Technical focus: mise en scene
Focus Director: Jerome Robbins (1918-1998)
- Broadway and ballet/dance choreography
What is a musical?
- a movie with music?
- a film where people sing?
- a motion picture where elements of the score advance the story line
- a work of visual fiction where the characters sing and dance
Genre theory
- A film is immediately recognisable as a style of film or type of film
- There are signs and signifiers to indicate to us the genre
- These signs can be seen in the mise en scene, the lighting, the characters, the plot, the sound and the pace
Reflection question:
What are the signs and signifiers that we are in the musical genre?
What are the signs and signifiers that we are in the musical genre?
The First Musicals
- The Jazz Singer (first musical)
- Busby Berkerley (20s)
- Fred Astaire
- MGM
Historic Background
Turn of the century - the fair ground and Vaudeville - watching silent films, low budget
Early 20s: Silent film and birth of sound - early sound experiments, vitaphone, partial talkies, The Jazz singer, The Broadway Melody
30s: WWI and the Great Depression - black tuesday
Busby Berkley and Fred Astaire - the escapist genre, musical review format, large dance numbers
Old musical to New Musical: MGM and the Freed Unit
The 40s: WWII
The 60s: rock and roll and the 'death' of the musical
Escapist genre - people wanted to escape
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