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  • Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter by Richard Barrios
  • Megan Woller
Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter. By Richard Barrios. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-19-997384-2. Hardcover. Pp. ix, 276. $34.95.

Richard Barrios’s Dangerous Rhythm is a breezy, concise work of popular scholarship on the film musical. The author displays a wide knowledge of the genre, moving fluidly from the musicals of the early sound era to 2012’s sweeping Les Misérables. Barrios writes in a conversational style that is always opinionated and occasionally snarky. While he dutifully cites sources for quotations and select assertions, the source notes appear unobtrusively at the end of the book, and the numerous footnotes in the text act merely as asides. For scholars of the film musical, this book traverses familiar territory, and music scholars in general may be disappointed by the absence of musical analysis. When Barrios does mention musical specifics, they remain superficial. Yet the book is an entertaining read that offers vivid descriptions of beloved performers and sequences. It also gives educated lay enthusiasts of the film musical an informative and insightful look at the genre. In its assumption of a basic knowledge of the musical, Barrios’s work goes beyond popular works geared towards novices.

Barrios begins by defending the musical and its importance, a move that feels somewhat antiquated at a time when scholarship on the film musical continues to grow. The introduction discusses the fact that the film musical tends to be a fairly polarizing genre—people either love it or hate it, sometimes with equal passion. Dangerous Rhythm is not a straightforward chronological survey, though it covers the entire span of the genre’s history in less than 250 pages. After a brief tour of the film musical in the first chapter, the book tackles a particular subject or aspect of musical film in each subsequent chapter. The avoidance of chronological structure in the book works well, as each chapter fruitfully draws together various threads. The structure allows Barrios to highlight the connections among different topics as well as specific features of individual musicals. He moves throughout different decades with ease, deftly comparing such chronologically distant films as Mary Poppins (1964) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Likewise, the book’s structure allows Barrios to pivot from an evocative [End Page 364] description of Maurice Chevalier’s early persona to a revealing examination of his late role in Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi (1958). On the other hand, this approach can sometimes seem repetitive: for example, the arrival of the innovative Cabaret (1972) after the bloated films of the late sixties feels like less of a breath of fresh air when mentioned for the third time.

The second chapter contrasts musicals written specifically for film with those adapted from the stage. Barrios asserts that the relationship between musical theater and film is both highly contentious and in some ways necessary. In part, this chapter deals with the ever-present issue of fidelity in musical adaptations, a specter looming over much scholarship on the film musical. Other chapters address the presentation of song and dance, performers, directors, songwriting, finances, animation, and race and sexuality. In these chapters, the familiar names of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Busby Berkeley, Arthur Freed, Walt Disney, and Lena Horne loom large. The book looks at the multitude of imitative films spawned by artistically and financially successful ones such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Sound of Music (1965). While sometimes these imitators have merit, Barrios argues, they rarely live up to the originals. In several of the internal chapters, particularly those on performers, directors, and songwriters, the influence of individuals on the development of the film musical comes to the forefront. Barrios also touches on the role of collaboration, the studios, the audience, and other such aspects throughout the book. While the author mentions animated musicals and those films that highlight minorities throughout the work, the decision to separate these topics into their own chapters reveals the ways in which they have been marginalized in film history more broadly. He also devotes an entire chapter each to...

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