Singing and Dancing in Film

 

In the Framework of the Vienna Festival 2003, from April 28 to May 31, the Film Museum will be presenting a large-scale retrospective devoted to the genre of film musicals.

 

Fifty films, made between 1929 and 2002, evoke a rich cinematic landscape composed of song and dance – a world which has no geographical or stylistic boundaries. In musicals, the dynamics of body and voice are infectious: Carried away by the music, the films’ protagonists take their co-stars and the audience along for a ride, whether it be in stage- or studio-set choreographies, in the wide open field, in a factory, shopping mall or prison. Language becomes onomatopoetic, dialogue transforms into song, noise turns to music and gesture to dance. The whole narrative unfolds in an entirely musical fashion.

 

The film selections range from Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland to the modern musicals of Jacques Demy, Chantal Akerman and Lars von Trier; from the great masters of Hollywood Entertainment, such as Busby Berkeley, Ernst Lubitsch, and Vincente Minnelli, to spectacular musical discoveries from Mexico, Hong Kong and England (Jessie Matthews and Gracie Fields), as well as films from the realm of "Cheerful Communism" (Hungary, German Democratic Republic, USSR).

 

The irrepressible musicality of European classics directed by René Clair, Jean-Luc Godard and Helmut Käutner is juxtaposed with a contemporary re-definition of film musicals, as represented by such filmmakers as Terence Davies, Tsai Ming-liang or Alain Resnais, who often work with “found” soundtracks and “borrowed” voices.

 

A wide range of short films will also be included, from early 1930s Black Musical Shorts (starring Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway) to extravagant 1990s music videos with their limitless references to earlier musicals (directed by Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry or Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and starring Björk, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Fatboy Slim or the Chemical Brothers).

 

Instead of limiting its survey to the history of classical Hollywood musicals, the retrospective will be presenting a wide variety of parallels and linkages by which the films and their characters frequently communicate with each other – across decades, across continents. The clear distinctions between various genres (musicals, romantic comedies, melodramas, music videos) become as blurred as the transitions between "dream" (the musical numbers) and the actual "reality" of the narrative. 

 

The modern workspace, confrontations between the sexes, the various tensions existing between a collective and the individual are all as relevant for the films of this show as is the dream world of showbiz. New characters, milieus and locations appear alongside the traditional world of professional entertainers: people sing and dance in a hairdressing salon (Golden Eighties), behind a typewriter (Der Traum von Lieschen Müller) or on the assembly line (A nous la liberté). Steps are dictated by the rhythm of machines (Dancer in the Dark), and on one occasion there's even a mad musician who attempts to build an ensemble out of 500 piano pupils (The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T). Such strictly choreographed movements and sequences offer constant opportunities for musical anarchy.