Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem (review)

Most books about the Hollywood Musical spend considerable time exploring the genre's Golden Age which waned in the late 1950s and was pretty much over by the mid 1960s. Authors and historians tend to view the movie musical after 1965 as one long epilogue with decades of few musical offerings and even fewer works of quality. So it is refreshing to note that Kelly Kessler's book concentrates on the film musicals that came out between 1965 and 1983. Kessler makes no effort to suggest this period is a high point for Hollywood musicals, but she finds it an interesting era with regard to the way the movie musicals of this time reflected the attitudes and moods of Americans. Her discussion of this period is prefaced by a detailed look at earlier times, what she terms the 'arcadian' days, and she continues her study with film musicals that were released after 1983. But the focus of the book is on those eruptive, volatile years in which the nation and its movies turned 'ambivalent'. It is a descriptive term that suggests many things, the word itself being rather ambivalent, and her view of this era is a complex one. The only difficulty is that, as compared with the decades before, so few movie musicals were made between 1965 and 1983 that her discussion and arguments are based on a relatively small sampling. Many non-musical films from this era are brought into the discussion in order to better illustrate the changes Hollywood was going through, but I cannot help feeling that they are there because the true subject of the book, movie musicals, offers less than overwhelming evidence. Of the 58 musicals released during those 18 years, the major hits can be counted in single figures: Funny Girl (1968), Oliver! (1968), Cabaret (1972), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Grease (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1980). The last barely qualifies as a musical and Rocky Horror's cult success did not come until a decade after it was initially released. So what is here is largely a detailed and thorough study based on dozens of relatively, in box office terms, unsuccessful movies.

Kessler describes the change from Arcadia to Ambivalent thoroughly and with plenty of examples. Her observations may not be startling but they are solid. The old musicals concentrated on the wholesome family unit, heterosexual romance, idealised societies, clear resolutions and happy endings. The 'ambivalent' musicals involved dysfunctional families, non-traditional sex and love, nightmarish worlds and unsettling finales. In addition to numerous samples from both periods, Kessler uses a fascinating but little-seen Hispanic musical, Zoot Suit (1981), to illustrate many of the changes that occurred during this period. Her discussion of theatricality in post-1965 movie musicals is of particular interest. In the 1930s Hollywood made every effort to film these musicals so that they did not look like stage pieces. Broadway musicals were opened up and a stylised kind of realism replaced the artificial look of the theatre. Yet in 'ambivalent' films such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Tommy (1975), Pennies From Heaven (1981) and Zoot Suit, theatricality was embraced and the resulting films were even more artificial than a stage musical. She also includes cinematic techniques in her discussion, noting how dance was filmed in the old days (long shots with few cuts) as opposed to the later style (short takes, many cuts) that is still familiar to audiences. As Kessler points out, in the 1990s and the following decade, the camera sometimes moves more than the dancers as zoom lens and rapid cutting create energy in movies like Moulin Rouge (2002) and Chicago (2002).

As her title suggests, Kessler dedicates a good portion of her book to discussing the male mystique in post-1965 movie musicals. She compares Classic Hollywood singers and dancers, such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, James Cagney and Howard Keel, with the more 'ambivalent' male stars of later musicals. While some, such as Steve Martin, Barry Bostwick...