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Three more magnificent musical films belong on the list of all-time
greats. Although filmed by three different studios, all were created by alumni of
Arthur Freed's legendary production unit at MGM.
Funny Face
Funny Face (1957) was conceived at MGM, but when Paramount
refused to loan out Audrey Hepburn, members of the Freed unit (which
was being disbanded) went to Paramount. Arthur Freed's longtime associate
Roger Edens produced,
Stanley Donen directed, and singer-composer
Kay Thompson (Edens' longtime MGM colleague) gave a film-stealing performance as a
ruthless fashion magnate. Fred Astaire
made everything from a raincoat to an umbrella come alive as dance partners in
"Let's Kiss and Make Up." The score consisted of four classic George
and Ira Gershwin songs,
with several new numbers by Edens and Leonard Gershe. Hepburn gave a
disarming performance as an intellectual beauty wooed by photographer Astaire when they
work on one of Thompson's Paris fashion shows.
Impressive as the cast and score are, it is Donen's unique
sense of cinematic flow that makes film a masterpiece. Every song flows out of the action surrounding it, and unforgettable
images abound. Cineast's have long treasured
Hepburn's exuberant descent down a staircase in the Louvre, waving a red
tulle wrap in imitation of the massive sculpture "Winged Victory."
Although visually stunning and thoroughly entertaining,
Funny Face was such a box office disappointment that Paramount stopped
making musicals altogether, and MGM allowed the Freed unit to melt
away . However, the film developed a dedicated following over time and
remains a great favorite with film buffs.
A Star is Born
Warner Brothers' most masterful 1950s musical was built by another stellar
team of MGM alumni: director George Cukor, screenwriter
Moss Hart, composer
Harold Arlen, lyricist
Ira Gershwin and performer
Judy Garland. The magnificent A Star is Born
(1954) was based on a classic 1937 tearjerker about an unknown actress surviving Hollywood
stardom and personal heartbreak. After months of long and tortured filming, Garland gave the
most spontaneous and powerful screen performance of her career, while Cukor and company made
"The Man That Got Away" and other songs emotional highpoints that fit seamlessly
into the story.
Convinced that
A Star Is Born was too long, Warners executives cut 27 minutes from all prints
soon after the premiere. As a result, most audiences saw a confusing, incomplete
version. It was not until an archival restoration in 1983 that the true impact
of the film could be appreciated. The "Born in a Trunk" sequence (scored
without credit by MGM's Roger Edens) had always been praised, but "Lose That
Long Face" and other restored scenes make this the best screen performance of Garland's
career. That Hollywood's greatest musical star did not receive an Academy Award for
her finest performance remains one of the saddest injustices ever perpetrated in an unjust
business. (You have to see winner Grace Kelly's pallid work in The Country Girl to know
how senseless this choice was.)
Gigi: MGM's Finale
MGM had dismissed it's contract employees, but a defiant
Arthur Freed pulled together one last triumph. At
the urging of director Vincente Minnelli,
Freed called in My Fair Lady's Alan Jay
Lerner and Frederick Loewe
to musicalize French novelist Colette's story of a young girl who is raised to be a
courtesan but manages instead to fall in love with (and marry!) a millionaire. The
result was Gigi (1959).
The cast included Leslie Caron as
the title character, Hermoine Gingold as her
protective grandmother and Louis Jourdan as the
millionaire. Maurice Chevalier, his
roguish charm as irresistible as ever, made a triumphant return to the musical
screen as Jourdan's aging playboy uncle.
Gigi had minimal choreography, but the score ("Thank Heaven
For Little Girls," "The Night They Invented Champagne," "Gigi")
and ingenious screenplay made the unsavory subject matter into a surprising,
sophisticated hit. Where other film makers settled for a standard postcard vision of Paris,
Minnelli shows the city from the everyday perspective of Parisians. Instead of gazing at the
Eiffel Tower from a distance, we travel beneath it; instead of glittering hotel or romanticized
garret, we see a frowsy bourgeois apartment. Minnelli also makes amazing use of light and
shadow. In one sequence, a pensive Jourdan is silhouetted against illuminated fountains, communicating a
key moment of revelation with a few mute movements the sort of
pure cinematic magic that could never be accomplished on stage.
Despite Gigi's tremendous critical and commercial
success, MGM's Freed unit passed into history. Producer Arthur Freed and his
associates would not receive their full due until the release of That's
Entertainment (1974) reminded the world what a rich legacy they had left
behind.
Gigi was Freed's last original musical, and the line
begun in The Wizard of Oz and continued through Meet Me in St.
Louis, On the Town and Siingin' in the Rain came to an end in one
of the ritziest films ever. Here is a musical that uses decor, color,
motion, even the juxtaposition of true locale and sound stage, for tone . .
. Minnelli makes a movie, as Lubitsch and Mamoulian did when almost no one
else knew what a musical was, and as few knew now that musicals were turning
into Broadway souvenirs.
- Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Musical (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1981), p. 198.
Why Are These Musicals "The Best"?
The seven 1950s film musicals we've just discussed have two common factors.
First, all seven set their musical numbers in the context of everyday
life. Gigi has Maurice Chevalier sits in the middle of a bustling city park and
sings right to the camera about girls whose beauty can send men "crashing through the
ceiling." In Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a septet of mountain
men in the Wild West win feminine attention by kicking up a macho storm at a
town dance.
While stage musicals had long since relied on this blend of song
with real life activities, it had only been tried on film by a few experimenters
like Rodgers and Hart (i.e. - in Love Me Tonight's
pass-the-song-along "Isn't It Romantic" sequence). Minnelli toyed with
the concept in Meet Me In St. Louis, but compromised by presenting
most of the songs proscenium-style (framed in windows or doorways) or on a raised space
with an audience (the top of a trolley).
Another key issue in these films the songs were
sensational. When Judy Garland sets A Star is Born smoldering with her rendition
of "The Man That Got Away," Harold Arlen's music and Ira Gershwin's
lyric matter just as much (if not more than) the visually arresting
presentation. Whether pain-filled, witty or celebratory,
1950s screen musicals used some of the finest songs in the history of American popular music. (Of
course, this is a qualified distinction. An American in Paris,
Funny Face and Singin' in the Rain resurrected many existing hit
tunes, so the songs were actually written over a period of
several decades.)
The next decade would bring the most profitable musical films of all time.
Almost all would be adaptations of Broadway shows, but there was an occasional
"spoonful of sugar" to help the medicine go down.
Next: Film 1960s