Tag Archives: musical film

Assessments, Exploding Genre

EG Week 6: Musical

Musicals exist in a privileged space, “a ‘place’ of transcendence where time stands still, where contingent concerns are stripped away to reveal the essence of things” (Altman 1987, as quoted in Grant 20121). The transcendence in question is often to do with limitations either emotional or physical — the ordinary rules of narrative fiction cinema are temporarily suspended and anything is possible. Characters break into song, music appears suddenly and interacts with characters in the story world, physical limitations can be overcome, etc. A film musical is, basically, a lie agreed upon.

Having read this piece by Grant, I think I now understand why I love Singin’ in the Rain so much. It’s one of the few musicals that acknowledges, embraces and celebrates the artificiality of the form so comprehensively. The reading examines the scene where this is most obviously foregrounded — “You Were Meant For Me”, in which Gene Kelly’s Don Lockwood literally prepares a soundstage with fans and lights for the heartfelt musical number — but the entire film interacts with Hollywood artistry in the same way, from “Make ‘em Laugh” to “Broadway Melody”.

Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind is another film musical aware of the conventions of the form, but in that case the knowing quality is used more directly for comedy. In All That Jazz, it’s used for tragedy.

Do all films exist in a privileged space? Is that not one of the defining qualities of cinema — that anything is possible as long as the filmmaker can adequately suspend the audience’s disbelief? I think the difference is that while all films can break the rules of immersive narrative construction, it is by definition a necessity of the film musical to operate outside the normal rules of cinematic form. A film musical must contain songs performed by characters in the film that, while they may ostensibly be part of the story world, are actually for the audience watching the film, which is a breach of the fourth wall.

This is one of the things I found most interesting about our screening, One Night the Moon. I’ve not seen too many musical dramas in my time, but the film felt constantly in tension between the social realism of what are ultimately pretty horrific themes, and the inherent artificiality of the musical. In the song “This Land is Mine/This Land is Me”, the lyrics and performance are so perfectly in tune with everything else happening in the film that it feels seamless on every level, but the other songs aren’t quite as well integrated, resulting in a somewhat disjointed and confusing film.

  1. Grant, B.K. (2012), ‘Introduction’ in The Hollywood Film Musical, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1-6. ↩
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Assessments, Exploding Genre

Exploding Genre: Case Study – A Mighty Wind

As a folk musical comedy mockumentary, Christopher Guest’s 2003 film A Mighty Wind  interacts with film genre in a number of interesting ways.

On the surface, the most obvious genre association that can be made is the musical film, or, more specifically, the backstage musical (one of the earlier codified genres, which came out of Hollywood in the 1920s1). A Mighty Wind follows a group of folk musicians and performers as they come together to stage a tribute concert, and the process of bringing these musicians together, their reunions and rehearsals, and finally the concert itself, all feature prominently in the film. The music, though occasionally comedic in subject matter or lyrical content, is generally treated with the reverence that a genuine musical would afford its performances: the concert features full-scale productions, including elaborate set dressings, costumes and camera set ups, for each of the three groups performing. As is the case with most parody films, Guest carefully adheres to the conventions of the genre his film parodies, despite occasional jokes at the expense of the absurd nature of musicals.

A Mighty Wind is also a mockumentary, which is a genre that holds many of its own idiosyncratic conventions (most of which Guest himself helped to popularise and codify with This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and the films that followed it). Mockumentary owes much of its own character to the rules and conventions of the documentary — like talking heads interviews, vérité-style camera work, etc. — and indeed A Mighty Wind generally utilises these techniques and rules faithfully. But, importantly, it also deviates from many of these tropes when comedy calls for it, such as showing action that would never realistically be captured in a genuine documentary.

  1. Rubin, M. (2001) ‘Busby Berkeley and the Backstage Musical’, in Cohan, S. (ed.), Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. ↩
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