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Warning! This article reveals significant plot details of On the Town, Cabaret, and Moulin Rouge. Do not read if you do not want to find out the endings of these films! Genre Criticism: The Musical The musical is, like the western, one of the most "classic" genres. By this I mean that in the classical period of Hollywood filmmaking, musicals and westerns were produced by most every studio on a frequent basis, but both subsequently fell out of favor in the seventies and eighties and are basically dead as genres today. Unlike the western, however, the musical is trying to make a comeback with such films as Love's Labour's Lost, Moulin Rouge, and the upcoming Chicago. Musicals are identified, obviously, by the fact that they contain music-specifically, the narrative flow is carried forward or augmented by singing and/or dancing. But there are some movies that contain singing and dancing that are not considered musicals — Destry Rides Again, for example, is clearly a western, but includes a couple of barroom numbers performed by Marlene Dietrich (who sings in several of her dramatic films). The Harvey Girls and Annie Get Your Gun, on the other hand, have western settings, but are clearly musicals rather than westerns. What makes the difference? For a musical to be a musical, the music has to be an integral part of the story, used either to advance the story along or tell us something about the characters. On the Town is a musical, though only one of its main characters is an entertainer — a Coney Island showgirl who wants to be a classical ballerina. But we learn most of the important things about the characters through song or dance. We learn that Ann Miller is man-crazy. We learn that both Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen are small-town kids trying to act like big-city sophisticates. We learn that Betty Garrett is even more man-crazy than Ann Miller (imagine that!). Relationships are built through song ("On the Town"), stabilized by song ("You Can Count on Me"), and reestablished in song (the finale). Plus the whole story is reviewed in Kelly's "A Day in New York" ballet, which forms a kind of trilogy with the "American in Paris" ballet from An American in Paris, and the "Broadway Melody" ballet from Singin' in the Rain. On the Town concerns itself with three sailors with twenty-four hour leaves in New York City, during which time they plan to see all the sights and get themselves girls. The time constraint is drawn attention to by flashing numbers in the corner every once in a while reminding us that time is running out. Time runs out in all movies, for to us, the hero only has roughly two hours to solve whatever problem the plot has given him. In classical musicals, the problem is always how to find and get the girl. In On the Town the two hit it off instantly, though they each refuse to admit they are from the same tiny mid-western town, even had the same grade school teacher, and spend all their time trying to impress each other with their worldly attitudes. The meeting of small-town America and big-city New York is appropriate for a representative musical: for the musical, unlike the western (tied to the wild frontier) or the crime film (constrained to the city), may be set anywhere. Its conventions are not of setting. I've given examples of musical westerns. Chicago is a crime musical. Rather, the musical is a genre of storyline and content (i.e., music). One of the hosts of the MGM musical retrospective film That's Entertainment! commented that the story of every musical was "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy sings a song and gets girl." And while that's very banal and trite, it's usually true. In On the Town, Kelly decides what girl he wants after seeing her on a poster, searches for her until he finds her, and wins her over. Then she runs out on him to go to her job on Coney Island, and he loses her. When he finds her again, he and his friends have to do a musical number dressed up as showgirls before he can have her back. Every musical must have a happy ending. Page last updated 8/1/04. |
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