Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! The Evolution of the Movie Musical

A Film Lecture Series Presented by Librarian Doug Swiszcz 

 

 Wednesdays, September 26-October 31, 2012 at 1:00 PM

Barrington Public Library

We're all familiar with the image: a euphoric Gene Kelly, so happy that he is in love that--inclement weather be dashed--he just has to sing and dance in the street. Pouring rain can't dampen his spirits; that's how effusive his feelings are.

On the stage, song and dance are an accepted means of expression.  What about song and dance in the movies? Film is a more natural, realistic medium--worlds removed from the artifice and high degree of stylization that we think nothing of when we experience live performance.

But once the technology of talking pictures came about, movie makers attempted to wed the artifice of the one medium with the naturalism of the other. It was definitely a growth process. Early movie musicals were often revue-style productions that featured singers and dancers performing "face out,"  as if they were on a proscenium stage, in a Broadway theater. Many early movie musicals, in fact, revolved around a "let's put on a show" story, as if the only way that filmgoers would readily accept the idea of people breaking into song and dance was if these "numbers" took place on stage within the movie.

Movie musicals really started coming into their own when song and dance were used in a cinematic way, with a camera that incorporated their rhythm and movement to advance the story, or to reveal characters' feelings. In the film that opens my series, Love Me Tonight (1932), the Rodgers and Hart song "Isn't It Romantic" is introduced by a tailor (Maurice Chevalier) in the city of Paris, and is then taken up by other characters, through various means of transportation, to the countryside, where we find it being sung by a lovely princess (Jeanette MacDonald). Here, we see music used as a means of linking two disparate characters--the lowly city tailor and the high-born princess in her country chateau.

Of course, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers used song and dance as a kind of "courtship ritual" in the many movies that they made together--he wooed, she initially demurred, but in the end they ended up in each others' arms.We'll see such a love story told through dance to a tuneful Irving Berlin score in Top Hat (1935).

Musicals written specifically for the screen were quite common in the hey day of movie musicals--and no studio excelled at this form better than MGM, thanks to a creative and technical team headed up by producer Arthur Freed. And with talents like Judy Garland and Gene Kelly--whose films Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), respectively, will be shown as part of this series--how could they go wrong?

As the golden age of the Hollywood musical started to decline in the late fifties and early sixties, we saw movie studios increasingly turning to Broadway properties to transfer to the screen (for fear that audiences would not come to a movie musical unless the show already have a proven track record on stage). Some of these adaptations were quite successful, but many of them were unimaginative transcriptions of their stage version. Like the early movie musicals, these movies were staged and filmed in such a way that the casts might as well have been up on a proscenium stage. Where was the cinematic expression that could enliven these properties? Of course, not all such adaptations were so static and "stagey." The film version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) presented a robust adaptation of a smash Broadway musical.

As tastes in popular music changed, Hollywood musicals all but died out. Younger film audiences, raised on rock music, were less likely to be captivated by characters bursting into song up on the screen. But director Rob Marshall found a way to adapt the Broadway musical Chicago (2002) into a film so that it appealed to these younger moviegoers. The snappy, savvy movie went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in the year of its release--the first film musical to earn that accolade in over 30 years.

I hope that you will join me for this look at the evolution of the movie musical.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Doug Swiszcz

The line-up:

Sept 26^th Love Me Tonight (1932) -- Black & white -- 89 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct  3^rd  Top Hat (1935)  -- Black & white -- 101 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct 10^th  Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) -- Color -- 113 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct. 17^th  Singin’ in the Rain (1952) -- Color -- 103 minutes -- Unrated.

Oct. 24^th Fiddler on the Roof (1971) -- Color -- 181 minutes -- Rated G.

Oct 31^st  Chicago (2002) -- Color -- 113 minutes -- Rated PG-13.