Five Academy Award Nominees in Five Days

[Chris Knipp]

This is an amazing compendium, cinemabon! I will comment further when I've watched them all. In the CHORUS LINE scene the timing seems off.

[cinemabon]

SUCCESS, BUT WAIT! IT'S NOT A MUSICAL?

In this great opening, one of the finest of any non-musical adventure movies, Steven Spielberg makes a brilliant tongue in cheek tribute to the great Busby Berkley with his soon to be wife Kate Capshaw in "Anything Goes" a precursor to what is to follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1H9eKWPGRo

[cinemabon]

Animated film as musical

Starting in the 1930’s, Walt Disney pioneered the idea that you could combine music and animation. Although the Fleischer brothers offered Walt competition (Gulliver’s Travels), Disney shined with Silly Symphonies. His work culminated in the first full length feature film, “Snow White.” The title character not only sings but acts! However, animated characters are limited in their emotional responses reduced to caricatures of emotions and not performances. Walt followed this success with “Pinocchio.” Instead of the main character breaking into song, those around him do all the singing. But by the time Disney arrived at Bambi, he put the music aside and concentrated more on the story. (Although Dumbo and Cinderella are more musically oriented). Animated musicals remained rare birds until a young gay man arrived at Disney Studios who would not only breathe new life into the genre but nearly save New York City in the process. It was Jeffrey Katzenberg who employed Howard Ashman to write a script for an animated feature. Ashman pictured a singing mermaid based on the Hans Christian Andersen story and pitched it to Katzenberg. The rest is musical history. Starting in the late 1980’s with “The Little Mermaid,” Disney Studios practically resurrected the musical (by popularizing that style of presentation), revitalized Times Square (which had fallen into disrepair), and brought audiences back into theaters. Musicals bloomed and gave rise in popularity to nearly every title that followed – Beauty and the Beast (the only animated film ever nominated for Best Picture), Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan – all musicals. Stage musicals flourished as well, including “Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Miss Saigon, and Les Miserables (among many others). All thanks to a little mermaid in the mind of a young gay man who longed for the glory days of musicals. We miss you, Howard.

[Chris Knipp]

A lot of clips to look at, but I'm looking at them all, and here are my responses. First of all let's not forget: all of these, good and not-so-good, are lipo-synched, not recorded live.

STRISAND. "My Man" is beautifully done, with grace and assurance. Lena Horne's "Stormy Weather" is from an era when movies were really glamorous. French film noir sometimes evoke those cool nightclubs. The dance sequence starting with the patchwork zoot suits in the rain is great, if incomplete.
JUDY GARLAND: 'THE BOY NEXT DOOR'. CLOSEUP: a bit of a bore to me, but beautifully done.
HAIR, CHERYL BARNES. She really belts it out. This song made me say, "Wow!" I never saw this before at all. I like that they shot it in the snow. You introduce this song well. She should have had recognition for this performance. I'd like to see this.
EVITA. How can you lose with Antonio Banderas in the audience? This is the most interesting visually of your excerpts so far, in the editing.
MIXED SUCCESSES?
THE STUDENT PRINCE AND MARIO LANZA. This also I did not know. Mario Lanza died at 38! He did have films that had great hits before the big battle with Dore Shary, and he did have a beautiful Italian operatic tenor voice. There are no singers in "Les Miz" within a mile of this voice! The dull actor lipsynching surely detracts from the emotion considerably.
ROSALIND RUSSELL. This is real campy musical grandeur. "This time I'm gonna make you a star, baby!" Not the greatest singiner.....bu there's Karl Malden.
BETTE MIDDLER. This is lovely. Very campy too. Let's not forget Bette Midler got her start performing in the gay baths. She achieves magic here.
"FAILS:"
CHORUS LINE. What is actually wrong with this movie, do you think? That the original itself is too stagey, too static? I was not that crazy about the original Boradway musical. I did see it. (There's something wrong with the formatting of this clip, by the way. It's badly compressed.)
CLINT EASTWOOD in PAINT YOUR WAGON. Wow. Yeah, nice voice, handsome man, stupid idea. Good example, maybe your best.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. We've already discusssed......I watched this after our discussion and also watched all the Dennis Potter original BBC version. Steve Martin is kind of creepy. It was meant to be Bob Hoskins. And it was meant to have the British class element. But it's still pretty weird and creepy; the Dennis Potter version has some even creepier stuff in it, but it fits better in the whole.
CAMELOT. I find this musical boring so who's in it hardly matters, besides the music doesn't seem to require a great singer, but if you say Julie Andrews should have gotten the role....I can't argue with you. But Vanessa Redgrave is elegant, and the feel is nice and light, and moves along, unlike the dreary, heavy, self-important "Les Miz."
LUCILLE BALL in AUNTIE MAME. Bad casting, I suppose. Also it seems that the rhythm is way off. It seems to me to drag.
KATE CAPSHAW doing "Anything Goes" in the TEMPLE OF DOOM opening. Yes, this is beautifully done. Is she singing it in Chinese? How did she doe that?!

[Chris Knipp]

When you're talking about animated "musicals," don't forget about Walt Disney's FANTASIA. That was groundbreaking, and I think wonderful, for bringing classical music to kids. It made Leopold Stokowski a star. With Mickey. Truly magical use of animation and music.

[tabuno]

Tab, I would agree with you to certain extent on the use of camera technique to create visual tension. However, in the case of this particular musical where you have a scene shot in tight quarters with a "wide" lens on a steady-cam, the effect when enlarged on a big screen is amplified by a factor of ten or more. This gives the scene that rolling motion, as if you were shooting on the deck of an oceanliner. Some shots require forethought and planning. While I like hand held scenes for dramatic tension in fights and car chases, when a woman is singing about her inner feelings, I don't like the idea that camera movement should draw attention to itself. That's a distraction and the reason so many critics and other people have complained about it.

This is a great observation for me that didn't occur and impact me when I saw Les Miz, but it really makes a lot of sense. I may have been so caught up in the scene and Ann Hathaway's performance that she was able to out perform the distraction for me. But that's a tribute to her performance, not the quality or lack of the cinematography itself. I will need to take more time and experience the movie again with this new insight before I can make any reasonable response. Opened my eyes here.

[tabuno]

Of course, Judy Garland, the little girl with the big sad eyes, probably set the standard for the "wistful" melody in "Over the Rainbow." But she sang many torch songs in her career. Here, she pines over the good looking young man next door... looking as wistful as ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUB4XcQYq9A

I've attempted to sing Judy's Over The Rainbow and have watched this scene numerous times. My singing however leaves much to be desired. When I compare this scene to Ann Hathaway's scene I was much more moved by Hathaway's performance though I don't know how the camera work might have contributed or detracted from her performance. The dramatic content of Hathaway's lyrics may have more to do with the emotive resonance than how it was sung or it just the biting lyrics that brought out such resonance from Hathaway than from Garland.

[tabuno]

One of the most original and creative talents of my generation, Madonna is a singular phenomenon who is unlike anyone before her or after. She made her mark on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Evita" that many felt fell flat, but did not blame her. Here she sings the best song from the show and gives one of the finest performances of her career; directed by Academy Award nominee Alan Parker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA1QHtFkH48

When I watched Madonna in "Evita" when it came out, up until then I didn't care for Madonna, a seemingly slutty girl. But her performance in "Evita" made an indelible mark on me and my respect for Madonna was never waivered since.

[tabuno]

I haven't had a lot of opportunities to experience professional quality musicals, but of all of the one's I've witnessed, Chorus was the most moving and memorable. When I went to see the movie version, my expectations were so high that I was devastated by how disconnected the movie was from the live performance.

I remember in 1975 when I took acting at the University of Utah, Sonny, my instructor recommended that I must sit within the first fifteen rows. So when I had a chance to go to Los Angeles and the Shurbert Theatre I made sure I was near the front. Apparently I was told that Chorus Line was created with the idea that the audience experienced the musical from the perspective of the director who likely sat near the front. This authentic, in the immersive sense was never translated well as a movie and the absence/or substitation of some of the most memorable songs also was a horrendous mistake in my mind. The best way to have made an adapted movie unlike Les Mis was to recreate an intimate theater-like atmosphere and maybe just maybe try to use a reality video cam documentary like cinematographic approach to the shots outside the theater as if the audience were just transplanted outside of the theater.

[cinemabon]

Had Richard Attenborough shot "A Chorus Line" the same way it was presented in the theater, the film would have made good theater but bad filmmaking (the show doesn't really lend itself to the film medium anyway). As you recall, we never see the director in the play, only hear his voice. In the film, Attenborough turns the camera around and we see every reaction on the director's face (Michael Douglas) to every actor's story. This has the effect of taking away our reaction, of robbing us the chance to experience our own feelings (which was the point of the play).

"Les Miz" is not so much the poor effort of great actors as it is more like "A Chorus Line" spoiled by the techniques used by an over-indulgent director who wanted to experiment. In this case, we differ. I feel he failed. You feel he succeeded. I feel his use of experimental techniques gets in the way of the storytelling, especially since the basis for the medium is that it is a musical, or was at one time. I do not, will not, and cannot take away the efforts of quality actors who gave it their all, singing on the set without the benefit of proper conditions (a set is not a sound studio that has different accoustic properties).

When I starred as Charlie in the off-Broadway production of "Where's Charlie?" I sang live before an audience. The acting level in a stage musical is not nearly as important as is the singing voice. However, unlike the film "Les Miz," I benefited from the presence of a full pit orchestra that included two harps, not the playback of some tape synched to cameras rolling. As an actor having to concentrate more on performance than song delivery, I feel my songs would have suffered. I would have found it even more difficult to deliver a good singing performance with a camera inches from my face (not that I couldn't deliver a performance, just that I couldn't hear myself singing). We could go back and forth on this day after day, week after week. In the end, you liked "Les Miz" and I didn't for different reasons that have nothing to do with my abilities as a critic, my age, or my preference. I don't believe the criteria add up. But you have repeatedly demonstrated your personal feelings in this regard and I respect them because you well educated, thoughtful, and have the right to express your opinion. That doesn't mean your argument is sound, just that it is preferential.

[tabuno]

cinemabon's perspective on perspective and Chorus Line (the Broadway stage and film) shines an important light on how we better experience these art forms. He has captured the dissonant problems with the movie version of Chorus Line (which I up until now struggled to understand) and which I hope film producers and directors will have by now incorporated into their essential list of must dos and must avoids.