13 The Musical To La La Land: Existence Of Music In Cinema Since The Talkies

With the release date for the film adaptation of 13 The Musical on Netflix being announced all across the world, the visual and vocal emphasis is back on movie musicals. The film based on Jason Robert Brown’s Broadway production of 13: The Musical will be broadcast in August. The film, which is directed by Tamra Davis has its screenplay adapted from a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn.

In the musical, a Jewish youngster called Evan Goldman (Golden) is forced to relocate across the country as a result of his parent's divorce. It had its Broadway debut in 2008 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. It was the first and only musical to date to have a cast and band made up entirely of teens. Graham Phillips, Elizabeth Gillies, and Ariana Grande were all members of the original cast.

Evergreen Movie Musicals

The Sound of Music (1964) opens with shots of the Salzkammergut Mountains, and while viewers probably took this to be a depiction of the idea expressed in the ">famous first lines that "the hills are alive with the sound of music," the score is not actually always present. The music does not appear in the movie until the montage descends towards the greener slopes and valleys of the mountain range. The first audial occurrence that accompanies the sequence is the natural echoing of winds whistling through snowcaps. Before a fluttering orchestration (perhaps piccolo, flutes, and clarinet) trickles in beneath it, bird song is added to the background, hinting at the idea that musicality is an extrapolation of uncultivated audial things.

Sound of music

Movie musicals have existed since the advent of talkies

A film genre that dates back almost as far as cinema itself is the movie musical. Movie musicals have existed since the advent of "talkies," or motion pictures with sound. Numerous actors from the studio system, such as Gene Kelly (Singin' in the Rain, 1954), Fred Astaire (Funny Face, 1957), and Ginger Rogers (Shall We Dance, 1937), rose to fame solely as a result of their singing and dancing in the period's motion picture musicals. Others, including Frank Sinatra (Guys and Dolls, 1955) and more recent examples Samantha Barks (Les Miserables, 2012) and John Lloyd Young, capitalised on the success of the motion picture musicals to increase their own notoriety (Jersey Boys, 2014).

Musicals are among the most well-known and instantly recognisable genres, whether on the stage of Broadway or on the big screen. To advance the plot and provide the audience with a distinctive experience, they intersperse song and dance with dialogue and narration. A change has been observed in both Hollywood and Broadway musicals over the past ten years. During the golden age of cinema, between the 1920s and the 1960s, musicals frequently featured a grand scale production, elaborate costumes, set designs, and dance numbers, typically Broadway-inspired songs, and typically happy moralistic stories and endings.

The Jazz Singer, a 1927 Warner Bros. production starring Al Jolson and having seven songs and a scant few lines of dialogue, had a profound effect. Hollywood understood that significant structural adjustments were required to transform the way viewers watched movies, as The Jazz Singer marked the end of the silent-film era by being the first sound film. When The Singing Fool, Jolson's second picture, was released in 1928, the majority of movie theatres had brand-new sound systems. That "musical talkie" set a record for box office receipts that persisted for 11 years before Gone With The Wind surpassed it.

Gone with the wind

By 1929, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayers Studios (MGM) had caught up, and The Broadway Melody, one of its productions, was given the first Oscar for a musical movie. After the 1929 Wall Street Crash, numerous theatres in New York shut their doors. Following Jolson to Hollywood were stage performers like Fred and Adele Astaire, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Maurice Chevalier, and Marilyn Miller. Broadway songwriters and librettists were likewise drawn into the new media by lucrative contracts. Broadway producers had no trouble selling the film rights to their productions.

Dance was prioritised during the 1930s. The distinctive and kaleidoscopic birds-eye-view dancer shots were invented by Los Angeles-born choreographer and director Busby Berkeley, who worked on 19 film musicals throughout the 1930s. Berkeley used motion cameras to virtually incorporate the audience into the dance in movies like Forty-Second Street (1933). In order to get daring shots, he pioneered the use of swooping cranes, filming from tunnels underneath the stage, and mounting cameras on highly specialised tracks. His imagination was equally strong. He used neon violins, giant flowers, and waterfalls as props in his stylised "moving images."

Many people still think that vintage musicals are antiquated or find them to be corny. But the form is nonetheless obstinately present in our culture's foundations. To witness a brave director recreate a magnificent studio-system musical in La La Land, complete with starry nights, street lamps lighting up the purity of soft-shoe romance, and two people who were destined to be together practically dancing on air feels just so perfect.

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But, the musical appeal of The Lion King may be an unmatched classic of the time. Tim Rice, the lyricist, requested Elton John for assistance and he contributed to the soundtrack. John claimed the opportunity to work on the film and contribute to the creation of classic songs like "Can You Feel The Love Tonight," "The Circle Of Life," and "Hakuna Matata." John became the latest member of a select group of well-known musicians to get an Oscar for music, joining the likes of Randy Newman, Prince, Lennon and McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and Annie Lennox.

The views expressed are the author's own.