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As Richard Barrios sees it, movie musicals can go one way or the other — some of them end up as cultural touchstones, and others as train wrecks. In his book Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter, Barrios goes behind-the-scenes to uncover the backstories of these fabulous hits and problematic (if not exactly forgettable) flops. In the slideshow below, take a tour through some of the great movie musicals — and some insight into life on set.

• "As Sentimental as Little Women"

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Slide9-WizardFinal.jpg

  Such was Time’s assessment of the final scene of The Wizard of Oz. For sure, many Ozians have been known to weep when Judy/Dorothy says that last line. Screen still from The Wizard of Oz, Warner Brothers

  Little Women

My Fair Lady

 

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The singularly formal stylization of My Fair Lady on film is adored by some and irksome to others. Here, an on-the-set shot of Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison gives a good representation of many of Fair Lady’s components—the style, the stiffness, the wit, the calculation. Publicity photo from My Fair Lady, Warner Brothers.

Richard Barrios worked in the music and film industries before turning to film history with the award-winning A Song in the Dark and his recent book on the history of movie musicals Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter. He lectures extensively and appears frequently on television and in film and DVD documentaries. Born in the swamps of south Louisiana and a longtime resident of New York City, he now lives in bucolic suburban Philadelphia.

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Richard Barrios has lectured extensively on film, served as a commentator on numerous DVDs, and co-hosted a series on Turner Classic Movies. He currently lives outside Philadelphia. His book, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film, 2nd edition, illuminates the origins of the movie musical from the smash hits of The Singing Fool and Sunny Side Up to bizarre flops like Golden Dawn and Cecil B. DeMille’s Madam Satan. In the original post below, Barrios looks at the 10 best musical films ever made.  Be sure to check out his 10 worst list here.

Any art, naturally, is inherently subjective. Film, with its particular blend of the personal and the egalitarian, is more subjective, even, than most art. And film musicals— intensely collaborative, yet frequently driven by one dominating force—are among the most very subjective of all films. They also have the potential for being exhaustively uneven and profoundly inconsistent, with higher highs and lower lows. As Pauline Kael once noted, many of them have superb moments, but rarely can they sustain the greatness through their entire length. On rare occasions, through skill and synergy and historical currents and sheer luck, they do. Simple song-and-dance achieves transcendence, words and music matter unutterably, and we are privileged to witness possibly the purest form of American popular art.

Having tested the waters with a lovingly mean-spirited Ten Worst Musicals list, I now venture farther afield with my Top Ten choices. Doing so makes for an oddly fraught process, as it is somehow more difficult to honor the distinguished than to excoriate the guilty. Few observers, in fact, could agree on which films scale this particular Parnassus. There will be a select handful that might be on everyone’s “Top Ten” list—Singin’ in the Rain above all, Love Me Tonight for those in the know–but it remains a slippery slope on which to climb, or for that matter tap dance. The result, then, is a list at once conventional and daring, idiosyncratic and iconoclastic, whimsical and dead serious. It takes into consideration history and influence, innovation and accessibility, innocence and sophistication, and lots of charisma. The choices range from the primitive origins of musical film to its slickest 21st century incarnations. (And, coincidentally, it is the youngest and oldest films on the list which are, along with Gigi, Best-Picture Oscar winners.) Each entry in this pantheon has a variety of reasons for being here. Suffice it to say that these reasons are as valid as they are debatable, and every movie here, and the runners-up too, are, in their own ways, magically irreplaceable. Now, on with the celebration, and more arguments!

The Broadway Melody (1929)
Where it all began—the first true movie musical, a show-biz Rosetta Stone. And, let it be noted immediately, what was a staggering hit eighty years ago is today an ineffably creaky and primitive experience for all but the most dedicated viewer. But that’s part of its m