Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. The songs are used to advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but some musical films (e.g.Down Argentine Way) simply plop the songs in as unrelated "specialties" (also called "production numbers") — as with Carmen Miranda's set pieces. A subgenre of the musical film is the musical comedy, which includes a strong element of humor 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.

Musical films in the Western world

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 highest in the Western world.

The first musicals

Musical short films were made by Lee De Forest in 1923-24. After this, thousands of Vitaphone shorts (1926–30) were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers, in which a musical soundtrack played while the actors portrayed their characters just as they did in silent films: without dialogue. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was not only the first movie with synchronized dialogue, but the first feature film that was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face;" "Toot, Toot, Tootsie", "Blue Skies" and "My Mammy". Historian Scott Eyman wrote, "As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights, Sam Goldwyn's wife Frances looked around at the celebrities in the crowd. She saw 'terror in all their faces', she said, as if they knew that 'the game they had been playing for years was finally over. Still, only Jolson's sequences had sound; most of the film was silent. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a musical sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than a year all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively. The Broadway Melody (1929) had a show-biz plot about two sisters competing for a charming song and dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first "All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing" feature film, it was a 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 versions of Broadway hits. The Love Parade (Paramount 1929) starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton. 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. Marlene Dietrich sang songs successfully in her films, and Rodgers and Hart wrote a few well-received films, but even their popularity waned by 1932.

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). Many dramatic actors gladly participated in musicals as a way to break away from their 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. (However, they also produced Technicolor remakes of such musicals as Show Boat, which had previously been filmed in the 1930s.) In 1939, Freed was hired as associate producer for the film Babes in Arms. Starting in 1944 with Meet Me in St. Louis, the Freed Unit worked somewhat 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 saw musical stars become household names, 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 1960s musical

In the 1960s the success of the films West Side Story, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, and The Sound of Music, suggested that the traditional musical was in good health. However popular musical tastes were being heavily affected by rock and roll and the freedom and youth associated with it, and indeed 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 such as Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music were straightforward adaptations or restagings of successful stage productions. The most successful musical of the 1960s created specifically for film was Mary Poppins, one of Disney's biggest hits.

Despite the success of these relatively few musicals, Hollywood failed to capitalise on them. It produced a series of enormous musical flops in the late 1960s and early 1970s which appeared to seriously misjudge public taste. The flops included Camelot, Finian's Rainbow, Hello Dolly!, Sweet Charity, Doctor Dolittle, Star!, Darling Lili, Paint Your Wagon, Song of Norway, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Man of La Mancha, Lost Horizon and Mame. Collectively and individually these failures crippled several of the major studios. By the early 1970s it was felt that the film musical had had its day.

1970s to 1990s

With the traditional musical seen as box-office poison, by the mid-1970s filmmakers avoided the genre in favor of using music by popular rock or pop bands as background music, in the hope of selling a soundtrack album to fans. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was originally released in 1975 and was a critical failure until it started midnight screenings in the 80's where it achieved cult status. Some musicals released in the New Hollywood period experimented with the form, such as Bugsy Malone, Lisztomania, and New York, New York. The 1978 film version of Grease was considered a smash hit; its songs were original compositions done in a 1950s pop style. However, the sequel Grease 2 bombed at the box-office, as did a calamitous attempt to resurrect the old-style musical in Can't Stop the Music (a vehicle for The Village People) which was released in 1980. Instead, 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. Film musicals were still made, but were financially and critically less successful than in the 1950s heyday. They included The Wiz, At Long Last Love, Funny Lady (Barbra Streisand's sequel to Funny Girl), New York, New York, A Little Night Music and Hair amongst others. By the 1980s, financiers increasingly grew in confidence with the musical genre, partly buoyed by the relative health of the musical on Broadway and London's West End. Productions of the 80s and 90s included Annie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Victor Victoria, Little Shop of Horrors, Absolute Beginners and Evita. Little Shop of Horrors was based on an off-Broadway musical adaptation of a 1960 Roger Corman film, a precursor of later film-to-stage-to-film adaptations.

Many animated movies of the period - predominately from Disney - included traditional musical numbers. Howard Ashman, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz had previous musical theater experience and wrote songs for animated films during this time, supplanting Disney workhorses the Sherman Brothers. Starting with 1989's The Little Mermaid, the Disney Renaissance gave new life to the Film Musical. Other successful animated musicals included Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas from Disney proper, The Nightmare Before Christmas from Disney division Touchstone Pictures, The Prince of Egypt from Dreamworks, Anastasia from Fox and Don Bluth, and from Paramount. (Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King were adapted for the stage after their blockbuster success.)

The 2000s musical

In the 2000s, the musical film began to rise in popularity once more, with new works such as Moulin Rouge!, Across the Universe, and Enchanted; film adaptations of stage shows, such as Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Dreamgirls, , and Mamma Mia!; and even film versions of stage shows that were themselves based on non-musical films, such as The Producers, Hairspray, Reefer Madness, and Nine. Across the Universe, Moulin Rouge!, and Mamma Mia! continued the trend of using popular hit songs in musicals. 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 Women, The Other Side of the Bed and Yes Nurse! No Nurse!. Some musicals films of the decade became successes without receiving a theatrical release, like the first two made-for-television High School Musical films and the web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. 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. In contrast to the 1990s, fewer major animated features of the 2000s included musical numbers, as the success of Pixar and Dreamworks computer animated films (which were not musicals) upset Disney's dominance. The 2009 film The Princess and the Frog was considered a throwback to the Disney musical style.

Musical films today

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Burlesque, Rio, and Tangled are films released in 2010 that include musical numbers. Successful Broadway musicals will receive movie adaptations - such as Rock of Ages, Cleo and Aida. Remakes of classic musical films are also planned, including Annie and A Star Is Born for 2012.

Indian musical films

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An exception to the decline of the musical film is Indian cinema, especially the three main branches, Bollywood film industry based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the Kollywood industry based in Chennai (formerly Madras) and Tollywood cinema based in Hyderabad, where the majority of films have been and still are musicals.

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 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.

Soviet musical film under Stalin

Unlike the musical films of Hollywood and Bollywood, popularly identified with escapism, the Soviet musical was first and foremost a form of propaganda. Vladimir Lenin said that cinema was “the most important of the arts.” His successor, Joseph Stalin, also recognized the power of cinema in efficiently spreading Communist Party doctrine. Movies were widely popular in the 1920s, but it was foreign cinema that dominated the Soviet moviegoing market. Films from Germany and the U.S. proved more entertaining than Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein’s historical dramas. By the 1930s it was clear that if the Soviet cinema was to compete with its Western counterparts, it would have to give audiences what they wanted: the glamour and fantasy they got from Hollywood. The musical film, which emerged in the 1930s embodied the ideal combination of entertainment and official ideology.

A struggle between laughter for laughter’s sake and entertainment with a clear ideological message would define the golden age of the Soviet musical of the 1930s and 1940s. Then-head of the film industry Boris Shumyatsky sought to emulate Hollywood’s conveyor belt method of production, going so far as to suggest the establishment of a Soviet Hollywood.

The Jolly Fellows

In 1930 the esteemed Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein went to the United States with fellow director Grigori Aleksandrov to study Hollywood’s filmmaking process. The American films greatly impacted Aleksandrov, particularly the musicals. He returned in 1932, and in 1934 directed The Jolly Fellows, the first Soviet musical. The film was light on plot and focused more on the comedy and musical numbers. Party officials at first met the film with great hostility. Aleksandrov defended his work by arguing the notion of laughter for laughter’s sake. Finally, when Aleksandrov showed the film to Stalin, the leader decided that musicals were an effective means of spreading propaganda. Messages like the importance of collective labor and rags-to-riches stories would become the plots of most Soviet musicals.

"Movies for the Millions"

The success of The Jolly Fellows ensured a place in Soviet cinema for the musical format, but immediately Shumyatsky set up strict guidelines to make sure the films promoted Communist values. Shumyatsky’s decree “Movies for the Millions” demanded conventional plots, characters, and montage to successfully portray Socialist Realism (the glorification of industry and the working class) on film.

The first successful blend of a social message and entertainment was Aleksandrov’s Circus (1936). It starred his wife, Lyubov Orlova (an operatic singer who had also appeared in The Jolly Fellows) as an American circus performer who has to immigrate to the USSR from the U.S. because she has a mixed race child, whom she had with a black man. Amidst the backdrop of lavish musical productions, she finally finds love and acceptance in the USSR, providing the message that racial tolerance can only be found in the Soviet Union.

The influence of Busby Berkeley’s choreography on Aleksandrov’s directing can be seen in the musical number leading up to the climax. Another, more obvious reference to Hollywood is the Charlie Chaplin impersonator who provides comic relief throughout the film. Four million people in Moscow and Leningrad went to see Circus during its first month in theaters.

Another of Aleksandrov’s more popular films was The Bright Path (1940). This was a reworking of the fairytale Cinderella set in the contemporary Soviet Union. The Cinderella of the story was again Orlova, who by this time was the most popular star in the USSR. It was a fantasy tale, but the moral of the story was that a better life comes from hard work. Whereas in Circus, the musical numbers involved dancing and spectacle, the only type of choreography in Bright Path is the movement of factory machines. The music was limited to Orlova’s singing. Here, work provided the spectacle.

Ivan Pyryev

The other director of musical films was Ivan Pyryev. Unlike Aleksandrov, the focus of Pyryev’s films was life on the collective farms. His films, Tractor Drivers (1939), The Swineherd and the Shepherd (1941), and his most famous, Cossacks of the Kuban (1949) all starred his wife, Marina Ladynina. Like in Aleksandrov’s Bright Path, the only choreography was the work the characters were doing on film. Even the songs were about the joys of working.

Rather than having a specific message for any of his films, Pyryev promoted Stalin’s slogan “life has become better, life has become more joyous.” Sometimes this message was in stark contrast with the reality of the time. During the filming of Cossacks of the Kuban, the Soviet Union was going through a postwar famine. In reality, the actors who were singing about a time of prosperity were hungry and malnourished. The films did, however, provide escapism and optimism for the viewing public.

Volga-Volga

The most popular film of the brief era of Stalinist musicals was Alexandrov’s 1938 film Volga-Volga. The star, again, was Lyubov Orlova and the film featured singing and dancing, having nothing to do with work. It is the most unusual of its type. The plot surrounds a love story between two individuals who want to play music. They are unrepresentative of Soviet values in that their focus is more on their music than their jobs. The gags poke fun at the local authorities and bureaucracy. There is no glorification of industry since it takes place in a small rural village. Work is not glorified either, since the plot revolves around a group of villagers using their vacation time to go on a trip up the Volga to perform in Moscow.

Volga-Volga followed the aesthetic principles of Socialist Realism rather than the ideological tenets. It became Stalin’s favorite movie and he gave it as a gift to President Roosevelt during WWII. It is another example of one of the films that claimed life is better. Released at the height of Stalin’s purges, it provided escapism and a comforting illusion for the public.

Lists of musical films

See and for a list of musicals in alphabetical order; note that not all of these have been made into films.

See List of musical films by year for a list of musical films in chronological order.

See List of Bollywood films for a list of Bollywood musical films.

References

See also

List of movies based on stage plays or musicals

AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals

Category:Film genres Category:Music media