Musical Films

Il nuovo secolo sembra vedere la rinascita del musical con successi come “Dancer in the dark” e “Chicago” – in realtà, con le loro atmosfere cupe ed amare, ben lontani dall’ottimismo ovattato dei musical dell’età d’oro. Nel contempo, “Moulin Rouge!” aggiorna per un pubblico giovane, con strabilianti effetti speciali, e una colonna sonora fatta di un collage di successi pop e rock, la formula dello “spettacolo nello spettacolo” e relativa love story. E mentre Broadway continua a fornire materiale per adattamenti più o meno fortunati (tra cui “Mamma mia” e “Hairspray”), emergono nuove forme, come i “musical juke-box” (“Across the universe, “Yesterday”), e ritorni al passato in chiave contemporanea (“La La Land”), mentre anche i sempreverdi “biopics” ritornano con successi come “Bohemian rhapsody” e “Rocketman”. Forse non siamo ancora al “canto del cigno” del musical hollywoodiano …

Postmodernism started to appear as a broad movement in the literary world after 1980s. It has been applied to various fields as well as cinema studies. The rise of postmodernist cinema brought many examples of cinematic productions to the contemporary literature. However, the idea to apply postmodernist film theories to musical film genre is not thoroughly fulfilled.

The United States has spawned few truly distinctive art forms-but one of them is the integrated musical. Although it has its European antecedents, including the Singspiel and music hall entertainment, the musical brings together acting, dancing, and singing in an accessible and popular articulation of what German composer Richard Wagner famously theorized as Gesamtkunstwerk-the "total artwork." But this integration of performance, music, and drama also calls to mind the sociopolitical meaning of integration, especially when one considers the undeniable indebtedness of the musical form to Black and Jewish artists. Playing upon both meanings of integration-the bringing together of storytelling elements and the unification of racial and ethnic populations-we will examine race, ethnicity, and the Hollywood musical from Show Boat (1936) through Encanto (2021). The genre's focus on relationships (romantic, familial, communal) as well as its utopian impulses make it a vibrant forum for ideological tensions and conflicting social discourses. What emerges is not only a cultural history of the musical as an art form, but a social history of the United States as well, in which the musical both stages and (temporarily) resolves the social injustices of the society from which it sprang. As an upper-level seminar, we also will develop in-depth film analysis skills, exploring a range of approaches, methods, and critical frameworks.

Through the coreography of musical cinema, Hollywood has expressed  with fineness the feelings that flowed between the main characters. The songs and dance gave to the public a particular visión of Love that was intimately linked to the romantic concept the Western Culture has created since the nineteen century. But also the musical numbers of  the genre were used by the filmmakers to depict and hint aspects of love that, if they were represents in an explicit manner, could be considered innaceptable by the Hays Code. With the analysis of some sequences from the films Top Hat, An American in Paris and Grease, the author of this article describe not only the mise-en-scene of the romantic courtship in the genre but the way its representation has developed throughout the history of Hollywood musicals.

Sanat insanın dünyayı anlamlandırmasına ve kendini ifade etmesine yardımcı olmaktadır. Tüm sanat dalları çeşitli dönemlerde birbirinden etkilenmiştir. Sinemanın 7. Sanat olarak görülmesi diğer sanatlarla güçlü bir şekilde etkileşim halinde olmasından kaynaklıdır. Sinema görsel sanatlar içinde etkili bir yere sahiptir ve görsel- işitsel tekniklerin kullanılması açısından esnektir. Sinemanın diğer sanatlarla ilişkisinde en çok incelenen konular edebiyat, resim ve fotoğraftır. Ancak bu çalışmada dans ve sinema arasındaki ilişkiden doğan müzikal filmler, hareket-imge bağlamında incelenmiştir. Hareket, dansın ve sinemanın özünü oluşturmaktadır ve bu hareketlerin kurgusu anlam yaratmada önemlidir. Sessiz sinema döneminde Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin güldürülerini bedenin hareketiyle anlatmıştır ve beden sinemada bir imge haline gelmiştir. Müzikal filmlerde öne çıkan beden,  müzik ve dansın etkisiyle estetik bir forma bürünmüştür, filmlerin anlatı yapısı müzikal türüne özgü değişmiştir. Deleuze sinemanın hareket bloklarından oluştuğunu söyler ve sinemayı hareketle düşünen bir sanat olarak görmektedir. Bu yaklaşımdan yola çıkarak müzikal filmlerindeki görsel imajların, sinematografik unsurlarla ve hareket ile güçlendiğini söylemek mümkündür. Bu bağlamda Damien Chazelle ’in yönettiği ‘’La la land’’ (2016) filminin örneklem olarak seçilmesinde düşsel dünyayı kuran hareket-imgeler etkili olmuştur.  Film analizi yöntemiyle filmdeki hareket imajlar incelenmiş ve müzikal türünün kendine özgü kodları açıklanmıştır.

Musicale określić można mianem jednych z najcenniejszych amerykańskich dokumentów społecznych i  kulturowych,
które prezentują dominujące w konkretnym momencie dyskursy i panujące wartości, a wszystko to za pomocą połączenia muzyki, tańca
i tekstu. James Rado i Jerome Ragni stworzyli Hair w czasach kontrkultury, w trakcie seksualnej i kulturowej rewolucji lat 60. ubiegłego
wieku. Tamte czasy minęły, zmieniły się ludzkie postawy, a mimo to
"Hair" nadal jest prezentowany w teatrach na całym świecie. Niniejszy
artykuł proponuje zbadanie ścieżek pozwalających produkcji utrzymać swoistą widowiskową żywotność na przestrzeni lat. Celem jest
wskazanie motywów zawartych w musicalu, które w dzisiejszych czasach nadal można odczytywać jako aktualne i inspirujące.

This article provides a feminist comparison between two works: a novel from the early nineteenth century, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and a motion picture that premiered in 2015, The Lure. The analysis of the acts of border crossing in the two texts helps us to reflect upon a contemporary, general approach to female agency and notions of feminism. Both texts challenge the binary oppositions that coincide socially with a biological distinction between male and female. Additionally, the monsters carried out by the practice of border crossing in both cases correspond to contemporary ideas about feminism. On websites as Tumblr and DeviantArt, we can find Frankenstein Mermaids, fan-made border-crossings between those two texts empower the fans. This article intends to provide a brief overview of feminist practices of border crossing in the history of feminism and beyond, and three specific
examples will be explored in detail: Frankenstein (the novel), Frankenstein Mermaids (the fan art), and The Lure (the movie). Concluding, this work aims to inspire others to continue identifying practices of border crossing. Because in these very acts of border crossing, the monsters that appear allow us to think about our society from new perspectives.

Am 05. April 1933 ließ der Regisseur und Drehbuchautor Hermann Kosterlitz – vom Aufkommen des Nationalsozialismus angetrieben – Berlin hinter sich. Viele Jahre und eine Namensänderung später zog sich Hermann Kosterlitz alias Henry Koster im Jahr 1966 als erfolgreicher Hollywood-Regisseur ins Privatleben zurück. Doch bevor der jüdische Regisseur 1936 den Sprung über den großen Teich wagte, verweilte er rund drei Jahre in Europa. Paris, Budapest, Wien und Amsterdam hießen die Stationen seiner „europäischen Odyssee“. Kosterlitz‘ Weg durch Europa und letztendlich in die USA beruhte nicht auf Zufall, sondern war Ergebnis von gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen und innereuropäischen Verknüpfungen. Der Begriff des „Unerwünscht-seins“ begleitete ihn – sei es als „jüdischer Regisseur“ in Deutschland, oder als „deutscher Regisseur“ in Frankreich. Oder als „jüdischer Regisseur aus Deutschland“, der Teil eines sogenannten „Unerwünschten Kinos“ in Budapest und Wien war. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, den Weg Hermann Kosterlitz‘ durch Europa sowie seinen filmischen Werdegang nachzuverfolgen und länderübergreifende filmische Prozesse sichtbar zu machen. Stilistische und narrative Entwicklungen entlang der transnationalen Bewegung stehen ebenso im Mittelpunkt wie die Analyse der ästhetischen Spezifik von Kosterlitz‘ Werken und die seinen Filmen gesellschaftspolitisch zukommende Signifikanz. Den vorherrschenden Produktionsbedingungen kommt ebenso große Bedeutung zu, wie der (film)geschichtlichen Aufarbeitung von Kosterlitz‘ Biografie sowie den Werken des Künstlers. Denn „Unerwünscht-Sein“ und „Fremd-sein“ spiegeln sich in Kosterlitz‘ filmischen Oeuvre wider, was zu einem Dialog zwischen den von Kosterlitz künstlerisch erschaffenen Lebensräumen und dessen „realer“ Umgebung führt.

La terza parte di questo viaggio in uno dei più affascinanti e popolari generi cinematografici, dai primi film sonori degli anni '30 (con le folgoranti apparizioni di Fred Astaire e Ginger Rogers), attraverso le scintillanti produzioni degli anni '40 e '50 (da  Un americano a Parigi a  Cantando sotto la pioggia), dalle nuove interpretazioni di questo genere negli anni '60 e '70 (da  West Side Story a  La febbre del sabato sera), fino  alle innovazioni più recenti (da  Moulin Rouge! a  La-La Land). Una ricca antologia delle sequenze che hanno reso il musical un'esperienza spettatoriale indimenticabile ...

The third part in this journey through one of the most fascinating and popular film genres, from the early  talkies  of the '30s (with the stunning performances of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) through the glamorous productions of the '40s and '50s (from An American in Paris  to Singin' in the rain ), from the new interpretations of this genre in the '60s and '70s (from West Side Story  to Saturday night fever ), to the most recent innovations (from Moulin Rouge!  to La-La Land ). A rich anthology of the movie sequences that have made the musical an unforgettable audience experience ...

The new century seems to witness a rebirth of the musical with such box-office hits as “Dancer in the dark” and “Chicago” – in fact, with their dark, bitter atmosphere, far removed from the enchanted optimism of the golden era. At the same time, “Moulin Rouge!” updates the “backstage musical” (and its related love story) with dazzling special effects and a musical score made of a collage of pop and rock hits, suitable for younger audiences. And while Broadway continues to provide material for more or less successful adaptations (among which “Mamma mia” and “Hairspray”), new forms seem to emerge, like the “juke-box musicals” (“Across the universe”, “Yesterday”) and revivals of the past with a contemporary look (“La La Land”), while the evergreen biopics come back with hits like “Bohemian rhapsody” and “Rocketman”. Maybe the “swan song” of the Hollywood musical is yet to come …

A good friend of mine asked me to write the new 'story' of Broadway production of 1957 West Side Story . He knew that I do really dislike musical theatre, musical films and green (as a colour), but I love New York. Its winter in February reminds me of Russia. Thus, I accepted the challenge and the invitation to get involved in the 2017 celebration of the Broadway Musical production of West Side Story (1957). Instead, I decided to focus on Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, two names, two periods in music history as the main precursors of this musical (evident use of the Piano Concerto No. 5 (Beethoven) and also a longer phrase from the main theme of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake).

The musical fi lm genre is often considered as a classic one, both in terms of form/aesthetics and message/ theme; nevertheless, several modern fi lmmakers directed musical movies. In Brazil, fi lmmakers linked to 'Cinema Novo' and 'Cinema Marginal' – main Brazilian cinematographic movements, inspired both by Italian Neorealism and French Nouvelle Vague – directed a certain number of fi lms that inhabited this nebulous place: in between the classic and the modern. By choosing and analyzing three of these movies − A noite do espantalho (1974, Sérgio Ricardo), Ópera do malandro (1986, Ruy Guerra) and Roberto Carlos em ritmo de aventura (1968, Roberto Farias) −, this paper aims to observe how these fi lms deal with the clash of such different strains (classic/modern) and how this tension is presented in the poetics of these works. Finally, it aims also to give a fi rst glance at the so far overlooked world of the Brazilian modern musicals.

Children remain under-theorised spectators in cinematic theory. Spectatorship models – apparatus theory, feminist film theories and embodiment theories – have not properly accounted for the child audience nor fully accounted for intergenerational experiences of children’s cinema. Children’s cinema is an errant and a bodily one, an experience of distraction, digression and sensorial abundance from the candy bar to the closing titles. Using an auto-ethnographic approach based on my experience of taking my boys to see Sing (Christophe Lourdelet and Garth Jennings, 2016), supported by embodiment and genre theories, I argue that this unruly experience is elicited by the affective appeal of the films, the confines of the cinema space itself and the food and beverages consumed. Contemporary children’s films actively encourage a fantasy-infused, cross modal cinematic engagement that is akin to that of a cult film experience. A rowdy affective response, including dancing in the aisles, is incited through the use of popular tweenie pop music in Sing – a convention and bodily reaction that is notable across children’s cinema. These unruly pleasures combine to create the ‘unsocial’ experience of children’s cinema as positive one for both adult and child - from the opening titles to the closing title sequence.

The aim of this master dissertation is to isolate distinguishing features of music post-production of primary feature films of John Cameron Mitchell, ‘Hedwig and the angry inch’ (2001) and ‘Shortbus’ (2006), from a comparative analysis. We will pay special attention to ‘Hedwig...’ because of its genre: a musical film. For that purpose, we will use a quantitative and qualitative method. Quantitative method warns about related to diegesis music types and music mixing in the soundtrack. Qualitative method, for its part, takes care about the meaning of song
lyrics in the stories, songs psychological functions and other details such as its auricularisation, acousmatic changes and the relationship between music and narrative rhythm, etc. Results point out that there is a solid common ground in booth music post-productions aside those distinguishing features (three times more spectacular music, 11,8% more presence of absolute mixed music, etc. for ‘Hedwig’), not that marked as originally assumed. Finally, we suggest to future investigation to verify if Cameron Mitchell has taken the way musical genre has always post-produced its music as authoral sign for all of their films.

Sind derzeit Filmmusicals erneut auf dem Vormarsch? Diese Arbeit möchte ihren Beitrag zum Erkenntnisgewinn hinsichtlich des zeitgenössischen Filmmusical-Genres leisten. Mittels einer Untersuchung der verschiedenen Herangehensweisen an das zeitgenössische Filmmusical wird sich der Frage gewidmet, ob sich Filmmusicals nach aktuellem Stand bewähren und auch in Zukunft Anklang beim allgemeinen Kinopublikum finden können.

Ausgewählte Beispiele: La La Land von Damien Chazelle, Begin Again von John Carney und Hard Way – The Action Musical von Daniel Vogelmann.

En 1956, Henri Decoin réalise Folies-Bergère, un film musical fastueux tourné en Technicolor, prenant pour décor la célèbre salle de music-hall parisienne et réunissant à l’écran l’acteur américain Eddie Constantine et la danseuse étoile française Zizi Jeanmaire. Épousant la structure traditionnelle des comédies musicales hollywoodiennes, le film raconte la naissance d’une histoire d’amour entre Bob Wellington, un GI américain ambitionnant de devenir chanteur, et Claudie, une danseuse anonyme des Folies-Bergère appelée à devenir une grande vedette du music-hall. Nous analyserons cette transposition culturelle, en essayant de déterminer ce qu’elle révèle de l’évolution des formes musicales dans le cinéma hexagonal et de l’état des relations France/Amérique au milieu des années 1950.

It’s 1963. Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is a college-bound teenager staying at Kellerman’s Mountain Lodge with her family. Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) is a dance instructor at the resort – and Baby’s love interest. Dirty Dancing is one of those films almost everyone has at least some knowledge of, even if only second-hand. It is therefore not surprising it has inspired a reality TV show: The Real Dirty Dancing...

In 1956, Henri Decoin directed Folies-Bergère, a somptuous musical drama starring Eddie Constantine and Zizi Jeanmaire, which was conceived to adapt the Hollywood musical formula to French cinema. This article seeks to analyse this cultural transposition, by focusing in particular on the « curious meeting » (Cinémonde, n° 1170, January 10, 1957) between Constantine, an American actor who became one of the greatest French stars of the post-war period (in cinema as well as popular music) and Jeanmaire, a Parisian ballet dancer who set out to conquer Broadway and Hollywood at the beginning of the 1950s. What is the meaning of this Franco-US interlacing ?

1 The film musical is predominantly perceived as an art form of pure entertainment, where everyone "may burst into magnificent, breathtaking song and dance in order to give unhindered expression to their emotions" (Grant 2). Musical entertainment hence seems to "effectively den[y] the legitimacy of other needs and inadequacies, and especially of class, patriarchal and sexual struggles" (Dyer 184). However, two Australian musical productions by Indigenous filmmakers have successfully shown that the genre can productively discuss urgent social issues of racial and gender politics and the question of reconciliation. Through the use of song, dance and music these productions address the painful aftermath of the Stolen Generations, colonial displacement and racism. [1] Both films advertise with the truthfulness of their stories and refer to real people and events (One Night the Moon set in the 1930s, The Sapphires in the 1960s). The films, despite their distinctive hi...

Entrevista com o multiartista Sérgio Ricardo sobre sua obra como compositor e diretor de cinema, realizada em 2014 pelos professores Guilherme Sarmiento e Guilherme Maia; André Félix, então mestrando do Póscom-UFBA, e Artur Dias, então graduando em Cinema e Audiovisual da UFRB, no Condomínio Pedra Bonita, no bairro do Vidigal, na Zona Sul do Rio de Janeiro. O material bruto dessa entrevista foi transcrito e revisado por Paulo César de Jesus e Jamile Freitas, alunos do Bacharelado Interdisciplinar em Artes da UFBA, e editado por Guilherme Maia e Márcia Carvalho especialmente para o dossiê Canção popular e audiovisual: latitudes contemporâneas  da Revista Brasileira de Estudos em Música e Mídia.