The Hollywood Film Musical

by Grant, Barry Keith

• ISBN13: 9781405182522
• ISBN10: 1405182520
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-23
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

THE MUSICAL FILM will synthesize the history of, and critical literature about, the film musical, as well as offer a series of detailed close readings of representative specific musical films that cover the history, range, and types of the genre. The volume will analyze the musical uniquely in terms of its dialogue with various aspects and institutions of popular music culture, and map out its functionality in aesthetic, industrial, and ideological terms. The close readings in THE MUSICAL FILM will emphasize the relations of the films and their music, dance, and song with other aspects of American popular music, including minstrel shows, vaudeville, the Broadway stage, the recording industry, and stardom. The films chosen for the close reading chapters include classic musicals as well as more recent ones--from 42nd Street, and Singin' in the Rain to Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, West Side Story and Dreamgirls--and provide a broad representative range of the this evolving and ever-popular genre.

Author Biography

Barry Keith Grant is Professor of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author or editor of more than two dozen books, including Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (2008) Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology (2007), Rim Genre Reader (2003), and The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (1996). As well as being an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is the series editor of the New Approaches to Film Genre series for Wiley-Blackwell.

Table of Contents

Introduction.Chapter 1: Historical Overview.Chapter 2: Critical Overview.Chapter 3: Golddiggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) and 42ND Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933).Chapter 4: Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935) and Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936)..Chapter 5: The Pirate (1948) and Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanely Donen, 1952).Chapter 6: The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin, 1956) and Rock, Rock, Rock (1956).Chapter 7: Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970) and Gimme Shelter (Albert and David Maysles, 1970).Chapter 8: Lisztomania (Ken Russell, 1975) and Beyond the Sea (Kevin Spacey, 2004).Chapter 9: West Side Story (1961) and Saturday Night Fever (1977).Chapter 10: Phantom of the Paradise (Brian de Palma, 1974) and Pennies from Heaven (Herbert Ross, 1981).Chapter 11: Dreamgirls (Bill Condon, 2006)