swo17 wrote:Yeah, here are 10 pre-'30s releases. There are even less westerns. And if I'm being generous, the only musicals I see are the Lubitsch Eclipse, Tales of Hoffmann, Jubilee, A Woman Is a Woman, Topsy Turvy/The Mikado, and The Music Room.
You're being extremely generous if you're counting a film without musical numbers in it as a musical!
EDIT: I'd forgotten that A Woman Is a Woman did contain an actual song, and not just the threat of one. Swo has duly slapped me about backstage and told me to pull myself together. Nevertheless, it's still not a musical, and most of the other suggestions here are seriously stretching the definition.
Last edited by zedz on Wed Jul 17, 2013 10:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Musicals are (more or less) descended from operettas (such as stuff by Offenbach and Strauss) which are (more or less) descended from singspiels (like Magic Fluete and Fidelio) which are monetheless generally classed as "operas". ;~}
Are you talking about Altman's The American Film Musical? Is it not supposed to be any good? I have a copy that I've been meaning to read for awhile now.
No, it's extremely good, if very occasionally willfully idiosyncratic. But that's to be excused given that the book is a foundational text of genre theory and criticism. Altman's allowed to set parameters for what is and what is not a musical (which is certainly a less fraught project than trying to define what is and what is not a film noir). My frustration comes from exasperation with genre parameters and thinking that it's just not good enough to exclude Les Parapluies de Cherbourg from the musical genre for the sole reason that no one speaks a line of dialogue in it. If it's 99 and 44/100 percent a musical, it's a musical. Coming up with a separate genre category just to contain that film and maybe less than a dozen others seems ridiculous.
Which would fit the idea of a 'musical' very well. The term 'musical' was unknown in Germany at the time, and late Weimar sound film musicals were called 'Tonfilmoperette', even though there's very little or no difference formally between something like "Love me tonight" and "Der Kongress tanzt".
If you're looking for a very simple definition of the musical that distinguishes it from related forms like opera, this is a good place to start. Though you'd need to add a few specifics (e.g. the music comes in the form of songs, they're sung by the characters, and there are more than a couple of them) to further distinguish from, say, melodrama.
Except that singspiels like Freischutz and Fidelio and Magic Flute (which are spoken plays with lots of music) are now generally treated as if they were operas. And operettas (also plays with lots of music) may or may not be treated as if they were operas. Not sure about zarzuelas from Spain. And then how does one classify Carmen (originally spoken -- not sung -- dialog). And works like Porgy and Bess and Regina -- which certainly feel like operas. Historically, spoken, semi-spoken (recitativo secco) and sung dialog don't really seem to be markers for whether or not something can be considered "opera".
I'm pleased to announce that the domino harvey / zedz mutual bafflement zone is in full effect with Lili, which I finally managed to see.
It's an admirably peculiar film, starting with a thwarted rape (presumably) that nobody in the film seems to acknowledge, and then developing into a really odd love triangle with a whole lot of additional, not necessarily human, vertices. The momentum of that oddity kept me watching, but I didn't feel that any of the performances truly rose to the distinctiveness of the material (Caron's awkwardness was appropriate, but hardly revelatory) and I continue to regard Walters as a rather perfunctory director, with nothing in the film demonstrating any particular flair (or, again, any real grappling with the strangeness of the material). The comparison with a Powell / Pressburger film is certainly valid, but it doesn't do this film any favours.
This is all kind of academic in the context of the musicals list, anyway, since there's no way I could consider this a musical. I know the definition of the genre is flexible, but if there's any First Commandment surely it must be: "one song doth not a musical make." Sure, the song is partially reprised by puppets, but if there's any Second Commandment of the Musical, it's a toss up between "likewise two songs" and "reprises of songs don't count towards the total." Still, Lili is a very interesting test case, because there are also a couple of fantasy dance numbers, which bring the film closer to something like The Red Shoes (which I also couldn't in all honesty consider a musical). In the end, I'd have to consider it as a fascinating mutant offspring of the Hollywood musical which nevertheless doesn't meet the bare minimum requirements of the genre.
I probably have undervalued the Walters that directed Summer Stock and Good News (though the direction in Easter Parade has always struck me as somewhat anonymous, and I get the feeling that Astaire was really the auteur of the best numbers). In Lili, and The Barkleys of Broadway, and High Society I can see lots of evidence of an MGM house style, but not much that points to an individual directorial personality.
Going to start digging through these old genre lists which I didn't get a chance to participate in. Hopefully one day we'll get around to doing a genre 2.0, though I'm sure that's a ways off.
Anyways I recently got around to watching My Sister Eileen which was just a tremendous experience all around. Part of what I love about the exaggerated nature of the musical genre, is some of the on the nose, no bullshit, narrative shorthands it allows for, like with the effects gag of the dynamiting the new subway underneath the apartment is just so perfect both in technical execution and in how and when its used. A lot of really outstanding musical numbers as well, they do a great job of building up in a such a way where I'm just so giddy about what's happening on the screen and it just continues to escalate past my expectations (with 1 or 2 of them employing some false stops? my memory is fuzzy.)
Admittedly I probably don't have quite as large a database of musicals in my brain yet as some other veterans here to contextualize how well it stands apart from other films in the genre, but those were a few points that spring to mind in a muddied attempt to verbalize such a great viewing experience.
What happened to being generous?
