The Music Man

One of my favorite musicals is 1962’s, "The Music Man," starring Robert Preston as Harold HIll and Shirley Jones as his love interest, Marian Paroo. The film is set in 1912 and tells the story of a traveling salesman who arrives in a fictionalized town in Iowa. Hill is masquerading as a traveling band leader, and he cons the townspeople by telling them that, in order to keep the towns' boys out of trouble, they need to create a boys' marching band. Hills scam was to collect the money for the band instruments and then leave town, but in the process of his scam he falls in love with the town's librarian, and decides to stick around and face the consequences.The films tunes are very catchy and easy to sing along to.

This film won one Academy Award and also nominated for five. The musical was originally a Broadway musical then made to a big screen film. The film was remade again in 2003.

West Side Story

       The 1961 musical, West Side Story is a story about a forbidden love. It is an adaptation of the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. It was meant to be a modern retelling which took place in Manhattan between two rival gangs. The tension between the Sharks and the Jets can be seen through their choreography. The entire first scene had no dialogue, yet a story was told through the music and the dance. The snapping of fingers was like a heartbeat. The music sped up when they were tense and it slowed down when they were trying to be cool. Also, the gangs fought by using dance moves. At first it seemed awkward and silly, but the strength, energy and acrobatics used helped to suspend the disbelief. I could appreciate the physicality of the moves.

At the dance hall Maria and Tony meet and instantly fall in love. Everyone and everything around them becomes blurred. However, the image of them is clear. This was because they only saw each other. The chaos between the two fighting gangs around them meant nothing to them because of their love. This blurring of everything around them is used in other scenes as well. It was a vision of hope because they were looking for a place apart from everything that was reality.

 I love the song “I like to be in America.” For the women being in America was a lot better than in Puerto Rico because they were free to have fun. The men on the other hand do not feel the same way. For Bernardo and the other guys being in America means they must fight. They are not free to do what they want. I thought this contrast was very interesting. Anita believed in the American Dream, but Bernardo believed that "life is alright if you're white." Again their feelings are expressed through the choreography and music.

The scene where Tony calls out to Maria mimics the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. She is on a fire escape above him and he climbs up to reach her. It was dangerous for him to be in Shark territory. He tells Maria he loves her and she tells him she loves him in Spanish. To me this proves love has no language.

 I enjoyed the song the Jets sang about being juvenile delinquents. They blame society and their family for their actions. They make a joke of it because there is nothing else they can do. They can't change that their mother's are junkies and their father's are drunks. They think that life on the streets is all there is. Tony on the other hand has grown out of this life. He gets a job and says there are more important things than fighting. Unfortunately, the Jets do not see it the same way and Tony is pulled back in to intercede on their behalf.

The "Tonight" song united them all. Anita sings about the night because she will be with her love Bernardo after the fight. The Sharks and the Jets sing about the night and the fight. Tony and Maria sing about the night and how they will meet again. Each separate song is woven together brilliantly. To me this underscored the fact that they are all connected. They all believe their dreams or conflicts will be resolved that night. However, the fight goes horribly wrong and causes even more harm than good. It is a tragedy after all.

Tony is told Maria is dead and so, he wants to die too. This is just like Romeo and Juliet. In the end Maria stands up to both gangs to make them understand that the fighting is for nothing. They all killed not with weapons, but with hatred. She is the last to leave the scene. When she rises from the ground she is strong. She has a presence. She is no longer an innocent child. She became a real lady of America. The ending scene shows both Sharks and Jets carrying Tony (a dead Shark) away. For me the ending brings hope. It brings hope that the two rivals can learn to live with one another.

 It was amazing how so much was said without anything being said. The music, singing and choreography all explained the story better than the dialogue. It conjures an emotional response from the audience. You feel what they characters feel. You feel angry, sad, and hopefulness. I love this musical. It may be dated, but it has a powerful message. I like to live in America and everyone that lives here should be able to as well.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

While I enjoyed Burton’s version of Sweeney Todd it does not compare to the stage version starring George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. One reason of course being the movie does not have the first song “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” which is both a great song and a great opening number. However, the biggest reason is that much of the humor of the musical was taken out of the film version. In the movie Sweeney is a much darker character that comes across as being relentlessly driven forward by his anger, despair, and resentfulness. He takes no joy in his work or in his victims being turned into food, just continuous killing person after person until his true targets shows up. There is little of the dark comedy that makes up the original Sweeney Todd musical written by Stephen Sondheim.

            In the stage version Sweeney truly likes what he does. You can see this when he becomes upset that he cannot kill one customer because he brought his daughter with him. It is obvious that he is happy and in a good mood when he receives a customer. When Mrs. Lovett proposes her plan, Sweeney laughs and smiles. Even though his ultimate goal is revenge, Sweeney is actually enjoying the ride.

The Phantom of the Opera, a story retold countless times, is a love story that captures my ears and heart every time I hear its soundtrack. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of the classic novel and 1925 film is, hands down, my favorite musical that I will, probably, ever see. Although the Broadway musical experience is priceless, the Joel Schumacher musical-on-film was disappointing. I was raised to the voice of the musical god, Michael Crawford, who captures the spirit of the tortured genius, Erik, or better known as “the Phantom”. I came to love the voice of Sarah Brightman, the actress portraying Christine, entranced by the Phantoms music and forbidden love. To see Gerard Butler, and Emmy Rossum attempt to lip-sing their way to the same fame that the Broadway gods reside, made me loose respect for this adaptation. Having seen the Broadway musical multiple times, the color and choreography of certain dance scenes were lacking. The masquerade scene was solely black and white, probably to allow the Phantoms red costume to be more outstanding. Even his red costume was dumbed down with a simple skull face-mask, not the terrifying full skull head that the musical AND the original film used to shock the people of the Paris Opera House along with the audience. I may be spoiled from seeing the Broadway musical multiple times, and my opinion reflecting that of such, but in the movies defense, it was an enjoyable movie, a beautiful musical, and did a nice job of keeping to the story and to the original music and lyrics. However, there is an area that movies cannot touch or even begin to do justice, and that is capturing the music, talent, magic that is reserved for the live stage.

Phantom of the Opera

Although I've seen the more recent version of this movie, watching the older silent film version was really different. It was interesting seeing how things have changed as the movie was remade. The music in the background gave it a seriousness for the time period (1920's), however, after watching the movies that we have seen today the music seemed to make it slightly comical. I could imagine how at the time the movie was a dramatic movie. The facial expressions such as eyebrow movements, body language, and even the movement of the lips was over dramatic. However, I imagine that this is due to the nature of the silent film because this was visible in The Gold Rush as well. It helped to add to the drama and the suspense.

Also, I watched Arsenic and Lace and actually really enjoyed it. It was quite comical. The sisters were hilarious in their own suspenseful way, and the long-lost murderous brother reminded me a little of Lurch from the Adams Family. The facial expressions in that movie were also priceless. It makes you wonder how many crazy women are living in your neighborhood and stashing bodies in their trunk-like- window seat couch... great movie for halloween time.

TOP HAT (1935)

Most of the earliest musicals are pretty much boring affairs. Long shots of chorus lines and stiff vocalists seem to be more a documentary record of vaudeville and burlesque than the “all talking, all singing, all dancing” entertainments they purported to be. Sound had just come in and many filmmakers seemed to have no idea how to re-mobilize a camera that had become a prisoner of the sound proof booth. Post-sync techniques were soon to be developed but early musical performances were largely stage bound, wooden and far from spectacular.

Enter Busby Berkeley at Warner Bros. Suddenly the musical opened up with numbers edited into increasingly outrageous close ups of beautiful faces, bare legs, tapping feet, luminescent pianos, waterfalls and the kaleidoscopic overhead vibrations of scantily clad chorines. Starting with “42nd Street” in 1933, Berkeley moved from a choreographer credit to the director’s chair and churned out such crowd pleasers as “Gold Diggers of 1933”, “Dames”, and his greatest of all, “Footlight Parade”.

Something different was happening over at RKO. The man Rudolph Nureyev once called the greatest American dancer of all time, Fred Astaire, had partnered with Ginger Rogers, a young supporting actress and chorine from the Berkeley casts. They had starred as a secondary love interest couple in “Flying Down to Rio” in 1933. Stealing the show with their dancing, the studio moved them to a headlining position with “The Gay Divorcee” the next year, then back to supporting roles in “Roberta”.

“Top Hat” was their fourth film together and their second at the top of the bill. It was RKO’s biggest hit of the year and held onto that title for the team during their career together.

What had changed from the beginning was Astaire’s insistence on the camera moving with the performers and holding the editing to a minimum. What we get as a result are full-bodied shots of great dance numbers, photographed from a distance that allowed the viewer to see the dancers in detail and to marvel at the sometimes intricate and always demanding routines that they put themselves through. If Busby Berkeley had pioneered the breathtaking production number spinning into the fantastic, Astaire was responsible for the spotlight being trained on the very real talent of the performers, anchored firmly in the atmosphere of a world turned fantastic by their artistry.

Another convention that the Astaire-Rogers production team adopted that helped the musical to become one of the great American genres was the pacing of the numbers themselves. Where the Warner’s films were often backstage musicals with most of the singing and dancing crammed into a spectacular but short final 20 minutes, the RKO productions spaced the interludes evenly throughout the film. Also, there was the insistence that the songs and dances reflect and further the storyline; that every number have a dramatic purpose as well as a musical one.

In selecting the best example of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical, it really comes down to two movies. The team felt their best film was “Swing Time” directed in 1936 by George Stevens. Rogers said she believed he brought something different to the formula. I would agree with that. It also contains what most critics think is the pair’s greatest performance on film, “Never Gonna Dance”. No argument there either, although “Cheek to Cheek” in “Top Hat” is one memorable number and a close contender for the title.

“Top Hat” is the most iconic of the Astaire-Rogers pairings. It gets my nod due to the consistent excellence of the aforementioned innovations that arrive fully formed with this film, the great Irving Berlin score, the smart comedy script (Dwight Taylor and Allen Scott) performed by an ensemble of classic character actors (Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore and Helen Broderick) at the top of their craft, the no-holds-barred Art Deco production design (Carroll Clark and Van Nest Polglase), Fred Astaire’s underestimated singing talent and the wonderful dancing of the greatest musical team in history.

The Gold Rush

I was very impressed that the Tramp could walk in the snow wearning 14 size shoes! Although it was a silent film I found the music really led the story. It would change with the seriosness of the scenes. I didn't like when a person was talking and there was no caption for what they had said. We coldn't hear them so, why did they do that without letting the audience know what was said. It just annoyed me alittle. I thought that when Big Jim McKay was imaging the Tramp as a chicken his laugher appeared very realistic. Has facial expressions and body movements really made me believe he thought it was hilarious. It even made me smile. The last thing I thought was interesting was when the Tramp played dead outside the cabin in order to get food. He was completely stiff when the man picked him up! I do not know how he did that. His body really looked like he was frozen.  I guess that is the beauty of silent film actors. Everything depended on their actions.