AFI's 100 Years, 100 Musicals? (1 Viewer)

[Greg_M]

"While I'm assuming it's a foregone conclusion that Singin' in the Rain will be #1, I'd be curious to see what else they'd include. "


"Singing in the Rain" is a fine film, one of MGM's best, but honestly it is not the #1 musical film in my opinion. The songs really don't progress the plot the way they do in "West Side Story" In fact most of the songs in "Singing in the Rain" were written long before the film was made. Even "The Wizard of Oz" is a better "musical" then "Singing in the Rain" Though I could see "Singing in the Rain" voted #1.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Well Tommy is 100% a musical, as is Hair. I would expect both to be considered and for at least Tommy to make the list. It has a great set of songs written for the musical specifically, all of which advance the plot, and it was the vanguard of rock music in musicals.

Certainly I wasn't saying that concert films are musicals. But after seeing the "100 Thrills" list I can see them combining concert films with musicals to fill out a catagory (doubtful that concert films would have their own catagory and musicals seem to be coming up short of 400 noms).


Also, Scott left out Phantom of the Opera (43) and Phantom of the Paradise, which would both seem to qualify as musicals as well. Not saying they'd go top 100 of course.


Something else interesting that IMDb reminded me off is the Marx Brothers films. It is a tough call but they often have many songs and muscial numbers, some of which advance the plot (the opening of Duck Soup and Animal Crackers). Certainly A Night at the Opera belongs on the list.

Mel Brooks hits on the fringe with a couple of films - The Producers, High Anxiety, Blazing Saddles all have famous singing bits.

Along that line is also Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.


A couple of others left off - Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, both 70's musicals (not great, but still).


We also can add in some Fred Astaire films like the Barkleys of Broadway and Finian's Rainbow.

Man, I actually think we could probably come up with 400 quality musicals once we start digging. I think a 400 list would include Elvis, Shirley Temple and the singing cowboys even though Scott was unsure. Singing and dancing by characters as a major part of a film would be the key for me.

It happens in film a lot more than we appreciate at times. And it certainly is a big part of film history, so I agree that it should get done as one of their lists.

 

[george kaplan]

We tend to think of them as simply cartoons with songs in them, but the truth is that almost every Disney animated feature is really a musical with lots of songs sung by the main characters that progress the story. For some reason only Beauty & the Beast ever gets called a musical, but really they are all, which fills out about 10% of the needed 400.

 

[Scott Leopold]

One of the things I was concerned about regarding Tommy & Albert Finney's Scrooge is their national origin. I'm not sure if they'd be considered for the list simply because I'm not sure if they're American productions, so I didn't include them.

In a couple instances--Elvis, for example--I wasn't familiar enough with all the movies of a particular genre, so I just included one or two as a sampling. Looking at IMDB, it appears as though Elvis has about 30 movies that would qualify for consideration. Shirley Temple made over 40 movies by the time she was 12--I'm not sure which are musicals and haven't had the time to find out. Some titles, like Mame (which I just remembered tonight) simply slipped my mind.

Based on the AFI's past lists, they are kind of liberal in their interpretation of some of the categories, so I think it'd be pretty easy for them to get a list of 400. If they do go ahead with this, I'd really like to see them include a wide variety of films. I think a lot of people have a negative opinion of musicals nowadays, and in turn miss out on a lot of quality entertainment. Each of the previous specials seems to have gotten people talking more about the movies showcased, whether they're film afficianados or casual fans. I think a well-done special highlighting the best the musical genre has to offer could help at least some people to view them in a more positive light.

On a quick side note, someone mentioned that there weren't too many musicals prior to 1927. My question is, were there any? Not that they'd be musicals in the traditional sense, but were there any silent films that focused on music and/or dance numbers?

 

[BarryR]

Yes, there were silent musicals with music and dance sequences aplenty. In this case, depending on the theater, live musical accompaniment would be either a piano, organ or a full scale orchestra. By the way, in August TCM will air OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS (1928)with Joan Crawford, which depicts dancing and music with a synchronized music track, which studios began adding back then even before recorded dialogue was commonplace (the first synchronized music track for a feature film was the 1926 DON JUAN, with John Barrymore). DAUGHTERS may utilize the original music soundtrack or a modern rerecording. Ironically, there were hundreds of Vitaphone sound shorts made in the 1920s, before THE JAZZ SINGER, featuring musical acts--priceless time capsules of pop culture back then. As a whole they make an incredible contribution to the understanding of what was popular back then.

 

[george kaplan]

I certainly am not aware of any silent films that were musicals in the usual sense, but there are certainly examples of simulated song. It happened quite a bit in Chaplin films. One example is Gold Rush (1925) in which the crowd sings Old Lang Syne on New Year's Eve. And of course, it doesn't really count, but the 'silent' film Modern Times has a musical number at the end.