American Film Genres The Musical

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American Film GenresThe Musical

• Niskanen
• 26.4.2008

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The musical in film industry

• early mixed variety shows including short films
  and song-dance performances
• minstrel shows, Wild West shows, vaudeville
• musical accompaniment of silent cinema
• sound in 1927 The Jazz Singer marketing sound
  cinema
• Vitaphone sound system introduced for film 1926
  the 1st film was a compilation of an opera
  singer, banjo player, classical music, and a
  Spanish dance group
• musical play Show Boat (3 movie versions)
• recording Broadway shows, same talent
• influences from variety, music stage, operetta
  etc.

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film industry

• again the industry talked about comedy, romance,
  melodrama etc. with many musical numbers
• film versions of popular Broadway and Tin Pan
  Alley shows
• 1929 55 musicals produced 1930 77, but 1931
  11, and 1932 10 (Rick Altman)
• the term musical used by film industry from
  1930 on, was an adjective
• also other genres have musical numbers (Rio
  Bravo femme fatale as a night club singer)
• 1933 music romantic comedy - the musical as
  genre term

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Studios and the musical- musicals often grouped
after producers, choreographers, or performers

• MGM Arthur Freed Unit - Singin in the Rain,
  dirs. Stanley Donen Gene Kelly, 1951/52
  self-reflexivity
• RKO, Pandro S. Berman producer, Fred Astaire and
  Ginger Rogers musicals in the 1930s
• Swing Time, 1936
• Warners post-depression era backstage musicals,
  contemporary themes and settings
• 42nd Street, 1933
• Paramount Maurice Chevalier films of 1929-32
  operetta Ernst Lubitsch Rouben Mamoulian
• Universal Rogers Pasternak formula starring
  Deanna Durbin, late 1930s

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Styles in choreography and dance

• Minnelli (dir.), Donen (dir.), Kelly and Astaire
  (dancer-choreographers) --integration of musical
  numbers in the plot
• vs. Busby Berkeley -- spectacular scenes
• Fred Astaires nascissistic refined femininity
  vs. Gene Kellys lively, masculine street dances

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Rick Altmans grouping of musicals(in The
American Film Musical)

• folk musical creating community in a small town
  Oklahoma, 1943, Harvey Girls, 1946,
• Meet Me in St. Louis, dir. Vincente Minnelli,
  1944 (though not a pure example, as the 2 couples
  are not opposite, oppisition St. Louis vs. NYC)
• fairy tale bringing unity in a fantastic kingdom
  
• The Wizard of Oz, dir. Victor Fleming, 1939
• backstage putting on a show
• 42 nd Street, dir. Lloyd Bacon Busby Berkeley,
  1933
• Singin in the Rain

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Altmans semantic-syntactic model

• Semantic elements
• characters romantic couple
• setting varies according to the 3 types
• Backstage Broadway theater (film studio)
• Fairy Tale mythical country, Venice
• Folk small town, rural setting
• events putting on a show, governing a country,
  celebrating and forming a community
• acting combination of rhythmic movement and
  realism
• sound micture of diegetic music and dialogue

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• Syntax (the structures into which semantic
  elements are arranged)
• Narrative strategy dual-focus built around
  parallel stars of opposite sex and different
  cultural values. Narrative built around
  comparison and simultaneity.
• Couple/plot parallelism (or causal link) between
  formation of couple and success in plot venture
• Music/plot music and dance as expression of
  personal and communal joy, signifying romantic
  triumph over all limitations challenge dance
• Narrative/number continuity between realism and
  rhythm, dialogue and diegetic music, numbers
  stiched into the plot, smooth transitions
• Image/sound classical narrative sound hierarchy
  (image over sound) reversed and climactic moments
  (audio dissolve) often from diegetic music to
  non-diegetic

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Integration of musical numbers

• anything between the musical numbers having
  nothing to do with the story, with them advancing
  the story, highlighting the theme or emotion, or
  through lyrical content
• revue musicals different comic numbers that
  dont build up a narrative
• escapism during the musical numbers illusion of
  community
• audio dissolve connects two levels of reality,
  two separate places or times - mark and bridge
  oppositions
• Feuer (The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth
  of Entertainment, 1992) 'spontaneous
  self-expression through song and dance'

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Singin in the Rain

• Semantic elements of a backstage musical
• romantic couple Don and Kathy w/ different values
  (seemingly, but quickly resolved)
• setting backstage is a film set (early sound
  film)
• task to compelte who makes it in the sound
  cinema Dueling Cavalier turned into Dancing
  Cavalier plus save the studio and their careers
• relationship building tied up with the success of
  the movie they are making
• self-reflexivity a film about making a film,
  references to Hollywood history
• Peter Wollen the film contrasts artifice vs. the
  natural, and illusion vs. reality

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Popular later musicals

• West Side Story, 1957
• Sound of Music, 1965 (Rodgers Hammerstein)
• Jailhouse Rock, 1957 (rock musical starts)
• Cabaret, dir. Bob Fosse, 1972, w/ Liza Minnelli
• Grease, 1978
• Saturday Night Fever, 1977, w/ John Travolta
  (diegetic action)
• Hair, dir. Milos Forman, 1979, choreogr. Thyla
  Twarp
• Blues Brothers, 1980
• Evita, 1996
• Chicago, 2002
• Revisionist musical Nashville (Robert Altman,
  1975) All That Jazz (1979)

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The End

• so the concept of genre varies according to who
  uses it the film industry, a film critic, the
  audience, movie theater marketing
• genres have always been hybrid, often often genre
  vs. style also cycles, sub-genres etc. exist in
  film history
• the concept genre has both advantages and
  disadvantages in academic analysis of films - use
  it as a tool to look at films!
• papers due sun 11.5., please email papers and
  questions about them to eija.niskanen_at_gmail.com
• Have a Good Summer!