Essay 3 (Musical) Flashcards
General introduction
- Jolson perfected every quality the Hollywood musical sought to appropriate from theatre
- Vaudeville personality and emotional excess
- A style of performing that emphasised direct contact between performer and audience
- The architecture of where he performed moved him into the heart of the audiences (This is why mise-en scene is important!)
- Musical films share the: desire to capture on celluloid the quality of live entertainment
- In theatre there is the iIllusion that the audience really participates
- Hollywood musicals compounded this fiction of direct and spontaneous performance
-The emergence of stars in theatre marked the transition from folk art to popular art
“The audience-as-community had come to depend on the performer’s skills to articulate its common values and interpret its experiences”
- The Hollywood musical is removed from folk art in that it involves mechanical reproduction and mass distribution
- Alienation between performer and audience
- Socio-economic alienation: The performers do not consume the product and the consumers do not produce it
- Aesthetic alienation: As a reproduction, the performer’s presence/aura vanishes (Benjamin)
- The Hollywood musical perceives this gap between producer and consumer, as community is broken
- It seeks to bridge this gap by putting up by basing community as its value system (community = folk?)
- The musical is self-reflexive, trying to compensate for its alienation by creating humanistic ‘folk’ relations
- Their relations cancel out the economic values and relations associated with mass-produced art/entertainment
- “The Hollywood musical becomes mass art which aspires to the conditions of folk art, produced and consumed by the same community”
Four key aspects of folk-art creation for mass-art cancellation in Hollywood musicals
- Bricolage vs. Engineering
- Non-Choreography and Non-Rehearsal
- Amateurs and Professionals
- The Folk Community and the Community Backstage
Bricolage vs. Engineering
-Preserve spontaneous over engineered effects
- Great musicals use domestic objects in their dance
- Speech - music; walking - dane; things in our house - props for an improvised ballet
- Performers make use of random props to create the imaginary world of the musical number
- The conventionality of prop dance suspends our disbelief regarding the reasons for the props being there
- Feats of technological knowhow have an aura of spontaneity
- Claude Levi-Strauss explains Bricolage: The primitive man uses materials which do not have any relationship for the project, but which appear to be all he has to work with
- He compares bricoleur of folk cultures to the engineer of modern scientific thought?
- Engineering is a pre-requisite for the creation of effects of spontaneity in the Hollywood musical
- The bricolage number attempts to cancel engineering (characteristic of mass production) by substituting bricolage (characteristic of folk production)
- The mise-en scene has to be invisible!!!
- Props do not appear as props (impression of being real objects in the environment, even though carefully placed)
- Astaire pioneered the prop dance
- Astaire creates the dance out of the total environment (Mise-en scene: Props and surrounding)
- Environmental conception for choreography
- Gene Kelly gave bricolage the stamp of good old American inventiveness
- The more a scene appears as bricolage, the more it cancels out its creation through engineering
- Still, the bricolage and the engineered number are closely related (When trick photography is combined with bricolage)
- It takes engineering to give an effect of tinkering
- Engineering as the mode of production of Hollywood musical is cancelled by a content relying heavily upon bricolage
- The number may appeal as folk art, while taking full advantage of the possibilities technology gives mass art
Non-Choreography and Non-Rehearsal
-Masking choreography and rehearsal
- All musical dance originates in folk, yet dominant dance styles in 1930s musicals (tap dancing and ballroom dancing) have European rather than American folk roots
- Astaire’s dance is folk as it is more natural and spontaneous than classical ballet
- Still, too European to appear folksy to the audience
- It took a revolution in ballet during the late 30s and the war to introduce American folk ritual into the Hollywood musical
- Choreographers made ‘local colour’ ballets out of American folk material (cowboys and sailors)
- This happened by introducing spontaneous dance style based on American folk stance and gesture (which?)
- Influenced by the movements of modern dance and the psychological mime-ballets
- This new American ballet was closer to acting and natural body rhythms
- Choreography for group dances in musicals of the 40s, borrows from ballet its incorporation of folk gesture
- Choreography for bricolage numbers borrowed from the new ballet its conception of dancing as acting and spontaneous outpouring of emotion
- Classical ballet seeks to conceal all effort; Modern dance seeks to reveal all effort; musicals neutralise all effort
- Choreography in prop numbers could only with imagination be called dancing
- The impression that choreography is cancelled out (dance appears natural)
- Both the group folk dance and the prop number reflect this
- Dances that employ ordinary movements (not steps) aim for an effect of natural body language (Continuity between walking and dancing is stressed)
- Thin line between normal and choreographed movements
- Non-choreography reached its peak in MGM musicals in the 50s
- Movements are spontaneous (horsing around)
- Stamping of feet cancels out the quality of grace associated with classical ballet
- Group dances can be seen as community rituals when amateurs dance in local choreography
- This performance suggest that performer and audience are the same
- In the group folk dance, the choreographer is the community
- Choreography forces us to accept the illusion that this is the audiences community
- Non and folk-choreography conceal the making of the dances
- The presentation of finished performances as rehearsals is a deception in backstage musicals
- We forget we are polished performance, due to rehearsal environment (illusion of spontaneity)
-Masking choreography serves to hide the work that goes into producing entertainment
-Dances and their practices hide their own origins in labour and technology
“The illusion of spontaneity cancels out the place musicals occupy in the history of entertainment, because mass art becomes folk art”
Amateurs and Professionals
- Creating amateur entertainment to cancel professionalism
- There is an emphasis on the joys of being an amateur
“Amateur” derives from amator (lover)
-The difference between singing and dancing for the love of it or for profit (economic angle)
“All folk art is amateur entertainment”
- Stardom came in with the emergence of popular and mass entertainment out of communal folk art
- Hollywood musicals attempt to combine the charisma of the professional with the folksiness of the amateur
- They eliminate the exploitative aspects of professionalism
- Amateur entertainers are like the audience (Jo)
- Some films do this by eliminating the backstage context
- Singing and dancing emerge from the joy of everyday life
- 1940s shows sub-genre of Hollywood musicals in small folk towns (Paris)
- Dick’s first doesn’t do it for the love: “It pays well”
- Musicals aim to achieve an aura of amateurism
- Portraying characters that do not sing for the money (Jo Stockton) brings them closer to the audience
The Folk Community and the Community Backstage
-Creating communities both offstage and backstage
- The musical developed a filmic vocabulary to create an kinetic sense of participation in the film audience
- The creation of community within films, cancels out the loss of community between Hollywood and its audience
- The making of the couple is paralleled with the making of a stable community in a folk sub-genre
- Choreography blurs the dividing lines between performer and audience. (folk group dance becomes a community ritual) (already know)
-Folk musical reeks with nostalgia for America’s mythical communal past, even as the musical itself exemplifies the new alienated mass art (Fashion industry)
- Two song formats create nostalgia (Singalong and passed-along)
1. Traditional form in ordinary life. Links entertainment to community.
2. Specific cinematic techniques such as the travelling shot and montage sequence to illustrate the spread of music by the folk (Bonjour Paris) - The latter can make the entire world a community (This is what Funny Face does!!!)
- In backstage musicals the world of the stage is a community too (there is a need for community to resolve conflict and obstacle)
- The cinema audience feels a sense of participation, cancelling out the alienation inherent in the viewing situation
- Just as in backstage musicals the final show incorporates folk motifs, so do folk musicals (Final scene in Funny Face)
- Even after the girl becomes a star, she retains an identity with rural America, which rubs off on the alienated world of show business (In backstage musical, but relevant)
- Summer Stock keeps the folk and professional alternating, but in the end the folk brings it home (Funny face)
- Economic relations underlying professional entertainment and mass art are universalised, given the timeless and spiritual dimension of pre-industrial communities and folk arts (in Summer Stock but applicable)
- Conventions for staging and filming numbers in musical position the spectator as an uncritical consumer of entertainment as folk, rather than mass art (This happens through mise-en scene, which is the staging of the frame)
Funny Face: Information
- 1957
- Directed by Stanley Donan
Starring:
- Jo Stockton
- Dick Avery
- Maggie Prescott
- Prof Emil Flostre
Themes
- Love
- Juxtaposition of American capitalism/mass production with French folk values and intellectualism
- Global community
- Feminism
Funny Face: Ideas
“The illusion of spontaneity cancels out the place musicals occupy in the history of entertainment, because mass art becomes folk art”
- Meta-cinematic quality (Bookstore and stage)
- The fashion industry is reflexive of the musical industry
- In Funny Face it is the intellectual community
- Mise-en scene and sets create folk thematics and allow for spontaneity, which in turn also shapes folk art
- Both American, French and global folk values by showing different communities (Intellectuals, fashion industry, world community)
- Jo’s identity rubs off on Dick and the fashion industry, just as in the reading the alienated world of show business
- Funny Face is not a backstage musical
- Is Jo’s identity folksy (Because both French and American intellectualism)
- Greenwich village bookstore shows both folk characteristic of New York and is reflexive of the engineering used to create folk thematics
- The fact that Jo is an amateur and not a professional model shows that she is doing it for the love (Not love for fashion industry, but for Dick.)
- The saturated colours in Funny Faces might highlight themes and folk values
- Unlike in cinemascope, Vista Vision did not affect mise-en scene tremendously
- In the end they perform for their love for each other (amateur = folk) (highlighted by folksy mise-en scene)
Scenes
Opening scene
-Introduction to fashion world (mass produced industry)
-In Ms. Prescott’s office, the mise-en
scene reveals a view of skyscrapers in Manhattan
behind a transparent curtain
-Choice of colours and symmetrical framing of doors
makes mise-en scene unique from the beginning
“Think Pink”
-String of pink fabric: spontaneous prop in the room
-New York maintains framed in the background
(dominant theme of American capitalism and American
Dream)
-Dance turns into trick photography montage created
through camera tricks (pink purses, jewellery and high
heels are shown
in front of a black background)
-Links to Feuer’s idea that bricolage and
engineering are closely intertwined (Further
emphasised through jump cuts of different children
appearing in pink outfits, animated pink toothpaste and
freeze frames of people wearing pink in mid air)
-Then group choreography is painting the doors (choreographed group dance by amateurs. They are painters/American labour. They jump.)
Bookstore
-On the way to bookstore we see location shots of
Washington Square Park in New York
-Bookstore scene is self-reflexive (as the musical), as it
shows how objects are arranged for spontaneity
-They rearrange books for their photo
-All props are carefully placed
-The mise-en scene of bookstore itself, reiterates
American literary tradition (folk values)
“Bonjour Paris”
-Location shot of the streets of Paris with Arch of
Triumph (similar aesthetic to Washington square arch)
when Dick Avery walks along and starts singing
(background might be fake)
-Prescott and Jo do the same in a different locations
(Saine etc.)
-The performance is extremely improvised as they use
the environment of the city and interact with its people
(Community values)
-Attention is brought to French folk thematics, such as
its architecture and the intellectual culture (Landmarks
and Montmartre)
-Return to trick photography where all three
performances are edited into one frame (engineering)
-Choreographed group performance with officers
-The words of the song reflect upon the different
areas of Paris and maintain American folk values as the
emphasis is put on the American tourist
-Sequence is intercut with aerial shots of Paris
-The lyrics emphasise American folk values and
juxtapose them to French folk values to create a sense
of a world community
Bohemian dance
-Mise-en scene emphases the intellectual quarter of
Montmartre at night before
-The mise-en scene in the bar is very intricate
-People dancing and doing unusual acts in the
background
-Jo’s dance is the definition of an impromptu dance
-It is spontaneous, makes use of people (two) and
objects (stand up base) around her
-Rooted in ballet, yet she stomps (Link to reading)
-She also tap dances
-Seemingly improvised scene that is choreographed
Dick’s dance in front of Jo’s apartment
- Spontaneous prop dance with umbrella and raincoat
- Simple mise-en scene (Courtyard at night, long shot)
- Raincoat is used like a Bull fighter
- Pretends to play golf (Dance ends majestically)
The Windmill scene
-French folk thematics allows the couple to be together
-Rural France, castle, bridges (frames in the back)
-She connects the idea that she loves Paris with the
idea that she loves him (Folk and romantic values
together)
-Reiterated through mise-en scene of blooming flowers,
white swans and doves)
-Classic ballroom dancing
-Raft as seemingly spontaneous use of mise-en scene
The dance on stage in Paris (similar to rehearsal)
-The lyrics reiterate ideas such as being married etc.
-The mise-en scene in the set of the catwalk reflects
the folk values of windmill scene (bridge
-Self-reflexive
-Does this go against Jo’s previous belifs?
Photoshoot montage
-The freeze frames reiterate the aspect of
engineering
-Dick is staging the photos to create a certain mood
-Reflexive of how dance numbers are staged with
random props environment to create a mood (folksy)
Jo in the Bar with Prof. Flostre
-Visual Juxtaposition of Blue dress in intellectual environment
On Stage
-As the stage is destroyed (the folksy mise-en scene is destroyed), their relationship crumbles (reliant on mise en scene/folk values)
Dance in Flostre studio
- Dick holds guitar like a rockstar - Seems improvised and supposed to be improvised - American spectacular show in this calm environment
Final scene
-The white costume design of both Jo and Dick
represents purity, innocence, reconciliation and
romance
-The mise-en scene shapes a happy ending
More historical and technical info
- Third major era for motion pictures in the 50s
- TV began to rise, America started to suburbanise and people would rather watch something at home than go to the movies (Samuel Goldwyn)
- Wide-screen revolution in the early 50s (John Belton)
- Wide-screen wars happened because cinema needed to distinguish itself from TV
- Funny Face was shot in Vista Vision, which according to Paramount president allowed “compatibility and flexibility”
- 35mm film but exposed horizontally
- This technique resulted in tremendous sharpness and depth of field
- Not too relevant, because Vista Vision is not in the strict sense a wide screen
