Engl. 339 - The musical

Musicals have, as long as I've been conscious of it, considered light fare as far as movies are concerned. If a drama is a hearty steak dinner, and a comedy is an appetizer, the musical is a dessert. Something fluffy and pink.

I've been taught that in creating a story, character matters most, then plot, language, song, and spectacle, in that order. I think the challenge of musicals, and part of the reason they are occasionally disdained, is because they are, by genre, things of song and spectacle. So if they are defined by this, they must work extra hard to develop character, plot, and language lest the spectacle outweighs the story.

In my opinion, the Busby Berkeley musicals sort of fail at doing this. They are lavish with spectacle, and I'm willing to bet with The Gold Diggers of 1933 that more money went into the production of the four musical numbers than into the rest of the movie. You know, the part with the story?

It doesn't make them bad movies, necessarily, but if it were dessert, it would be cotton candy. Light and fluffy and almost no substance. The story of Gold Diggers was funny enough, but the movie concentrated more on the spectacle than on character development or motivation, and though it purported to tell a story about the ravages of the depression, it soon abandoned that for the silly farcical love story. To me, the most compelling part of the movie was the "Forgotten Man" musical number at the end, which seemed to finally recall the point of the movie, and drew us away from the giggling and $1500 dollar hats to remind us of the real issue.

Not that I dislike musicals; far from it! I love them. But of all the movies we've seen this semester, this was the weakest.