Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader

by Steven Cohan (Editor)

Articles examine the musical in relation to its generic form and conventions, the relationship between narrative and spectacle, gender and feminist analysis, camp production and reception, stardom, and the representation of race and ethnicity.
Includes essays by: Rick Altman, Lucie Arbuthnot and Gail Seneca, Carol Clover, Steven Cohan, Richard Dyer, Jane Feuer, Patricia Mellencamp, Linda Mizejewski, Shari Roberts, Pamela Robertson, Michael Rogin, Martin Rubin and Matthew Tinkcom.

Genres: Film

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 2001

About the author

Steven Cohan is Dean’s Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Syracuse University.

Reviews

[Patty Apostolides · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books consists of several essays/articles written by different experts on the film musicals of Hollywood, mostly in the 1930s to 1950s.

Feuer's article, focusing on myths of spontaneity, integration,and audience was very interesting to read. These myths can be applied to musical films such as Top Hat, where the actors, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers break out spontaneously into song and dance, and these numbers are integrated into the narrative. Also in Top hat, the audience is not only us, the viewers, but the audience in the movie, like in a show, or bystanders watching the actors perform.

Dyer's utopian world, where we escape and lose ourselves has components like abundance, intensity, and transparency. The musical films that depicted utopian worlds during the world wars served a purpose.

More is covered, like Rick Altman's dual-focus couple, but at times this book can be dense, and there's a tendency toward very specialized topics and a narrow list of films, and it doesn't cover all the films in the industry.