the viewer becomes the deictic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it.
Western musical films
Musical films of the classical sound era
The 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s are considered to be the golden age of the musical film, when the genre's popularity was at its height in the Western world.
The first musicals
Musical short films were made by Robby Ray Stewart in 1923-24, followed by thousands of Cell phones shorts (1926-30), many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers. In 1929, the first all-talking feature Lights of New York (1928) which included a musical sequence in a night club, was released. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than a year all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The first movie that could be said to be a musical was The Broadway Melody, it was a smash hit and won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1929. There was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed version of Broadway hits.
Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor. This was followed by the first all color all talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show (1929). The most popular film of 1929 was in fact the second all-color all-talking feature which was entitled Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929). This film broke all box office records and remained the highest grossing film ever produced until 1939. Suddenly the market became saturated with musicals, revues and operettas.
The following all-color musicals were produced in 1929 and 1930 alone: The Show of Shows (1929), Sally (1929),The Vagabond King (1930), Follow Thru (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Golden Dawn (1930), Hold Everything (1930), The Rogue Song (1930), Song of the Flame (1930), Song of the West (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Under A Texas Moon (1930), The Bride of the Regiment (1930), Whoopee! (1930), The King of Jazz (1930), Viennese Nights (1930), Kiss Me Again (1930).
In addition, there were scores of musical features released with color sequences. By late 1930, audiences had been oversaturated with musicals and studios were forced to cut the music from films that were then being released. For example, Life of the Party (1930) was originally produced as an all-color all-talking musical comedy. Before it was released, however, the songs were cut out. The same thing happened to Fifty Million Frenchmen (1931) and Manhattan Parade (1932) both of which had been filmed entirely in Technicolor. The public had quickly come to associate color with musicals and thus the decline in their popularity also resulted in a decline in the use of color.
Busby Berkeley
The taste in musicals was finally revived once again in 1933.
Director Busby Berkeley began to enhance the traditional dance number with ideas drawn from the drill precision he had experienced as a soldier during the First World War. In films such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street (1933), Berkeley choreographed a number of films in his unique style. Berkeley's numbers typically begin on a stage but gradually transcend the limitations of theatrical space: his ingenious routines, involving human bodies forming patterns like a kaleidoscope, could never fit onto a real stage and the intended perspective is viewing from straight above.
Musical stars
Musical stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were among the most popular and highly respected personalities in Hollywood during the classical era; the Fred and Ginger pairing was particularly successful, resulting in a number of classic films, such as Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937 film).
Many dramatic actors gladly participated in musicals as a way to break away from their typical typecasting. For instance, the multi-talented James Cagney had originally risen to fame as a stage singer and dancer, but his repeated casting in "tough guy" roles and gangster movies gave him few chances to display these talents. Cagney's Oscar-winning role in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) allowed him to sing and dance, and he considered it to be one of his finest moments.
Many comedies (and a few dramas) included their own musical numbers. The Marx Brothers' movies included a musical number in nearly every film, allowing the Brothers to highlight their musical talents. Their final film, entitled Love Happy (1949), featured Vera Ellen, considered to be the best dancer among her colleagues and professionals in the half century.
The Freed Unit
During the late 1940s and into the 1950s, a production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer headed by Arthur Freed made the transition from old-fashioned musical films, whose formula had become repetitive, to something new. In 1939, Freed was hired as associate producer of The Wizard of Oz, and rescued the film's signature song, Over the Rainbow, from the editor's scissors. Recruiting his own workers, mostly from Broadway and the New York stage, Freed was responsible for bringing such talents as director Vincente Minnelli to the world of film. Starting in 1944 with Meet Me in St. Louis, the Freed Unit worked independently of its own studio to produce some of the most popular and well-known examples of the genre. The products of this unit include Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The Band Wagon (1953). This era allowed the greatest talents in movie musical history to flourish, including Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, Mickey Rooney, Vera Ellen, Jane Powell, Howard Keel, and Kathryn Grayson. Fred Astaire was also coaxed out of retirement for Easter Parade and made a permanent comeback.
The post-classical musical films
The 1950s musical
Since the 1950s, the musical film has declined in popularity. One reason was the change in culture to rock n' roll and the freedom and youth associated with it. Elvis Presley made a few movies that have been equated with the old musicals in terms of form. Most of the musical films of the 50s and 60s, for example Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music, were straightforward adaptations or restagings of successful stage productions.
The musical film today
After the 1960s, filmmakers tended to avoid "musical films" in favor of using music by popular rock or pop bands as background music, in the hope of selling a soundtrack album to fans. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Films about actors, dancers or singers have been made as successful modern-style musical films, with the music as a diegetic part of the storyline. Many animated movies also include traditional musical numbers; some of these movies later became live stage productions, such as Beauty and the Beast, Cry-Baby and The Lion King.
In the early 2000s, the musical film began to rise in popularity once more, with new works such as Moulin Rouge!, Across the Universe, High School Musical, and Enchanted; film remakes of stage shows, such as Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Dreamgirls, Sweeney Todd, Little Shop of Horrors, and Mamma Mia!; and even film versions of stage shows that were themselves based on non-musical films, such as The Producers, Hairspray and Reefer Madness. Under the mainstream radar, there have been acclaimed independent musical films, such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Dancer in the Dark; and foreign musical films, such as 8 femmes, The Other Side of the Bed, Yes Nurse, No Nurse and Clear Blue Tuesday. In 2004, the New York Musical Theatre Festival presented a week-long festival of modern movie musicals that included 10 independent features made since 1996, as well as several programs of short movie musicals.
A new wave of Teen Musicals have come with the success of The Cheetah Girls franchise. After the first was a big success in ratings and album sales, Disney released High School Musical franchise, and subsequently Camp Rock.
Indian musical films
An exception to the decline of the musical film is Indian cinema, especially the Bollywood film industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where the majority of films have been and still are musicals. Thanks to the incumbent Bollywood formula of the often garish and unrealistic "song and dance" routine, and the lack of an independent Indian popular music scene until the late nineties, the Indian film and popular music industries have been intertwined since virtually the beginning of film production in the country. Some top playback singers are celebrities in India due to the demand for so-called filmi singles and albums. This trend continues even to date, although there has always been a Parallel Cinema movement where Indian art films often have no songs, such as Matrubhoomi, 15, Park Avenue, and Bengali films by Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen for example. Many of the newer mainstream Bollywood films are also breaking the mold by not including any songs, such as Company, Black and Chak De India for example.
Influence
In the 2000s, Bollywood musicals played an instrumental role in the revival of the Western musical genre. Baz Luhrmann stated that his successful musical film Moulin Rouge! (2001) was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals. The film thus pays homage to India, incorporating an Indian-themed play based on the ancient Sanskrit drama The Little Clay Cart and a Bollywood-style dance sequence with a song from the film China Gate. The critical and financial success of Moulin Rouge! renewed interest in the then-moribund Western musical genre, and subsequently films such as Chicago, The Producers, Rent, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, Across the Universe, The Phantom of the Opera, Enchanted and Mamma Mia! were produced, fueling a renaissance of the genre. The Guru and The 40-Year-Old Virgin also feature Indian-style song-and-dance sequences; A. R. Rahman, an Indian film composer, was recruited for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams; a musical version of Hum Aapke Hain Koun has played in London's West End; the Bollywood musical Lagaan (2001) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; two other Bollywood films Devdas (2002) and Rang De Basanti (2006) were nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film; and Danny Boyle's Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008) also features a Bollywood-style song-and-dance number during the film's end credits.
Lists of musical films
See also
- List of movies based on stage plays or musicals
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