Film Musical
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The musical treated as a cinematic art form, where song, camera and cutting are conceived together and the film-maker uses numbers to bend time, heighten emotion and stage interior life. Modern film musicals lean on hybrid pop and theatre singing, close-mic'd intimate vocals recorded live on set, and stylized production that ranges from jazz-club naturalism to surreal fantasy. Tempos and idioms are drawn from contemporary pop, jazz and Broadway rather than operetta, and the mood swings from euphoric to melancholy within a single picture. Signature techniques include the long-take dance number, the diegetic-to-fantasy dissolve, and live vocal capture that prizes acting over polish.
History
Distinct from the classic studio musical, the "film musical" as an auteur-driven form flowered in the New Hollywood era (Cabaret, 1972; All That Jazz, 1979) and was reborn in the 21st century after Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002) proved the genre commercially viable again. Tom Hooper's live-sung Les Misérables (2012) and Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016) pushed technique in opposite directions — raw immediacy versus widescreen homage — while Dreamgirls and later Wicked extended the range. The wave revived the Oscar musical, retrained a generation of screen-singing actors, and reconnected Hollywood with Broadway source material.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- City of Stars(2016) — Ryan GoslingSpotifyYouTube
- Audition (The Fools Who Dream)(2016) — Emma StoneSpotifyYouTube
- And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going(2006) — Jennifer HudsonSpotifyYouTube
- I Dreamed a Dream(2012) — Anne HathawaySpotifyYouTube
- Roxie(2002) — Renée ZellwegerSpotifyYouTube
- Your Song(2001) — Ewan McGregorSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Kelly Kessler, Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical (2010)
- Steven Cohan, The Sound of Musicals (2010)
- Academy Awards database, Best Original Song and Best Picture nominations