Movie – Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Singin’ in the Rain is the quintessential Hollywood musical and I am far from the first person to consider it the best traditional musical ever made.  It may surprise you to learn that it started out as nothing more than a recycling of songs and props that had been around for years.  Even the iconic title song had been used in several movies prior to this one.  Screenwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden had the task of taking various songs and filling in a story around them.  The result was a look back the beginnings of the sound era in Hollywood – something recently revisited in The Artist.

Movie – Cabaret (1972)

Question:  Which film was the most honored at the 1973 Oscars – The Godfather or Cabaret?  Answer: It’s not even close.  While The Godfather had eleven nominations to Cabaret’s ten, The Godfather won only three (Picture, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay).  Cabaret won eight (Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Editing, Music and Score, Art Direction, and Sound.)  In the seven categories where they went head to head, Cabaret won five of them.  In fact, its loss to The Godfather for Best Picture has made it the film that has won the most Oscars without winning the biggest one.

Movie – Chess: In Concert (2009)

One day I happened to see Chess: In Concert offered from Netflix.  At the time I knew nothing about it other than it was about chess (duh) and that it had the late 1980s hit song “One Night in Bangkok” in it.  I was curious enough, so I got it.  I figured I would probably skip from song to song, listening to the ones I liked.  I ended up watching it from beginning to end, then the next day watching most of it again.  It turned out to be far more than just a collection of songs.  It was nothing less than chess as a metaphor both for the Cold War, and for the heart of a woman and a man.

Movie – Stop Making Sense (1984)

Over the years, the concert film I most often saw named by professional critics as the best of all time was 1978’s The Last Waltz.  This is because the music in it is what they listened to when they were younger and because Martin Scorcese directed it.  While I liked the music in the film a lot, the jarring transitions between songs, and the cuts back to a couple studio sessions, keep The Last Waltz from flowing as well as it should. 

I freely admit that my choice of Stop Making Sense is also impacted by the music that I was listening to in college.  I consider the music of The Talking Heads to be great songs that still hold up today.  In addition to this, I consider this movie to be the absolute best at making you feel like you are part of the audience, which to me is the most important thing.

The Best Movies with Music

“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.” – Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night

Notice that the title of this category is not “Best Musicals”.  When I see people comparing films such as 1965’s The Sound of Music to 1970’s Woodstock I have a little trouble understanding why they are getting lumped together.  The former is a traditional movie musical.  The latter is a combination concert film and documentary with no plot to it.  The only thing uniting them is the superficial. 

It’s not just movies where this happens, though.  True story – many years ago I was in a mail order music club.  For about six months their catalog had a ridiculous “Black Music” section with listings for Michael Jackson, Public Enemy, Robert Johnson, and Miles Davis all grouped together.  I used to wonder just how out of touch this (major music) company was to not even realize that those were four very different kinds of music that had little in common other than the skin color of the performers.  For some reason they never added a “White Music” section with The Beatles, Metallica, Garth Brooks, and Glenn Miller all lumped together.

To me, movies with music in them break down into four distinct categories: the traditional movie musical; movies that happen to be musicals (the performances are secondary to the plot); concert films; and operas (i.e. 1996’s Evita or 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg where all of the dialog is sung).  For a time in the 1980s people used to talk about “music video movies” such as Flashdance, but those have kind of faded away.

I will be reviewing my choices for the best movie in each of these four categories.  As I post the reviews, I will come back and post the links to them here:

Best Concert Film:  Stop Making Sense

Best Opera:  Chess in Concert

Best Movie That Happens to Be a Musical:  Cabaret

Best Musical:  Singin' in the Rain

Along with this you may want to check out my earlier category Movies with Musical Numbers for No Apparent Reason.  You can find it here.

On to the reviews…