In a section about theatrical language, Mr. Woolford makes a passing point about film musicals:
"The various theatrical languages that musical-theatre creators have utilised over the years have translated with greater or lesser success to the more naturalistic medium of film...I mention this only to point out that in the transfer to a movie version, any musical necessarily has to change its theatrical language to a cinematic language" (p.193)
Which is, I think, a much better way of saying what I was trying to say about Nine: film musicals need to be conceived as films, rather than merely being filmed.
4. Stylistically the film is best described as an extended lingerie advert.
5. Judi Dench has apparently mastered the technique of shout-sing. She'd make a decent Al Jolson if ever given the opportunity.
6. Actors not stars. Daniel Day-Lewis is inch-perfect as the egotistical director Guido Contini. However something felt missing: he is credible but not charismatic. I could believe that this man was adored by women; I just didn't care. To be fair, there's not much to care about. The character is rich, handsome, successful, bags a series of glamour pusses and whose only problem seems to be a touch of writer's block. Not one for bleeding hearts.
Charisma is really his only redeeming feature and I suspect (and it is merely suspicion - I've never seen the stage show) that this is partly a problem of moving from stage to screen. It's much easier to get caught up in the sheer charisma of an actor on stage. If they're good, a musical performer can sing and dance their way into the audience's appreciation whatever the character. Screen charisma is something else, not always determined by talent. Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the finest screen actors. My feeling is that this part doesn't require an actor; it needs a star.
7. Stars not dancers. Where's the dancing? OK, there's quite a bit. But there's nothing that really strikes you with its physicality (with the possible exception of Marion Cottilard's "Take It All"). There's no routine which makes you say, "Wow! I didn't know the human body could do that". As I recall, I didn't care greatly for Chicago but at least there were some stunning dancers (mostly in the chorus) who were given the chance to shine. As much as I enjoyed Kate Hudson wiggling I can't help feeling that some of the chorines would have made a better fist of it. A film musical needs dancers even more than it needs stars.
8. Augmented theatre. With the exception of Guido's final song, all the numbers are set in his memory or imagination. So whenever the music cues, we generally cut from the story to a number set in the film's sound stage. The cut isn't really the problem (although I suspect, again, this is something that works more effectively on stage). The real problem is the sound stage, which is essentially a cavernous theatrical stage. So instead of eight dancers draping their legs over bits of furniture, we get eighty. Instead of a two-tiered stage, we get multi-storey scaffolding. Instead of the romantic lighting effect of a few dozen candles, we get a few thousand.
Sometimes these are good effects. But Guido's character is an obsessive film director. He eats, sleeps, drinks, thinks, dreams in film. The musical numbers, above all, should be filmic. Setting them in a big space with spotlights and half-finished sets and lots of well-spaced dancers doesn't really make this an imagination on film. Rather it is theatre augmented.
9. Redemption through Art. What does Guido want? Ostensibly it is to finish the film. What he really wants is a kind of redemption or, at least, the forgiveness of his wife, Luisa, whom he has wronged. At the end of the story, with his creative forces exhausted and unable to complete his film, he becomes a recluse, grows a beard and watches the world go by. A couple of years later his friend and long-term costume designer, Lilli, tracks him down. She reminds him of all the people he has touched through his films and encourages him to return to his film making. The final scene shows him in the studio making a film about a man trying to win back his wife. Meanwhile Luisa sneeks onto the set unseen. She sees Guido at work and smiles.
This is bunk. Artists tend to have a very high regard for Art and I think it catches them out sometimes. Guido is a monster. The story here is trying to redeem him merely by the fact that he's a great artist. Any amount of cruel and narcissistic behaviour is apparently forgivable as long as you can make a great movie.
Well, I'm not buying it. It doesn't happen in any other profession. We don't forgive plumbers their infedility on account of their copper pipework. We don't give a moral carte blanche to accountants who never misplace a decimal point. What makes the artist so special?
Ultimately I suspect that's why the film, despite the extensive lingerie and a galaxy of star names, never really became the hit in the way that Chicago was. For the non-artist, there's limited appeal. Nine is basically Sunday in the Park with George in frilly knickers.
“Something else you can appreciate is how little the camera gets in the way of the musical performances. Today’s musicals are all editing — chop, chop, chop. “West Side Story” might cut here and there and move the camera a bit, but you are at least allowed to enjoy these remarkable performances without feeling manipulated or cheated. The actors, music, and choreography dazzle, not the post-production”
Spot on.
Over the yuletide there was a BBC special with former ballerina Darcy Bussell re-creating some famous Hollywood numbers by Fred, Ginge, Gene and Cyd. The programme concentrated on the differences between dance in ballet (all stiff backs, glum faces and pointy toes) and dance in musicals (hunched shoulders, loose limbs and comedy props).
Well, Darcy's a game gal and made a rum go of it. But the thing that you really noticed in the resultant dance films was the editing. No machine-gun editing and quick-fire cuts here, there and everywhere. Instead there were long lingering shots where the camera allowed us to watch the dance in full flow.
It’s been said that film editing and choreography are similar in as much as they are both essentially exercises in rhythm. This may be true but too much of one can spoil the other. Too many short, snappy cuts (“chop, chop, chop”) and what you end up with is not a dance but a series of poses. In dramatic terms, it’s like defining a character by a series of attitudes rather than a personality.
But more recent film musicals seem to have caught MTV-itis with their short little spans of attention. In fact, when it comes to editing a dance, the best music videos are of the old school. Just ask Beyonce.
(By the way, all of the above goes for modern action films too.)
Blogger Andrew Brinded has been busy unscrambling a very silly post by the Guardian’s Stuart Heritage. The thrust of Mr. Heritage’s argument is that characters in film musicals should just say how they feel rather than sing. He does, however, admit to liking “The Bare Necessities”, to which Andrew parries:
“I would suspect that as Baloo is a talking bear, it’s okay for him to sing”
There is much wisdom in this. Let’s poke this bear some more.
There is a notion in some quarters that cinema audiences no longer accept characters bursting into song MGM-style. What is credible on stage apparently becomes ridiculous on film. I disagree. I just think that most of today’s film musicals either skirt around the problem or aren’t quite good enough to overcome it. Let’s go back a bit.
Cabaret marked the turning point. In the stage show there are “book” numbers performed by the characters in the story and “concept” numbers performed in the Kit Kat club. For the film version they dropped the book numbers so that the only songs performed were the ones performed in the more “realistic” setting of the cabaret itself.
Post-Cabaret there followed a relatively fallow period. Then Disney brought Broadway back to the screen. Suddenly movies were singing once more. There were singing mermaids (Little Mermaid), singing prince-beasts (Beauty and the Beast) and singing lions (Lion King). Even the warthog got its own number. And clearly audiences weren’t put off by it.
Ah, but this was animation and a difference this makes. Musicals need to exist in a world of “heightened reality”. This doesn’t necessarily mean a fantastical world but there has to be some sense of “bigness”, a reason to sing rather than merely to speak. Animation, by its very nature, already exists in this world. This is where Andrew’s comment gets to the nub. For an audience member, the imaginative leap required to move from talking bear to singing bear is less than it is to move from talking human character to singing human character. But it’s essentially the same imaginative leap, the same basic need for the willing suspension of disbelief. Animation just makes the leap a little easier.
So Disney offered a way back for the film musical. But the real test came with the live-action stuff and that’s been more of a mixed bag. Two exceptions have been Oscar-laden Chicago and the box office hit Enchanted. But neither film really challenges the idea that audiences won’t accept real people bursting into song. Chicago works on a similar basis as Cabaret with the songs being presented as artificial “concept” numbers. Enchanted, although for the most part a live-action film, leaves the singing to characters transported from an animated world.
So the notion that cinema audiences won’t accept people bursting into song persists to this day. Of course it’s bunk. Audiences will accept plenty of things on film – “flying cars, wizards, dragons” as Andrew points out – so there’s no reason to think that they’d be put off by characters singing. They weren’t in MGM’s day, they wouldn’t be now. The problem is that no recent screen musical has done it successfully enough to prove the point.
