What Are The Groundbreaking Musicals?
In today’s discussion, we are considering only movie musicals. My favorites include “The Band Wagon” and “Singing in the Rain.” But I have to agree with Jeffrey Wells when he writes: ‘For its depiction of musical sequences as neurotic dream fantasias occurring in the mind of a tragic heroine (Bjork) who can’t cope with reality, and for its use of dozens upon dozens of stationary video cameras to cover the dancing and singing, Lars von Trier‘s “Dancer in the Dark” is one of the few groundbreaking musicals in cinematic history. (A new Bluray version is out this month.) The other biggies are (b) Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen‘s “On The Town,” the first musical shot in real-world locations, (c) Richard Lester‘s “A Hard Day’s Night,” the first semi-comical, nouvelle vague-styled rock musical featuring the first-ever MTV music video sequence; and (c) Bob Fosse‘s “Cabaret,” in which all song-and-dance numbers were performed on a club stage with nobody “breaking out in song†within the narrative.’
