Musical film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers".
The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if a live audience were watching. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it.
With the advent of sound in the late 1920s, musicals gained popularity with the public and are exemplified by the films of Busby Berkeley, a choreographer known for his distinctive and elaborate set pieces featuring multiple showgirls. These lavish production numbers are typified by his choreographic work in 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade. During the 1930s, the musical films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers became massive cultural fixtures in the eyes of the American public. These films included, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz would become a landmark film for movie musical as it experimented with new technology such as Technicolor.
During the 1940s and 1950s, musical films from MGM musicals regularly premiered. These works included: Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, On the Town, An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, High Society, and Gigi. During this time, films outside the Arthur Freed unit at MGM included Holiday Inn, White Christmas, and Funny Face as well as Oklahoma!, The King and I, Carousel, and South Pacific. These films of the era typically relied on the star power of such film stars as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Ann Miller, Kathryn Grayson, and Howard Keel. They also relied on film directors such as Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli as well as songwriters Comden and Green, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and the Gershwin Brothers.
During the 1960s, films based on stage musicals continued to be critical and box-office successes. These films included, West Side Story, Gypsy, The Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Oliver!, and Funny Girl. In the 1970s, film culture and the changing demographics of filmgoers placed greater emphasis on gritty realism, while the pure entertainment and theatricality of classical-era Hollywood musicals was seen as old-fashioned. Despite this, Scrooge, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, 1776, Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Pete's Dragon, as well as Grease and The Wiz, were more traditional musicals closely adapted from stage shows and were strong successes with critics and audiences. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, musicals tended to be mainly coming from the Disney animated films of the period, from composers and lyricists, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, and Stephen Schwartz. The Disney Renaissance started with 1989's The Little Mermaid, then followed by Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, and Mulan.
In the 21st century, the musical genre has been rejuvenated with darker musicals, musical biopics, musical remakes, epic drama musicals and comedy drama musicals such as Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Dreamgirls, Across the Universe, Enchanted, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mamma Mia!, Nine, The Muppets, Les Misérables, Into the Woods, Descendants '', La La Land, Beauty and the Beast, The Greatest Showman, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!, A Star Is Born, Mary Poppins Returns, Bohemian Rhapsody, Aladdin, Rocketman, The Lion King, The Prom, In the Heights, Respect, Dear Evan Hansen, Cyrano, Everybody's Talking About Jamie, Tick, Tick… Boom!, West Side Story, Elvis, Spirited, Disenchanted, Matilda the Musical, The Little Mermaid, Wonka, The Color Purple, Mean Girls, Wicked, Mufasa: The Lion King, Joker: Folie à Deux, A Complete Unknown, Better Man, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Snow White, Blue Moon, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Wicked: For Good''.
Hollywood musical films
1930–1950: The first classical sound era or First Musical Era
The 1930s through the early 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. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the earliest Disney animated feature film, was a musical which won an honorary Oscar for Walt Disney at the 11th Academy Awards.The first musicals
Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24. Beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands, vocalists, and dancers. The earliest feature-length films with synchronized sound had only a soundtrack of music and occasional sound effects that played while the actors portrayed their characters just as they did in silent films: without audible dialogue. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include an audio track including non-diegetic music and diegetic music, but it had only a short sequence of spoken dialogue. This feature-length film 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 isolated sequences featured "live" sound; most of the film had only a synchronous musical score. In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, which was a blockbuster hit. Theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen. 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 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 starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton.Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor. This was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled On with the Show. The most popular film of 1929 was the second all-color, all-talking feature which was entitled Gold Diggers of Broadway. This film broke all box office records and remained the highest-grossing film ever produced until 1939. Suddenly, the market became flooded with musicals, revues, and operettas. The following all-color musicals were produced in 1929 and 1930 alone: The Hollywood Revue of 1929, The Show of Shows, Sally, The Vagabond King, Follow Thru, Bright Lights, Golden Dawn, Hold Everything, The Rogue Song, Song of the Flame, Song of the West, Sweet Kitty Bellairs, Under a Texas Moon, Bride of the Regiment, Whoopee!, King of Jazz, Viennese Nights, and Kiss Me Again. In addition, there were scores of musical features released with color sequences.
Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. 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 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 and Manhattan Parade 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. The public had quickly come to associate color with musicals and thus the decline in their popularity also resulted in a decline in color productions.