Musical/Dance

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Musical film

Musical film, motion picture consisting of a plot integrating musical numbers, singing and/or dancing as an important elements . Although usually considered an American genre, musical films from Japan, Italy, France, Great Britain, and Germany have contributed to the development of the type.

The movie musical exploits more fully than any other genre the two basic elements of the film medium—movement and sound.

The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895.

The Magic Lantern - La lanterne magique (1903) World`s first dancing film

The first musical film, The Jazz Singer (1927), starring Al Jolson, introduced the sound era of motion pictures. It was followed by a series of musicals hastily made to capitalize on the novelty of sound. One of the few outstanding films of this early period was Broadway Melody (1929), which won the Academy Award for best picture of 1928–29.

In the early 1930s the German director G.W. Pabst presented a serious musical film, The Threepenny Opera (1931; Die Dreigroschenoper), from the ballad opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The most popular films of this period, though, were the extravagantly imaginative U.S. films of Busby Berkeley (1895–1976), a former Broadway dance director who presented elaborately staged dance sequences within the framework of well-worn stories. The Berkeley spectaculars such as the Gold Diggers productions (1933–37), Footlight Parade (1933), and Forty-second Street (1933) often starred Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, or Dick Powell, all of whom became well-known musical performers.

Throughout the 1930’s dance became a more important component of movie musicals than ever before (or ever again). This focus on dance also increased the importance of the individual dancers. The films of the singing or dancing teams of the mid-1930s—including Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (The Gay Divorcee, 1934; Top Hat, 1935; and others) and Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald (Naughty Marietta, 1935; Rose Marie, 1936; and others)—gradually came to replace the Berkeley spectacles in popularity.

With the dawn of the 1930s, the “Golden Age of the Musical” began. In fact, Hollywood released over one hundred musical films in 1930 alone. The oversaturation of musical films from the 1930s ultimately tired viewers though, especially since this era coincided with the height of the Great Depression. Given viewers’ lack of interest for the musical film, the genre began to experience a commercial decline over the next few years. Moreover, since the public had come to associate the early use of color with musicals, the popularity of color productions likewise declined.

However, with Warner Brothers’ acquisition of choreographer Busby Berkeley, the musical genre was revived again. This was perhaps most apparent in his work with 42nd Street (Bacon, 1933), which featured impressive production numbers and enjoyed critical success. Hollywood’s “classical era of the musical film” remained popular up until the late 1940s and 1950s, at which point a production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer headed by Arthur Freed began to transition away from the approach embraced by old-fashioned musical films, to a structure that gave his directors and choreographers free rein and furthered the boundaries of musical films. Starting with Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944), the Freed unit began producing some of the most popular films of the genre, which included The Wizard of Oz (1939), Babes on Broadway (1941), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), all starring Judy Garland; Cover Girl (1944), starring Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth; and the sentimental Going My Way (1944), starring the popular singer Bing Crosby. Well-remembered films from the immediate post-World War II period are Easter Parade (1948); An American in Paris (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), both starring Gene Kelly; and Kiss Me, Kate (1953).

By the mid-1950s the demand for original musical films was declining, although film adaptations of a number of Broadway hits such as Oklahoma! (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), South Pacific (1958), The King and I (1956), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Camelot (1967), and Hello, Dolly! (1969) were great box office successes.

Through the 1960s and onward, the adaptation of stage material for the screen remained the predominant trend in Hollywood, partly due to its enormous success upfront. In fact, West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961), My Fair Lady (Cukor, 1964), The Sound of Music (Wise, 1965), and Oliver! (Reed, 1968) were all adapted from Broadway hits and each won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Over the next several years, the popularity of the musical film waxed and waned, finding success in films such as Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977), Grease (Kleiser, 1978), and Footloose (Ross, 1984).

There was also a growing subtlety in musicals, as in the French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964; Les Parapluies de Cherbourg); a tendency to use the musical to exploit the appeal of a popular singing star, as in the many films of Elvis Presley; and experimentation with the merging of innovative popular music and filmmaking techniques, as in the pictures of the English singing group the Beatles. In the late 1960s and early ’70s the musical suffered a decline in both popularity and artistry, despite the occasional success of such films as Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972). Later it was the music itself—rock, disco, or classical—that inspired the production of such films as Saturday Night Fever (1978), Grease (1978), Flashdance (1983), and Amadeus (1984).

With the arrival of the early 1990s, one of the more successful modern-day musical movements emerged: Disney’s animated musical blockbusters. Under this movement, Disney films such as The Little Mermaid (Clements and Musker, 1989), Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise, 1991), Aladdin (Clements and Musker, 1992), and The Lion King (Allers and Minkoff, 1994) were released in rapid succession, amassing an enormous fan base. Although the animated musical film has become a popular route for the genre in recent years, the success of films like Chicago (Marshall, 2002), Rent (Columbus, 2005), Sweeney Todd (Burton, 2007), and Les Misérables (Hooper, 2012) seems to indicate that large scale, live action musical productions are still very much relevant to film today. In addition, although the musical film characteristically contains certain elements reminiscent of theater that can be a bit difficult to translate to the screen, such hurdles are definitely not insurmountable and without a doubt, the medium of film can actually enable musicals to make use of settings and situations that could not possibly be replicated on the stage. With that said, although musical films can teeter on the verge of being too camp at times, if properly executed, such films can be extraordinarily well done and quite deserving of critical acclamation.