The American Film Musical

The American Film Musical Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The American Film Musical book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The American Film Musical

Author : Rick Altman
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 025320514X

Get Book

The American Film Musical by Rick Altman Pdf

"... a model of genre criticism and probably the best overall analysis of the film musical to date." Journal of Popular Films and Television "The American Film Musical is a truly admirable book which is well worth making a song and dance about. It will immediately assume biblical authority for all who are seriously interested in the dream-factory's most lavish fantasies, and it may even come to stand as a landmark in our understanding of Hollywood as a whole.... Altman's book is thorough, well informed and warmly good-humored. It has brought the study of musical films out of the dark ages." Times Literary Supplement "... an important addition to both literature and film collections.... a landmark study." Library Journal "Altman's important study of the American film musical combines genre theory with film criticism and history.... Recommended... " Choice The American Film Musical is at once the most advanced statement on genre theory and the most complete treatment of the American musical. Altman's unique interweaving of theory, history, and criticism represents an original and challenging contribution to film studies. Illustrated with over 200 frame enlargements and production stills.

American Film Musical Themes and Forms

Author : Michael Dunne
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2014-12-24
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780786483372

Get Book

American Film Musical Themes and Forms by Michael Dunne Pdf

The musical has been called "the most popular form of entertainment in the world." This work examines the subjects, themes, and contemporary relevance of Hollywood musicals through their long popularity, placing each show in historical and political context and analyzing it in detail. A chapter is devoted to how Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) and Stand Up and Cheer (1934) deal with the economic crises of the Depressions. Another addresses race issues by examining the prevalence of blackface minstrelsy in the 1930s and 1940s, looking at productions like Swing Time (1936) and Dixie (1943). Rock and roll culture, which started in the 1950s and threatened America with teenage sex and rebellion, is addressed through such hits as Girl Crazy (1943), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), and Grease (1978). The work also explores dance as a signifier of character, the geography of musicals (such as New York or "the South"), fantasy settings, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and the musical biopic (mentioning biographies of such figures as Ziegfeld, Cohan, Rogers and Hart, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern). A later chapter discusses intertextuality in such shows as Singin' in the Rain (1952), which refers to many earlier musicals; Kiss Me Kate (1953) which refers to Taming of the Shrew; and All That Jazz (1970) which refers to the life and work of Bob Fosse. The work concludes with an examination of the continuing popularity of the musical with such hits as Moulin Rouge (2001) and Chicago (2002). Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Movie Musical!

Author : Jeanine Basinger
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 657 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-05
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781101874066

Get Book

The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Basinger Pdf

Irresistible and authoritative, The Movie Musical! is an in-depth look at the singing, dancing, happy-making world of Hollywood musicals, beautifully illustrated in color and black-and-white--an essential text for anyone who's ever laughed, cried, or sung along at the movies. Leading film historian Jeanine Basinger reveals, with her trademark wit and zest, the whole story of the Hollywood musical--in the most telling, most incisive, most detailed, most gorgeously illustrated book of her long and remarkable career. From Fred Astaire, whom she adores, to La La Land, which she deplores, Basinger examines a dazzling array of stars, strategies, talents, and innovations in the history of musical cinema. Whether analyzing a classic Gene Kelly routine, relishing a Nelson-Jeanette operetta, or touting a dynamic hip hop number (in the underrated Idlewild), she is a canny and charismatic guide to the many ways that song and dance have been seen--and heard--on film. With extensive portraits of everyone from Al Jolson, the Jazz Singer; to Doris Day, whose iconic sunniness has overshadowed her dramatic talents; from Deanna Durbin, that lovable teen-star of the '30s and '40s; to Shirley T. and Judy G.; from Bing to Frank to Elvis; from Ann Miller to Ann-Margret; from Disney to Chicago . . . focusing on many beloved, iconic films (Top Hat; Singin' in the Rain; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Sound of Music) as well as unduly obscure gems (Eddie Cantor's Whoopee!; Murder at the Vanities; Sun Valley Serenade; One from the Heart), this book is astute, informative, and pure pleasure to read.

Free and Easy?

Author : Sean Griffin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-07-24
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781405194969

Get Book

Free and Easy? by Sean Griffin Pdf

A History of the American Musical narrates the evolution of the film musical genre, discussing its influences and how it has come to be defined; the first text on this subject for over two decades, it employs the very latest concepts and research. The most up-to-date text on the subject, with uniquely comprehensive coverage and employing the very latest concepts and research Surveys centuries of music history from the music and dance of Native Americans to contemporary music performance in streaming media Examines the different ways the film musical genre has been defined, what gets counted as a musical, why, and who gets to make that decision The text is written in an accessible manner for general cinema and musical theatre buffs, whilst retaining theoretical rigour in research Describes the contributions made to the genre by marginalized or subordinated identity groups who have helped invent and shape the musical

The Hollywood Film Musical

Author : Barry Keith Grant
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2012-04-23
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781405182539

Get Book

The Hollywood Film Musical by Barry Keith Grant Pdf

This revealing history of the American film musical synthesizes the critical literature on the genre and provides a series of close analytical readings of iconic musical films, focusing on their cultural relationship to other aspects of American popular music. Offers a depth of scholarship that will appeal to students and scholars Leads a crucial analysis of the cultural context of musicals, particularly the influence of popular music on the genre Delves into critical issues behind these films such as race, gender, ideology, and authorship Features close readings of canonical and neglected film musicals from the 1930s to the present including: Top Hat, Singin' in the Rain, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, West Side Story, and Across the Universe

The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia

Author : Thomas S. Hischak
Publisher : Greenwood
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2002-09-30
Category : Music
ISBN : UOM:49015002816875

Get Book

The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia by Thomas S. Hischak Pdf

Offers background information and commentary on 1,200 popular songs from a variety of styles and genres written between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century.

Broadway

Author : Laurence Maslon,Michael Kantor
Publisher : Applause Theatre & Cinema
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Music
ISBN : 1423491033

Get Book

Broadway by Laurence Maslon,Michael Kantor Pdf

(Applause Books). A companion to the six-part PBS documentary series, Broadway: The American Musical is the first comprehensive history of the musical, from its roots at the turn of the 20th century through the smashing successes of the new millennium. The in-depth text is lavishly illustrated with a treasure trove of photographs, sheet-music covers, posters, scenic renderings, production stills, rehearsal shots and caricatures, many previously unpublished. Revised and updated, with a brand-new foreword by Julie Andrews and new material on all the Broadway musicals through the 2009-2010 season.

The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity

Author : Raymond Knapp
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2018-06-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780691186207

Get Book

The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity by Raymond Knapp Pdf

The American musical has achieved and maintained relevance to more people in America than any other performance-based art. This thoughtful history of the genre, intended for readers of all stripes, offers probing discussions of how American musicals, especially through their musical numbers, advance themes related to American national identity. Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical antecedents to the musical, including the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, nineteenth and early twentieth-century American burlesque and vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other song types. It then proceeds thematically, focusing primarily on fifteen mainstream shows from the twentieth century, with discussions of such notable productions as Show Boat (1927), Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Assassins (1991). The shows are grouped according to their treatment of themes that include defining America, mythologies, counter-mythologies, race and ethnicity, dealing with World War II, and exoticism. Each chapter concludes with a brief consideration of available scholarship on related subjects; an extensive appendix provides information on each show discussed, including plot summaries and song lists, and a listing of important films, videos, audio recordings, published scores, and libretti associated with each musical.

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical

Author : Raymond Knapp,Mitchell Morris,Stacy Wolf
Publisher : OUP USA
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2011-11-04
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780195385946

Get Book

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical by Raymond Knapp,Mitchell Morris,Stacy Wolf Pdf

The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website.Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.

A History of the American Film

Author : Christopher Durang,Mel Marvin
Publisher : Samuel French , Incorporated
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Drama
ISBN : UVA:X006193904

Get Book

A History of the American Film by Christopher Durang,Mel Marvin Pdf

Musical / 9m, 6f / Various Sets A hilarious take off on American films, especially from the 1930s through the 1970s. The principals play a variety of characters. There is a Cagney Bogart Dean Brando type-- and a Fonda Stewart Peck Perkins type. The women, too, are types-- basically Bette Davis, Loretta Young and Eve Arden. The parts they play are wild parodies from many Hollywood genres; a silent tearjerker, slum idyll, gangster epic, courtroom melodrama, chain gang social justice thriller, screwball comedy, Busby Berkeley backstage musical, war propaganda canteen musical-- not to forget "Casablanca," "Citizen Kane" and a variety of minor genres. "Christopher Durang has written one of the funniest, zaniest, most entertaining plays of the last decade...What we see is the American way of life reflected through a distortion mirror...Its true that Durang has serious points to make...but this is no message play, thank goodness. Most everything in it is pure, unadulterated, uproarious fun.... Durangs] witty comedy about the movies is a splendid, constantly surprising treat." - Stanley Eichelbaum, San Francisco Examiner "A grand popular entertainment. A significant act of film criticism as well as wise social commentary. Mr. Durang has the waggishness of four Marxes and the malice of Jonathan Swift. Through the history of the American film, we see a history of America - the turn from patriotism to cynicism, from optimism to sensationalism...The clown-sharp company of comic actors strikes precisely the correct stance - total conviction and not camp...A History of the American Film is an A-movie, a glorious montage of myth-America. - Mel Gussow, The New York Times

International Film Musical

Author : Corey K Creekmur
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2013-01-11
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780748654307

Get Book

International Film Musical by Corey K Creekmur Pdf

A unique study of the film musical, a global cinema tradition.

The Movie Musical

Author : Desirée J. Garcia
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781978803800

Get Book

The Movie Musical by Desirée J. Garcia Pdf

Putting Asian and European musicals into conversation with Hollywood classics like Singin’ in the Rain and La La Land, this study demonstrates the flexibility and durability of the genre. It explores how the movie musical mediates between nostalgia and technical innovation, while foregrounding the experiences of women, immigrants, and people of color.

Disintegrating the Musical

Author : Arthur Knight
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2002-08-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780822384106

Get Book

Disintegrating the Musical by Arthur Knight Pdf

From the earliest sound films to the present, American cinema has represented African Americans as decidedly musical. Disintegrating the Musical tracks and analyzes this history of musical representations of African Americans, from blacks and whites in blackface to black-cast musicals to jazz shorts, from sorrow songs to show tunes to bebop and beyond. Arthur Knight focuses on American film’s classic sound era, when Hollywood studios made eight all-black-cast musicals—a focus on Afro-America unparalleled in any other genre. It was during this same period that the first black film stars—Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge—emerged, not coincidentally, from the ranks of musical performers. That these films made so much of the connection between African Americans and musicality was somewhat ironic, Knight points out, because they did so in a form (song) and a genre (the musical) celebrating American social integration, community, and the marriage of opposites—even as the films themselves were segregated and played before even more strictly segregated audiences. Disintegrating the Musical covers territory both familiar—Show Boat, Stormy Weather, Porgy and Bess—and obscure—musical films by pioneer black director Oscar Micheaux, Lena Horne’s first film The Duke Is Tops, specialty numbers tucked into better-known features, and lost classics like the short Jammin’ the Blues. It considers the social and cultural contexts from which these films arose and how African American critics and audiences responded to them. Finally, Disintegrating the Musical shows how this history connects with the present practices of contemporary musical films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Bamboozled.

The Secret Life of the American Musical

Author : Jack Viertel
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2016-03-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780374711252

Get Book

The Secret Life of the American Musical by Jack Viertel Pdf

A New York Times Bestseller For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in childhood in a darkened theater, grows into something more serious for high school actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical? In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next—by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion—from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward. Structured like a musical, The Secret Life of the American Musical begins with an overture and concludes with a curtain call, with stops in between for “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales. The ultimate insider, Viertel has spent three decades on Broadway, working on dozens of shows old and new as a conceiver, producer, dramaturg, and general creative force; he has his own unique way of looking at the process and at the people who collaborate to make musicals a reality. He shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically. The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel as though you’ve been there in the rehearsal room, in the front row of the theater, and in the working offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beast—the Broadway hit.

Musical Sincerity and Transcendence in Film

Author : Timothy B. Cochran
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-16
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780429874697

Get Book

Musical Sincerity and Transcendence in Film by Timothy B. Cochran Pdf

Musical Sincerity and Transcendence in Film focuses on the ways filmmakers treat music reflexively—that is, draw attention to what it is and what it can do. Examining a wide range of movies from the last thirty-five years including examples from Indiewood, teen film, and blockbuster cinema. The book explores two recurring ideas about music implied by foregrounded musical activity on screen: that music can be a potent means of sincere expression and genuine human connection and that music can enable transcendence of disenchantment and the mundane. The book covers eclectic critical terrain to highlight various layers of musical sincerity and transcendence in film, including the nineteenth-century aesthetics of E.T.A. Hoffmann, David Foster Wallace’s literary resistance to irony (sometimes called the New Sincerity), strategies of self-revelation in singer-songwriter repertoires, Lionel Trilling’s distinction between sincerity and authenticity, theories of play, David Nye’s notion of the American technological sublime, and Svetlana Boym’s writings on nostalgia. These lenses reveal that film is a way of perpetuating, revising, and critiquing ideas about music and that music in film is a potent means of exploring broader social, emotional, and spiritual desires.