Film musicals

Through an analysis of two musicals, The Sound of Music (1965) and Mamma Mia! (2008), this essay will discuss the ways in which the musical provides empowering representations of women whilst still upholding and promoting conservative values. By looking at how each musical deals with feminism and post-feminism, the essay will discuss how this creates a space for different readings and how this in itself is empowering.

On the basis of industry reports (for instance, Gant, 2008: 9) and online discussions, it appears that two practices at the centre of Mamma Mia!’s enduring success and appeal have been repeat viewing and the opportunities the film provides for highly vocal audience participation (singing, dancing and clapping along to the musical numbers). Beyond its putative status as a musical (which is clearly central to its capacity to encourage vocal audience participation), the appeal of Mamma Mia! as a distinctive viewing experience can be seen to be informed by a range of reception traditions or categories, which differ in their cultural status and appeal. As Ashley Elaine York has recently argued, Mamma Mia! can be seen as a key example of the ‘millennial women’s blockbuster’ (2010: 4), a new form of ‘chick flick’ which has moved beyond its original target audience of 18-34 year old women, to appeal more widely to older and younger viewers. However, at the same time, the kind of performative activity that has been seen to characterise the Mamma Mia! film experience has more commonly been associated with cult classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and, more recently, the Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music cult screening events, held in the UK and elsewhere (see Conrich, 2006, and Mathijs & Mendik, 2008). Finally, Mamma Mia!’s status as a repeatable experience (in the cinema and on DVD) places it within a ‘popular canon’ of films that, in Barbara Klinger’s terms, have ‘replay value’, with this form of value often being ‘created outside the bounds of institutions officially sanctioned as granters of textual value’, such as academia or popular film criticism (2006: 142-44). Indeed, Klinger’s discussions of young women’s motivations for repeatedly watching chick flicks focus on appeals, including nostalgia and rewatching ‘as a form of female bonding’ (2006: 172), which, potentially (and particularly in terms of the ABBA songs), may inform Mamma Mia!’s place in this ‘popular canon’ of repeatable titles.

By drawing on focus group interviews with avid viewers of Mamma Mia!, the purpose of this chapter is therefore to explore the factors that inform Mamma Mia!’s appeal as a repeatable, pleasurable and meaningful film experience. Furthermore, the chapter considers the ways in which audiences from different age groups make sense of Mamma Mia! as a particular, special and/or distinctive kind of film, in relation to other kinds and categories of films as they are made relevant in viewers’ talk. By focusing on these issues, the chapter aims to explore fan understandings of the cultural status of Mamma Mia!, and to consider the degree to which the factors, motivations and pleasures that inform their love of the film can be related to existing academic debates on the reception of chick flicks and also, potentially, of cult films: a category which has been seen (for instance, by Hollows, 2003) to exist in marked opposition to the more mainstream, female-orientated appeals that are popularly associated with the chick flick.

À travers la notion anglo-saxonne d’entertainment, Fanny Beuré revisite la comédie musicale hollywoodienne, du début des années 1930 à la  fin des années 1950, afin de saisir de concert le plaisir que le genre procure et les valeurs qu’il véhicule. Il s’agit ainsi de constituer une alternative aux approches françaises traditionnelles du musical hollywoodien – surtout historiques et esthétiques – et de mettre en avant l’apport des théories queer et féministes. Études thématiques des films et interprétations détaillées des numéros musicaux s’entrecroisent, faisant aussi bien appel à l’histoire du cinéma qu’aux analyses musicale et chorégraphique.

Este estudo monográfico busca analisar a suposta permanência do gênero “chanchada” no cinema contemporâneo brasileiro. Em um primeiro momento, analisaremos os filmes estrelados por Xuxa Meneghel e Renato Aragão depois da retomada nos anos 1990 a partir de características geralmente atribuídas às chanchadas, a fim de investigar através de uma abordagem semântica/sintática se tais poderiam ser considerados continuidades do gênero. Posteriormente, em uma abordagem de viés pragmático, discutiremos o recente processo de generificação do termo “neochanchada”, seus diferentes usos e significados, enfatizando o papel do crítico na criação de terminologias genéricas no Brasil.

Palavras-chave: gênero cinematográfico; cinema brasileiro; televisão; neochanchada.

ABSTRACT

This study aims to analyze the supposed persistency of the chanchada genre in contemporary Brazilian cinema. First, we will analyze movies starred by Xuxa Meneghel and Renato Aragão after the “rebirth” of Brazilian cinema in the 1990s based on assumed semantic/syntactic features generally attributed to the chanchadas, in order to investigate if they could be considered continuities of the genre. Later, through a pragmatic approach, we will discuss the recent genrification process of the term neochanchada, its different uses and meanings, highlighting the role of the critic in the creation of generic terminologies in Brazil.

Keywords: film genre; Brazilian cinema; television; neochanchada.

Adapted from C. Y. Lee’s novel, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song is a film musical that may be read as a site of contested narratives. On the one hand, its laudable casting of Asian Americans seemingly indicates a greater self-representation for a minority ethnicity to express its own cultural narrative. Being a Rodgers and Hammerstein production necessarily confers cultural capital on its representations of Asian Americans, effectively Americanising the otherwise alien narrative and granting it agency and legitimacy within the mainstream. Yet it is precisely in the Americanising of preexisting Asian stereotypes that the film is guilty of what Edward Said defines as Orientalism; the film is ultimately a reductive interpretation of Asian culture as perceived and mediated through American popular culture, thereby serving as a product of cultural imperialism.

Il nuovo secolo sembra vedere la rinascita del musical con successi come “Dancer in the dark” e “Chicago” – in realtà, con le loro atmosfere cupe ed amare, ben lontani dall’ottimismo ovattato dei musical dell’età d’oro. Nel contempo, “Moulin Rouge!” aggiorna per un pubblico giovane, con strabilianti effetti speciali, e una colonna sonora fatta di un collage di successi pop e rock, la formula dello “spettacolo nello spettacolo” e relativa love story. E mentre Broadway continua a fornire materiale per adattamenti più o meno fortunati (tra cui “Mamma mia” e “Hairspray”), emergono nuove forme, come i “musical juke-box” (“Across the universe, “Yesterday”), e ritorni al passato in chiave contemporanea (“La La Land”), mentre anche i sempreverdi “biopics” ritornano con successi come “Bohemian rhapsody” e “Rocketman”. Forse non siamo ancora al “canto del cigno” del musical hollywoodiano …

El cine y el rock, formas de arte e industria popular, han mantenido una relación fructífera desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX. A partir de esto, el libro recorre subgéneros como el rockumental, la ópera rock y el biopic; se detiene en movimientos asimilados por el cine como el punk, la no wave o el metal; repasa algunas representaciones de la juventud en el cine de los años cincuenta y en las teen movies; detecta la presencia de la contracultura en el cine estadounidense y francés; para finalmente, explorar el panorama chileno y argentino.

Suban el volumen propone, a través de 13 ensayos firmados por críticos de Chile, Perú y Argentina, cartografiar y descifrar las relaciones entre cine y rock, buscando entusiasmar a melómanos y cinéfilos por partes iguales.

Título: Suban el volumen. 13 ensayos sobre cine y rock.
Editores: Iván Pinto, Álvaro García y Ximena Vergara.
Editorial: Calabaza del Diablo
Escriben: Alvaro Garcia Mateluna, Alejo Janin, Hernán Silva Arriagada, Alejandro Cozza, Juan Carlos Poveda, Iván Pinto, Andrés Nazarala, Mónica Delgado, José Carlos Cabrejo, Griselda Soriano, Luciana Calcagno, Ximena Vergara, Antonia Krebs, Luis Valenzuela, Susana Diaz.

The song-and-dance sequence, on account of being a staple item, a routine 'attraction' in the popular cinema of the Indian subcontinent, has been extensively and rigorously theorised in the scholarship on this cinema. The preponderance of song-and-dance sequences across the many film cultures of South Asia has been deeply generative in challenging theories of narrative construction and cohesion, and resultant ideological analyses; postulations about cinematic genre and authorship; canons of realist and experimental cinema; and indeed any attempt to propose a singular ontology of film.

This article situates the Pixar computer animation Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, 2017) within a recent selection of afterlife fictions and questions why such narratives might appeal to our contemporary moment. The author’s response is structured around the idea of utopia. In Coco, he identifies several conceptions of utopic space and ideals. The afterlife fiction places characters and viewers in a reflexive location which affords them the opportunity to examine their lives as lived (rather than in death). Transplanting Richard Dyer’s work on classic Hollywood musicals as entertainment utopia to a contemporary animated musical, the article proposes that such a film can be seen as adhering to a kind of ‘new cinematic sincerity’. Coco’s particular depiction of The Day of the Dead fiesta and the Land of the Dead has its roots in the Mexican writer Octavio Paz’s poetic and romantic treatise The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). A comparison between these two texts suggests that w...

Considerado um dos gêneros mais importantes da história do cinema em Hollywood, os musicais tiveram seu auge até a década de 60. A partir dos anos 2000, uma nova safra de filmes do gênero tentou trazer inovações para os filmes e reconquistar o público perdido. No entanto, mesmo com as intenções de um novo filme, percebe-se que a estrutura básica, tanto de roteiro, quanto de personagens, ainda está presente. Monografia apresentada como requisito para a obtenção do título de Bacharel em Comunicação Social pela PUC-Rio, sob a orientação do Prof. Dr. Miguel Serpa Pereira.

This thesis analyzes selected dream ballets, examining their appearances and investigating how they were used throughout their existence, offering a new perspective on an often-neglected dramatic device of American music theater. Each chapter analyzes the dream ballet from a different interrelated perspective: (1) as a transformative, liminal stage in the course of plot through which the main character(s) undergo some rite of passage (e.g., a “coming of age” ritual); (2) as a device of theatrical artifice rather than an engine of dramatic action; and (3) as a vehicle of political agency. My study analyzes four iconic examples: the dream ballet sequences of Oklahoma! (1943), Carousel (1945), West Side Story (1957), and Billy Elliot the Musical (London, 2005).

A relatively unexamined field in academic discourse, the dream ballet has rarely been the focus of scholarly investigation. Many of the secondary sources I use in this paper are either studies of the genre generally or of specific productions or biographies on significant figures of my research. My primary sources are housed in archival manuscript collections at the New York Library for the Performing Arts or the Library of Congress, where I conducted my research during the summer of 2016. I integrate such sources with theoretical approaches derived from psychology, cultural anthropology, gender studies, and other fields—Sigmund Freud’s classic formulations in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Victor Turner’s anthropological concept of liminality, and Ellen Koskoff’s work on performing gender—to move beyond the specific case studies toward a broader musicological consideration of the dream ballet as a dramatic device. Through this approach, I bring the dream ballet to the fore of musicological thought, both creating a theoretical framework through which to interpret the device and revealing new insights into the musical, cultural, and performative dimensions of music theater.

Cantando bajo la lluvia, al tiempo que rinde homenaje al cine musical anterior, consigue sentar las bases de un nuevo estilo de musical, mucho más cinematográfico y menos teatral, más espectacular, si cabe, y más cercano al espectador.
Jamás una película ha cautivado tanto al gran público, lo que la ha llevado en ocasiones a ser clasificada bajo la etiqueta de cine de evasión, sin complejidades ni pretensiones. Pero ninguna como ella demuestra hasta qué punto esa distinción entre cine de entretenimiento (o evasión) y cine "para cinéfilos" es una distinción artificial. Porque, tras su aparente inmediatez y simplicidad, el análisis de la película muestra un complejo y depurado trabajo con las historias, los personajes, los sonidos y las imágenes que sugiere dimensiones significantes de hondo calado.
Cantando bajo la lluvia es, sobre todo, una película sobre el cine, y no sólo porque cuenta la historia del paso del mudo al sonoro, sino también porque constantemente pone en escena la artificiosidad misma del cine, su naturaleza más íntima, en un juego donde la verdad y la mentira, lo real y lo
artificial pasan vertiginosamente de las historias a la puesta en escena y viceversa.
Cantando bajo la lluvia ofrece, además, un rico panorama, siempre irónico, del Hollywood de la época dorada, de los géneros, de las estrellas, de los grandes estudios, ese Hollywood del que la propia película es una de las cimas más logradas.
En la autoría del libro participaron (por orden alfabético): José Luis Barrera Calahorro, Adolfo Bellido López, Javier Marzal Felici; José María Monzó García; Salvador Rubio Marco).

Exploring the enduring popularity of Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables', this edited volume offers analysis of both the novel itself and its adaptations. In spite of a mixed response from critics, 'Les Misérables' instantly became a global bestseller. Since its successful publication over 150 years ago, it has traveled across different countries, cultures, and media, giving rise to more than 60 international film and television variations, numerous radio dramatizations, animated versions, comics, and stage plays. Most famously, it has inspired the world's longest running musical, which itself has generated a wealth of fan-made and online content. Whatever its form, Hugo’s tale of social injustice and personal redemption continues to permeate the popular imagination. This volume draws together essays from across a variety of fields, combining readings of 'Les Misérables' with reflections on some of its multimedia afterlives, including musical theater and film from the silent period to today's digital platforms. The contributors offer new insights into the development and reception of Hugo's celebrated classic, deepening our understanding of the novel as a work that unites social commentary with artistic vision and raising important questions about the cultural practice of adaptation.

What is 'fun' about the Hollywood version of girlhood? What kinds of pleasure does this version of girlhood invite us to enjoy? Through re-evaluating notions of pleasure and fun, this thesis forms a study of Hollywood girl teen films between 2000-2010. The aesthetic dimensions of commercial girl teen films are particularly underexplored. This study identifies the key aesthetics of girl teen film and articulates the specific types of tactile and kinaesthetic pleasures they are designed to create. Working outside of gendered hierarchies of pleasure and aesthetics, the thesis focuses on 'look and feel'. The study draws on recent literature that prioritises the relationship between film, the body, and affect, in conjunction with Susanne Langer's (1953, 1957) concept and Richard Dyer's (2002) application of 'embodiments of feeling', to present a new way of understanding the 'fun' in girl

This close reading of Heartbeat, a 2019 music video by South Korean pop group, BTS, shows how intermedial musical performance generates narrative and meaning through depictions of bodies and movement. The article begins by highlighting the delivery of Heartbeat’s audiovisual narrative through a hybrid set of formal devices linking the music video with cinematic language. The article makes specific intercultural and intermedial links between Heartbeat and self-reflexive classical Hollywood musicals that highlight spontaneity, integration and the audience. Further discussion of Heartbeat focuses on the music video’s intimate address to viewers through song and writing, highlighting a key moment where on-screen text is made to move in a manner resembling dancing bodies – while English-language lyrics are sung in ways that permit multiple meanings. Elements within this music video – such as the use of bodies to bear musical meaning – ultimately connect with larger intermedial contexts and spin-off products, demonstrating that intermediality plays across several levels from the aesthetic to the commercial.`

Dans le chant XIX de l'Odyssée d'Homère, Penelope décrit à Ulysse, alors qu'il est de retour à Ithaque grimé en vieillard, l'origine « réelle » des rêves. Elle raconte qu'en effet les songes s'invitent dans le monde par le biais de deux portes, l'une de corne et l'autre d'ivoire et elle ajoute ; « Ceux qui sortent de l'ivoire bien travaillé trompent par de vaines paroles qui ne s'accomplissent pas; mais ceux qui sortent par la porte de corne polie disent la vérité aux hommes qui les voient ». Les grecs anciens n'étaient pas capables de distinguer la substance mentale du rêve, et attribuaient aux dieux l'origine des images fugaces qui troublaient leur sommeil. Cette origine divine déterminait largement le rêve et sa signification pour les grecs anciens puisqu'ils pensaient fortement que les rêves étaient des expériences authentiques, très comparables à la vie éveillée, et dont l'expérience pouvait selon les cas se voir validée ou non dans la mesure où les rêves consistent soit d'images vaines, soit d'images vraies. L'approche psychanalytique plus moderne a montré que les rêves sont très étroitement liés à notre inconscient, et qu'ils représentent ainsi l'information qui concerne notre très particulier état d'être ; Ils incarnent les occasions stressantes en devenant cauchemars d'angoisse, ils éveillent nos souvenirs cachés, nos peurs et nos espoirs. Parfois ils montrent ainsi nos désirs forts et on peut cependant supposer qu'il existe une corrélation entre les rêves et les souhaitables réalités alternés. Dans ce sens, les paroles didactiques de Penelope ne sont pas une devinette mais la réalité brute; certes, il arrive que les rêves correspondent aux scenarios qui peuvent potentiellement être réalisés, mais d'autrefois ils s'opposent simplement à une réalité difficile, cahoteuse et parfois terrifiante. On dirait d'une manière arbitraire que le cinéma est en effet consacré à la réalisation des rêves. Au début, une série d'images cohérentes ou pas évolue dans la tête du rêveur, c'est à dire du cinéaste, et quand le film est réalisé, il nous donne l'accès à un monde diffèrent et particulier où on peut finalement partager son rêve. Quand les réalités alternées qui sont présentées dans un film contiennent des personnages-rêveurs, l'expérience totale comporte une essence plus métaphysique et spirituelle; on devient les observateurs des images-rêves qui se forment en schématisant des cercles intégrés les uns dans les autres. On pourrait dire qu'une image-rêve dans un film est si impressionnante parce qu'elle ouvre à nos yeux une subjectivité qui restait jusqu'à maintenant cachée, inconnue. Cette subjectivité nouvelle est réussie dans la mesure où elle met en jeu des éléments optiques-sonores qui sont effectivement virtuels, des sentiments de déjà-vu, des situations-rêveries, de fantasmes ou des figures et des incarnations du passé. Plus les « troubles de la mémoire » et les « échecs de la reconnaissance » sont incarnés par des images, plus nous sommes invités à envisager cette subjectivité comme une réalité à part entière. Gilles Deleuze souligne que c'est le cinéma européen qui présenta très tôt un ensemble de phénomènes psychiques comme l'amnésie, l'hypnose, l'hallucination, le délire, les visions morbides, et surtout le cauchemar et le rêve. Le penseur explique que les cinéastes européens y ont vu un moyen de rompre avec le cinéma américain qui favorise soit une narration plutôt linéaire soit une conception générale trop objective. Par opposition à son pendant américain, le cinéma européen essayait de créer « un mystère de temps, d'unir l'image, la pensée et la caméra dans une même subjectivité automatique ». Deleuze utilise la phrase « panorama temporel » pour décrire la nouvelle situation qui a été mise en surface par le cinéma européen, c'est-à-dire un ensemble d' « images flottantes qui défilent avec une

Au cinéma, quand celui qui est filmé dirige son regard au-delà du cadre visible par le spectateur, il implique la présence de quelque chose qui pourrait lui être accessible. En revanche, lorsqu'il regarde l'objectif de la caméra, il envoie son regard autre part, hors du monde où il se trouve. Le regard-caméra, comme un regard lancé hors de l'écran, transforme les impressions de distances entre le spectateur et les images. Cet article se propose de mesurer différents effets du regard-caméra sur le spectateur : le regard qui lui rappelle sa place face à l'écran, celui qui au contraire l'invite dans l'histoire, ou encore le regard qui se sait aveugle, celui qui dit l'impossibilité d'une rencontre.

There have been certain conventions such as music, dance, male-female duality, personal styles of characters, entertainment, spontaneity and audience, introduced to describe the Hollywood/American film musical genre. However, the majority of these specific conventions are deconstructed in the post-modern musical movies. In order to analyze these conventions by a semiotic approach, this study is devoted to the semiotic analyses of the audio visual language in the construction of these two different types of musical movie genres. The study explores one particular musical movie, ‘The Commitments (1991)’ by Alan Parker by using the theories of prominent semioticians, Christian Metz and Roland Barthes. Musical as a genre is very closely connected with ideology of ‘ideal community’ and nation-ness. The main outcomes of the present paper are primarily related to the ideology of ‘ideal community’ and nation-ness in ‘The Commitments (1991)’ Semiotic analysis takes part a crucial role for reaching this outcome.

This course explores the post-war period in American cinema from approximately 1946 to 1965. In this course we will examine how film interacted with history and culture during the "Cold War" period, a time that promoted economic abundance and population expansion, but also harbored deep anxieties over the bomb, Communist infiltration, the Civil Rights movement, and renegotiated gender roles. We'll explore how the film industry began to implode in the 1950s, unsure how to transition from a vertical monopoly model and wary of their ability to compete with the new medium of television.

The process of imagining the culturally constrained Victorian woman is familiar in contemporary cinema, especially in film musicals.  From Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) to Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables (2012), contemporary film musicals seek to deconstruct the gender politics of Victorian society.  These films present the nineteenth-century past as cultural memory, wherein women’s lives were shaped by inherently restrictive Victorian gender norms.  A specific metaphor – the caged bird – is used to aesthetically and thematically present the restrictions placed on women in Victorian society.
Yet the caged bird metaphor presents a monolithic view of Victorian gender roles.  The female characters imagined through this metaphor become disempowered, their tragic fates overdetermined.  Many historians, especially feminist historians, attest to the restrictions Victorian women faced, but they also demonstrate the many ways in which women resisted patriarchal society.  When contemporary film musicals use the caged bird metaphor, it is positioned as a neo-Victorian remediation for restrictive gender roles.  Ultimately, however, these films depict Victorian women as restricted and – more problematically – as passive to these restraints.

Much as the musical is touted as an American art form, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (1900) has been called the American fairy tale. Since its publication, the book has been eclipsed in popularity by a series of musical–theatrical adaptations, which are also among the most popular shows in the canon of musicals, suggesting an affinity between musicals and Oz. Close analysis of four Oz musicals, the Broadway extravaganza of 1903, the MGM film of 1939, The Wiz (1975) and Wicked (2003) shows how the conventions of musical theatre translate the already powerful symbolic national mythology of Baum’s book into participatory expressions of American identity through embodied performance. In return, Oz gives the musical a signal national text which, through adaptation, allows the musical to reassert its own American pedigree while rearticulating the meaning of American identity at significant moments in the history of the genre.

Film music and its dramaturgical significance are receiving increasing attention. However, little use has been made of the theoretical history of dramaturgy and narratology in concrete access to the many musical-dramaturgical varieties of music in film. The need for this also arises from the fact that previous terminology and systems of the functions of film music often only inadequately depict the circumstances.
In this book, these backgrounds are illuminated and, with a view to film music, a re-evaluation of, among other things, the concept of mimesis and the term fabula is undertaken. The author develops a concept of the fabula connection of film music, a system of music-image couplings and a new model of auditory levels that does without the concept of diegesis. These tools simplify the use of language, enrich film music analysis and clarify diverse music-dramaturgical conditions in contemporary cinema as well. What is also new is the proposition that film music can be involved in comparable processes that exist between the arousal of emotions and narrative processing. Numerous examples provide evidence and, together with a glossary, give impulses for further thinking.

Song translation has only recently become an area of interest for research purposes, with the development of studies on opera, films, folk music, cover songs, and more. Not many scholars have researched stage musicals, even though songs play a fundamental role in this type of performance, conveying meaning via verbal, audio and visual semiotic resources.
A few studies on song translation can be identified, such as Low’s (2003; 2005) Pentathlon Approach and Franzon’s (2005) functional approach. These models of transla- tion offer valuable guidelines on how to treat the lyrics, but what is missing is a systematic and multimodal model of analysis that can be applied to the song in its entirety. Kaindl (2005; 2013) takes into consideration the multimodality of songs, but only focuses on popular music and opera. Acknowledging the lack of substantial research on the interaction between modes, which is typical of stage musicals, this paper focuses on the development of a model of analysis that considers the semiotic complexity of songs. A new approach based on themes will allow for a more holistic view of the song and of its content.

The connection between mechanical voice reproduction and artificial femininity, popularized most recently by Apple’s debut of Siri for the iPhone in 2011, dates nearly to the very moment of the introduction of the phonograph in 1877. This connection was reinforced in the literature of the period, where it served to preserve or question traditional Victorian gender roles amid social and economic changes that were already upending them. In this essay, I build upon arguments in my book Victorian Soundscapes to sketch a trajectory of imaginative representation of the “female talking machine” across what historian of technology Vaclav Smil has identified as “the Age of Synergy” – that is, from Edison’s 1880s talking doll to E. E. Kellett’s turn of the century short story “The Lady Automaton” and on through George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. After mapping out the figure of the female voice engine along this arc, from speaking automaton to autonomous vocalist, I conclude by suggesting how the demands of post-war capitalist mass entertainment sought to undermine if not reverse it.

En el panorama de un cine español de principios de los 70 que sobrevivía a base de viejas fórmulas repetidas hasta la saciedad o nuevas fórmulas de dudoso interés, El espíritu de la colmena supuso una revolucionaria sorpresa. La sorpresa de un cine que abordaba el pasado reciente de la historia española comprometidamente, pero sin caer en el panfleto ni en velados automatismos simbólicos. Un cine que no se agotaba en su carácter testimonial y cuyos sentidos apuntaban, sin forzamiento alguno, a la naturaleza profunda del ser humano en su iniciático enfrentamiento con "la realidad", la "ficción" y la muerte, a la eterna dialéctica entre lo individual y lo social, a la esfera de lo mítico-religioso incluso, sin dejar por ello de ser una pequeña historia de la España de la posguerra. Y todo ello mediante un
trabajo formal tan sobrio como eficaz: desde la interpretación hasta la fotografía, pasando por la concepción sonora de la película, su peculiar estructura narrativa o entera pertinencia de los textos y los diálogos. Un cine sobre el cine (en una relación que, de nuevo, no se agota en la mera cita cinematográfica a El doctor Frankenstein de James Whale -Universal Pictures, 1931-).
Por todo ello, El espíritu de la colmena se convirtió, aún en los 70, en una película adelantada a su tiempo y en punto de referencia obligado de toda una hornada de nuevos realizadores. Por eso, El espíritu de la colmena
continúa teniendo perfecta vigencia hoy, muchos años después de la posguerra y bastantes años después de la muerte de Franco y de la transición política. Y (nos atrevemos a decir) continuará teniéndola durante muchos años más.
En la autoría del libro participaron (por orden alfabético): José Luis Barrera Calahorro, Adolfo Bellido López, Javier Marzal Felici; José María Monzó García; Salvador Rubio Marco)

Postmodernism started to appear as a broad movement in the literary world after 1980s. It has been applied to various fields as well as cinema studies. The rise of postmodernist cinema brought many examples of cinematic productions to the contemporary literature. However, the idea to apply postmodernist film theories to musical film genre is not thoroughly fulfilled.

A music video, commercial, musical, CD-ROM, or internet QuickTime movie can inspire a confusing mixture of rapture and bewilderment. So dazzling but so ephemeral - how to make sense of it? A groundbreaking work, Nicholas Cook's Analysing Musical Multimedia is the first to provide both descriptions and models of how media like music, lyrics, and image can function together. The book should interest scholars and students of American music because multimedia seem increasingly central to contemporary culture; in addition, Cook provides close readings of two quintessentially American
works - the Disney and Stokowski realization of The Rite of Spring from Fantasia, and Madonna's music video "Material Girl."

The United States has spawned few truly distinctive art forms-but one of them is the integrated musical. Although it has its European antecedents, including the Singspiel and music hall entertainment, the musical brings together acting, dancing, and singing in an accessible and popular articulation of what German composer Richard Wagner famously theorized as Gesamtkunstwerk-the "total artwork." But this integration of performance, music, and drama also calls to mind the sociopolitical meaning of integration, especially when one considers the undeniable indebtedness of the musical form to Black and Jewish artists. Playing upon both meanings of integration-the bringing together of storytelling elements and the unification of racial and ethnic populations-we will examine race, ethnicity, and the Hollywood musical from Show Boat (1936) through Encanto (2021). The genre's focus on relationships (romantic, familial, communal) as well as its utopian impulses make it a vibrant forum for ideological tensions and conflicting social discourses. What emerges is not only a cultural history of the musical as an art form, but a social history of the United States as well, in which the musical both stages and (temporarily) resolves the social injustices of the society from which it sprang. As an upper-level seminar, we also will develop in-depth film analysis skills, exploring a range of approaches, methods, and critical frameworks.

This article explores the centrality of Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976) to the history of p*rn, noting the ways that it interfaces with trends in adult film production and stands as representative of several possible avenues for the future of pornography before the VHS era. In exploring the film's contested authorship, association with the producing career of Bill Osco, connection to other films that use public domain literature as material for adaptation, and relationship to the history of adult cinema, the article argues that the film fascinatingly works through apparently contradictory tensions in the history of the field.

Through the coreography of musical cinema, Hollywood has expressed  with fineness the feelings that flowed between the main characters. The songs and dance gave to the public a particular visión of Love that was intimately linked to the romantic concept the Western Culture has created since the nineteen century. But also the musical numbers of  the genre were used by the filmmakers to depict and hint aspects of love that, if they were represents in an explicit manner, could be considered innaceptable by the Hays Code. With the analysis of some sequences from the films Top Hat, An American in Paris and Grease, the author of this article describe not only the mise-en-scene of the romantic courtship in the genre but the way its representation has developed throughout the history of Hollywood musicals.

A commonsense defi nition of a musical fi lm would be that it is a fi lm that has a lot of music in it. It is not a question that your average person would consider worthy of asking. For bett er or for worse, the scholarly study of musicals has evolved a bit further than this. And yet, we still disagree as to just how much music a fi lm must contain to be called a musical, how that music must relate to the diegesis (the narrative world of the fi lm), and what proportions of singing and dancing there must be. A very basic issue involves the diegetic nature of the music: Almost all fi lms contain large amounts of non-diegetic music on the soundtrack, music that is not heard within the narrative world of the fi lm. And many fi lms feature singing and dancing in realistic performance sett ings; in fact, Rick Altman identifi es an entire subgenre of "show" musicals. 1 In this way, a fi lm can have wall-to-wall music and yet not be considered a musical (e.g., American Graffi ti [George Lucas, 1973], or a concert fi lm). Intuitively, we call a fi lm a musical when it contains diegetic singing: songs or numbers that contribute to the telling of the fi lm's narrative. Interestingly, we are not so concerned about diegetic dancing. If we were, the numerous "silent" fi lms that used dancing as part of the narrative with an off -screen piano or orchestral accompaniment would register as musicals. Yet there seems W6041.indb 59 W6041.indb 59 9/26/12 12:17 PM 9/26/12 12:17 PM W6041.indb 60 W6041.indb 60 9/26/12 12:17 PM 9/26/12 12:17 PM

Wywodzący się z nickelodeonów hollywoodzcy potentaci doskonale zdawali sobie sprawę, iż kluczem do sukcesu w filmowym biznesie nie jest wcale […] sfera produkcji […], lecz dwa pozostałe sektory: dystrybucji i wyświetlania. Stąd studia hollywoodzkie dążyły do zbudowania własnych firm dystrybucyjnych oraz kontroli nad siecią kin, czyli integracji wertykalnej.

How do dancing bodies influence the music composed for them? Does the gestural repertoire of the on-screen performer impact the musical performance of the playback singer? How might a focus on dance provide new models for theorizing the Hindi film song-and-dance sequence? Through a focus on the dancing body, this article calls for a reconsideration of the process of ‘song picturization,’ a term commonly used in the Bombay film industry to reference the practice of recording the song first and then “adding” visuals to it. Using the example of the dancer-actress, Vyjayanthimala, it argues that in the case of certain dancer-actors, a reverse process of ‘dance musicalization’ may be at work, where the performer’s dance vocabulary and bodily comportment precede and influence the song. A choreomusicological analysis accords equal importance to the ‘sounding body’ of the dancer-actor as to the bodies that produce the film’s music, leading to the conceptualization of film music as produced through a multi-bodied ‘choreomusicking body.’

《五朵金花》（王家乙，1959）通常被作为少数民族题材的喜剧与音乐风光电影探讨，本文探究其如何将社会主义背景下的性别解放与民族平等主题编织进公路叙事。将《五朵金花》作为“公路电影”研究不仅可以挑战此类型的西方中心框架，也会赋予影片新的解读视角，如位于电影核心的“社会主义道路”的时间与空间隐喻。在此过程中，民间文化尤其是民歌及当时尚属新奇的彩色摄影呈现的乐观性暗示了其社会主义现实主义风格。除了影片叙事中的旅途及社会主义的象征性“旅途”，《五朵金花》本身跨越多个国家的旅途也使其在“冷战”时期“文化外交”方面扮演了重要角色。于是，社会主义现实主义与公路电影的跨国元素相遇与重叠，创造一种旅行世界的多层次流动。

Considers the phenomenon of musicals in Japanese cinema by focusing on the problem of genre, both in terms of the general issue of the structure of genre in the Japanese film industry and the specific problem Japanese musicals have faced in trying to pursue what is often perceived as a Hollywood genre. The paper takes up two examples of the salaryman musical, Harikiri Boy from 1937 and You Can Succeed Too! from 1964, to explore how Japan too could succeed at the film musical.