Abstract
Narrative elements of the musical, once so fully linked to the harmonious union of heterosexual couples, took a darker turn ideologically reflective of social conflict of the sixties and seventies and artistically reminiscent of shifts occurring both within the entertainment industries and motion picture style itself. The mixture of narrative darkness, egocentrism, and ambiguity prevalent in these integrated movie musical products of the late sixties to early eighties projects a generic ambivalence toward earlier established norms, and rather embraces the uncertainty prevalent in both the political and artistic moment. Compounding this narrative ambivalence that projects the genre as neither idealistic nor wholly nihilistic, a new sense of visual complexity emerged that embraced psychological subjectivity, community separation, and generic self-reflectivity. As with narrative shifts that destroyed the hazy idealism once so indicative of the musical, technical stylization closely reflects the innovations of the French New Wave and New American Cinema, as well as American and European avant-garde movements and these movements’ seeming opposite, Italian neo-realism. Techniques such as short shot length, jump cuts, freeze frame, and image superimposition help to replicate character subjectivity as these narratives turn in on themselves and often focus on the conflicted emotions and personal journeys of their protagonists.
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Notes
Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 147, 277–80.
David Bordwell, “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 24.
David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 374.
In “All That Jazz: Bob Fosse’s Solipsistic Masterpiece,” Alvin J. Seltzer states, “All That Jazz is a spectacular achievement in many ways, but certainly one of its greatest triumphs is its artistic expression of a unique vision: life as it is lived, perceived, and experienced through one person’s head, heart, and nervous system.” (99) He discusses the narrative and visual/aural techniques used to replicate the frenetic life and personal perceptions of Joe Gideon/Fosse. Alvin J. Seltzer, “All That Jazz: Bob Fosse’s Solipsistic Masterpiece,” Literature/Film Quarterly 24:1 (1996) 99–104.
For more on bricolage and choreography, see Jane Feuer’s The Hollywood Musial. Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 3–13.
Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (Garden City, N. J.: Anchor Press, 1976) 155.
Bertholt Brecht, “Theatre for Pleasure or Theater for Instruction,” The HBJ Anthology of Drama, ed. W.B. Worthen (Fort Worth, TX and Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993) 549.
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© 2010 Kelly Kessler
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Kessler, K. (2010). On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism. In: Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290556_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290556_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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