The Chris Moeller Archives

The top 10 musicals of all-time

New Year's Eve can mean only one thing-- a list of the greatest movie musicals of all-time!

Lately, a rash of such lists has broken out online from a most unlikely source-- baseball writers. ESPN's Keith Law and the Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski have both published lists. Time for me to get in on this.

My top 10 isn't packed with your standard fare. It's the best movie musicals-- not the best Broadway musicals adapted to the screen. I'm not a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan. Despite the brilliant Technicolor of their adaptations during the '50s and '60s ("Carousel," "Oklahoma," "The King and I," and "South Pacific," to name a few), their cheery optimism generally rings false for me, their social messages hamfisted and poorly-aged, and these films generally overproduced and often badly miscast. (Sinatra as Billy Bigelow in "Carousel" would have been killer.)

These aren't all for the kids, either. A great movie musical isn't required to be "rousing entertainment for the entire family" even if that's where the genre's marketing seems to lie. With one notable exception, none of these films are being produced today with great regularity by high school drama departments.

The top 10:

10) "Pennies From Heaven" 1981-- I know you haven't seen this Steve Martin movie. It bombed upon its theatrical release when it was nothing like the preceding Martin vehicle "The Jerk." It had an unusual tone, marinated in melancholy and each character seemingly lost in his or her own dream. All of the songs were original Depression-era tunes lip-synched by the performers. It features Christopher Walken hoofing it at his pre-Fatboy Slim best, and at its climax, Martin and Bernadette Peters have the stones to "Face the Music and Dance" in front of a theater screen featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and they're mirroring each step. Critic Pauline Kael called "Pennies From Heaven" "the most emotional movie musical" she had ever seen.

9) "Swing Time" 1936-- Many say this is Fred and Ginger's best collaboration. I say second best. Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields did the music, introducing, among other tunes, "A Fine Romance," "Pick Yourself Up," "Never Gonna Dance," and the Academy Award winner, that old Sinatra chestnut, "The Way You Look Tonight." "He gave her class, she gave him sex appeal," wrote one film historian about the Astaire/Rogers pairing. The dancing duo have yet to meet their match.

8) "My Fair Lady" 1964-- Professor Henry Higgins is so proper and snobbish that even by the end of this unusual romance opposite the recipient of his elocution lessons, Eliza Doolittle, there is no professed love, marriage, or consummation. He confesses in song only that he has "grown accustomed to her face." "My Fair Lady" has been called the perfect musical, and the film adaptation carries such arguable delight. It has all of Audrey Hepburn's charm that it can hold, even if few of her musical notes (she was dubbed by Marni Nixon). It's clever, glamorous, and well-paced. I could have danced all night after seeing this one.

7) "A Hard Days Night" 1964-- I'm a card-carrying member of the Michael Jackson generation, but I had the unique opportunity to see this exuberant film on the big screen during a revival in Des Moines about 10 years ago. It features John, Paul, George, and Ringo running about in semi-documentary style, being chased by crazed young ladies and generally enjoying their lives as break-out rock stars. AHDN served as the fans' original insight into the individual personalities of the four lads from Liverpool and simultaneously began the still-ongoing Great Depression for North American barber shops. Says Lord Ebert in his Great Movies series, "Many critics attended the movie and prepared to condescend, but the movie could not be dismissed: It was so joyous and original that even the early reviews acknowledged it as something special. After more than three decades, it has not aged and is not dated; it stands outside its time, its genre and even rock. It is one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies." The movie is cultural revolution incarnate. I can't wait to find out which "Mad Men" character is the first to see it in Season 4 of the series next fall.

6) "Gold Diggers of 1933" 1933-- Hey guys, are you like me? Do you love the human female form? Then have I got the movie for you. Scantily-clad showgirls with long smiles and longer gams dancing merrily and provocatively for the morale of their country during the lowest point in its economic history. Not one girl. Or two. Or twenty. But dozens and dozens, row after row on the Warner Brothers soundstage in flawless art deco and vulgar geometry. Hollywood's oppressive production code on morality has not yet descended, and Mervyn LeRoy and Busby Berkeley are intent on giving us all the greatest show on Earth. "We're in the Money" indeed. What does a girl have to do get a decent meal around here? And when does a good girl become a bad one? I'd like to know!

5) "Meet Me in St. Louis" 1944-- I can't help but think of this little favorite whenever I drive the western border neighborhood of Forest Park in St. Louis, amidst all of the stunning turn-of-the- century homes still standing. The structures were still in their infancy when the World's Fair came to town in 1904, inspiring the short story series that evolved into this musical masterpiece. Unlike many of its big-screen contemporaries, "Meet Me in St. Louis" was not adapted from the stage, which is probably why it fits the screen so snugly. Mr. Alonzo Smith is planning to move his middle-class family from the charming hamlet of St. Louis, Missouri to impersonal, far-off New York City, and his four daughters, ranging in age from Judy Garland to Oscar-winner Margaret O'Brien, dread the thought of leaving their Midwestern paradise. You're in tears by the time Garland's character, Esther, sadly warbles "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to her kid sister, at the same time introducing that now-standard holiday tune to the world. Surprise, surprise, though. Dad changes his mind at the end, and hey, let's all go to the Fair!

4) "The Wizard of Oz" 1939-- I shouldn't have to call this one to your attention. From sepia to Technicolor to that mystical someplace beyond the rainbow.

3) "Top Hat" 1935-- This is Fred and Ginger's best. Songs by Irving Berlin. Fred gliding about the sand-speckled floor above Ginger's bed in a hushed lullaby. The serenade and sidesteps of "A Lovely Day" during a rainstorm in the gazebo. And the epic "Cheek to Cheek" finale. Oh no, they don't make movies like this one anymore, laments me and Jim Beattie, the forlorn gentleman who posted the clip above on YouTube.

2) "Cabaret" 1972-- Little Dorothy from Kansas/Esther Smith would give birth to a force of nature, and its name was Liza! And Liza did a movie musical that served as the end of movie musicals essentially because it stripped away the sentiment, the wholesomeness, even the narrative concept under which characters break out unnaturally into song. "After Cabaret," wrote Pauline Kael at the time, "It should be a while before performers once again climb hills singing or a chorus breaks into song on a hayride." The film inspires arousal in its decadence and amorality, chills in its tale of the looming, unstoppable repression. Tomorrow may belong to the fascists, but tonight, a table's waiting, and what good's permitting some prophet of doom to wipe every smile away.

1) "Singin' in the Rain" 1952-- This one is indisputably the top. A charming and funny story about romance during the period of Hollywood's transition from silent to talking pictures. Corny to be sure, but with a wink about it. It's a movie that loves the movies. There are hilarious, acrobatic routines by Donald O'Connor. There's indefatigable Debbie Reynolds, and that great fullback of a dancer Gene Kelly in a film he co-directed and choreographed and that features him in what is possibly the medium's most iconic sequence (watched almost 2.5 million times on YouTube alone). The scene stands on its own, but it's even more satisfying, trust me, when you watch the entire film and you have to wait an hour and 7 minutes to get to the umbrella and the moistened street curb. It's bliss. Watch it soon with the sun in your heart and ready for love.

posted by CM @ 9:23 PM