A-List: Five Best Musicals of All Time
By J. Don Birnam
September 3, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
There won’t be many rules for this one except to exclude animated movies. Many of those are, to be fair, musicals strictly speaking, but I’m going to limit this list to live-action musicals to make my task somewhat easier. Outside of that, all bets are off.
The only other preliminary thing to say is that there are, of course, many bad musicals. But we can save all of those for another list.
To be honest, this was my hardest A-List column to date. I had to research extensively to make sure I didn’t forget about a good musical. And the narrowing down process was excruciating. Many were left off. Indeed the list of honorable mentions is twice as long as the top five list itself.
For example, I love My Fair Lady and Chicago, both Best Picture winners, greatly. The former is a bit too slow in the middle and the latter a bit too slap-sticky to make the list. I also enjoy really kitschy modern musicals like Hairspray and Mamma Mia!, but have no illusion that these are outstanding all-around movies that should be included in an uber-competitive list. The same can be said for other guilty-pleasure musicals, such as Grease, Guys and Dolls, and Hello, Dolly. All of them are enjoyable on repeat to a true musical-theater lover, but probably best left off of a top five list in the face of stronger choices.
And what can I say of The Wizard of Oz or Mary Poppins? Each of them could easily be listed as the Best Movie Musical of All Time. And yet neither make my list for reasons that are hard to explain. Perhaps their more childish nature turned me off in favor of more adult fare? Surely, that’s an incorrect explanation, given the adult themes that run subtly and flawlessly through both classics, and that, conversely, there is an element of childishness in most musicals. Alas, the list is five and not seven deep, but these two are the last ones I had to cut out. Oh, and in case you’re wondering from the get-go, I’ve never been a huge fan of Singing in the Rain, so you won’t find that movie on this list.
Here is what I came up with in terms of the best musicals of all time.
5. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
This kitschy and hilarious musical from 1954 makes the list despite its completely unknown cast, mostly unknown director and choreographer, and stunningly dated story, on the strength of the songs and dance numbers alone.
The movie, which was made as a musical for the screen first, unlike most other movie musicals these days, is based loosely on an Ancient Roman legend called “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” Yeah, I bet that title is welcoming. The story revolves around Adam, the oldest of seven husky, redheaded, somewhat backwards brothers living in the woods in Oregon in the 1850s, after he finds a bride to marry in town, Millie. Millie moves in and, to her surprise and dismay, finds that Adam has six other brothers who are even rougher and cruder than he is. She straightens them up somewhat, but, the times being what they are, they need wives. Eventually they “kidnap” six other townswomen, who actually wanted to be kidnapped because they liked the brothers but already had suitors. Times being what they are (there’s that phrase again), they couldn’t just leave with the brothers. Hilarity ensues and you can imagine the rest.
What’s so great about this movie is how deftly its makers use of the musical numbers to advance specific points in the plot. Rather than having musical sideshows a la “Razzle Dazzle” in Chicago, for instance, the numbers here weave seamlessly into the story. This is harder than it sounds, because it requires the dancers to use every day items as stage props. One of the best scenes is an early fight between the brothers and the women’s original suitors. It is clear from watching the dancing and singing alone in Seven Brides that the talent level required to be in one of these older musicals was much greater at that time than it is today. The dance numbers also feature another staple of older musicals that is now sadly mostly gone: the ensemble number. These are the hardest to pull off editing and choreography wise, and Seven Brides does so flawlessly.
In the end, the greatness of this movie was not lost on its time, resulting in an award-winning Broadway adaptation years later and netting the Oscar for Best Musical Score for a Musical. It did lose the Best Picture Oscar to Elia Kazan’s timeless classic, On the Waterfront. Perhaps the best known actor to have come out of this film is Russ Tamblyn, who features prominently in a movie that will predictably appear later on this list.
Worry not, this is perhaps the most obscure movie of the five I picked for this list, but it is worth a try if you’re looking for something older and unexpected to watch. Oh, and did I mention the movie is essentially a Western? That counts for something, right?
4. The Sound of Music
This 1965 all-time classic, winner of the Best Picture Oscar and the Best Director Oscar for Robert Wise, had to appear somewhere on the list. The movie is so steeped into our popular consciousness that it has gone full circle from great to trite and overhyped and back to great again.
The story needs little explanation, and stars Oscar winners (for other movies) Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer as the independent-spirited nun Maria and the indomitable Colonel von Trapp, facing love and danger on the heels of the Nazi takeover of power. What’s remarkable about this movie is that it constituted the second Best Director Oscar for Robert Wise for a movie musical that decade (for the same movie Russ Tamblyn will show up in soon - there’s another clue) and that, at the time, it briefly displaced Gone With the Wind as the highest grossing movie of all-time. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me.
And it bears lingering for a second on just how ingrained in popular culture this musical is. Short of, perhaps, The Wizard of Oz or Mary Poppins, songs like “Do-Re-Mi,” “The Sound of Music,” and “My Favorite Things” are instantly recognizable by most people, even today. If you don’t, I suggest you pause reading this column and not come back until you’ve seen this movie. Seriously.
Perhaps the best sign of greatness, however, is how often a movie is the basis for a parody or joke - because the joke writer assumes broad familiarity with the underlying material. I have seen references to the Sound of Music far and wide, from Looney Tunes and Simpsons cartoons to the Oscar telecast itself. Not much more need be said about Julie Andrew’s moving performance, or the exquisite on-location setting of the movie across Austria and Germany. Indeed, the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, Austria, should be on everyone’s bucket list.
If more were needed to convince you that this movie deserves a place on this list, then I have to words for you: Rodgers & Hammerstein. Enough said, I hope.
3. Moulin Rouge!
In 2001, a little-movie-that-could called Moulin Rouge! took Hollywood, and the world, by surprise. The Baz Luhrmann masterpiece was arguably responsible for Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress the following year for The Hours and for Chicago becoming the first musical to win Best Picture since 1968’s Oliver! Indeed, a quick glance through the lists tells me that no musical had even been nominated for the top prize since the 1980s, unless you count Beauty and the Beast in 1992, until Moulin Rouge! put the wind back in the dead sails of musicals in Hollywood up to that point.
The public’s warm reception of the Academy’s embrace of Moulin Rouge! arguably gave them cover to return the top prize to a sing and dance flick. Of course, in the modern times of Hollywood, the times of the graveyard of ideas where whatever makes it big will be emulated endlessly, Moulin Rouge! also unwittingly caused a string of disastrous musicals being produced. - The Phantom of the Opera and The Producers come to mind - and emboldened Luhrmann to make kitschier films, none of which have ever existed in the same galaxy as Moulin Rouge!
But aside from its unappreciated cultural legacy and impact, what makes Moulin Rouge! so great? The answer, essentially, is all of it. The music is incredibly imaginative considering it consists of mashing together old classics (including a riff on The Sound of Music’s title song). The cinematography and set decoration (for which it won an Oscar) are stunning and perfectly fitted to the different moods of the movie and narrative. On top of all this, the flawless performances by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman as star-struck but ill-fated lovers are unexpected in that the actors convince us that they have a real emotional connection despite their obviously different physical appearances. And despite the derivative nature of some of the numbers, the movie is a wholly original production.
For me, Moulin Rouge! was the first movie I saw that piqued my interest in musicals in general, and as such holds a special place in my movie-watching pantheon. It had to appear on this list.
2. West Side Story
When I listed my favorite movies about New York, I explained that I listed West Side Story, one of my favorite movies of all-time (if not “the”), because there was another movie that was more “about” New York than this one. Today, I don’t really have such an explanation for my #1 and #2 picks other than wanting to leave a little suspense for the top choice again. By now, of course, if you picked up on the Russ Tamblyn and Robert Wise hints from earlier in the list, you were expecting the 1961 Best Picture winner (a total of 10 Oscars total, one shy of the all-tie record) to be on the list.
And why not? It has a lot of what one sees in Seven Brides (the ensemble numbers, the plot-advancing songs) and then some. Who else other than Stephen Sondheim could pen such beautiful lyrics to go along with the touching, at times haunting, and always smile-inducing score by Leonard Bernstein. The talent involved in making this film is unrivaled, and the modern-day take on the Shakespeare classic was as timely in the 1960s as it is today. Expect this movie to appear over and over again on the A-List, it is hard to run out of new things to say about it.
1. Cabaret
But I saved the number one spot for another old-time classic, the unsurpassed Bob Fosse musical, Cabaret. Like Sound of Music and West Side Story, Cabaret is notable for some of its Oscar history. It holds the record for most Oscars won (eight) without winning Best Picture. One can hardly blame it for losing that prize to a movie you may have heard of called The Godfather. It did, however, defeat Coppola for the Best Director award (which he would win later for the sequel anyway). And, like the Sound of Music, this movie uses the tension and bleakness surrounding the Nazi ascent of power to move its plot forward. If you sense a theme it is because there is one: remember that these stories were all written in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Cabaret does everything right that all the other movies on this list do: the music is outstanding, the acting by the lead cast is unparalleled (netting acting Oscars for Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey as Sally Bowles and the emcee, respectively), and the technical aspects of this movie (in this case, the set decoration, costumes, and lighting) are perfectly suited for the movie’s tone, and a work of art in and of themselves.
But what makes Cabaret head and shoulders above the rest of them is that it also contains subtle social commentary, and an honest assessment of the meanings and challenges of love and life. Cabaret was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a gay character in the early 1970s, and anxiety-inducing in its cynical assessment of the expediency of the human condition. Unlike most of the other movies on this list, it is unforgiving, and does not look for a happy ending or an easy resolution. By now, you may have noticed that I tend to prefer the more challenging movie than those that gift-wrap a smile for the audience in the end.
In any case, I leave with a smile every time I see this movie. Perhaps not because of happily ever after, but simply because of the cinematic talent that went into its production, and because of how the gut-wrenching aspects of the story challenge one to be introspective about our own views of love, its challenges, and its tragedies.
A brief programming note is in order. This month, I will return with “They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?”, as awards season begins with the Telluride and Toronto Film Festival. I will endeavor to continue the A-List, but as Oscar coverage increases the former will naturally decrease in turn.