The 50 Best Movie Musicals Of All Time - Page 4 of 5

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20. “A Star Is Born”(1954)
The restored version runs to nearly three hours, but somehow even those extra 20 minutes can’t quite contain all the oceanic feeling summoned by Judy Garland in her most bravura, enormous performance. It’s a story that had been made before, as a non-musical drama (William Wellman‘s 1937 version is also excellent), and that would be made again (Barbra Streisand‘s 1976 vanity-project folly is not so excellent), but the 1954 version must still count as the definitive one, with George Cukor‘s meticulous direction and James Mason‘s perfectly broken performance as the alcoholic mentor-turned-millstone husband adorning what is in most ways a one-woman show. A show-must-go-on weepie to end them all, it’s also the rare melodrama in which the man ultimately sacrifices himself for the sake of the woman’s greatness, which makes a nice change.
Best Number: “The Man That Got Away” is just beautiful, simple but richly shot and sung by Garland as though her life depending on its perfection.

19. “Dancer In The Dark” (2000)
Without a doubt the toughest watch on a list largely composed of films designed more for escapist pleasure than grim, provocative social agenda, Lars von Trier‘s Palme d’Or winner is a pretty ruthless interrogation of the musical form, one that nonetheless occasionally works as a musical, too. But formal experimentation (it’s shot on ugly-looking, flat DV, with a minimum of glamorization) and a punishing narrative will only get you so far; the film finds its bottled lightning in the Cannes Best Actress-winning performance from Björk as the daydreaming immigrant factory worker gradually losing her sight and desperate to help her son avoid the same fate. It’s a performance memorably described by co-stars (who include Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare, David Morse, Jean-Marc Barr and Joel Grey) and director as “feeling” rather than “acting,” and certainly she brings such a raw-nerve vulnerability to this part that it’s both a shame she swore off acting thereafter, and totally understandable that she did.
Best Number: “I’ve Seen It All” best shows off the heightened color and multiple camera angles that von Trier allowed himself to use in the musical segments, to contrast them with drab and desaturated “reality.”

18. “The Jungle Book” (1967)
Maybe the only reason that “The Jungle Book” isn’t the highest-ranking Disney musical on this list is that it’s simply less of a musical: Every one of its songs is great, but there are just fewer of them than some of the other possibilities. Added relatively late in the process, they’re unusually with-it for a Disney movie of the time, with the Sherman Brothers riffing on jazz and doo-wop for songs like “I Wanna Be Like You” and “That’s When Your Friends Are For,” but the film’s absolute banger was actually from another source, with Terry Gilkyson contributing the instant classic “The Bare Necessities.” They arguably don’t integrate entirely with the whole, but they’ve passed into fame just out of sheer quality of execution. Perhaps it was right that Jon Favreau’s recent remake nodded to them, rather than attempted to recapture the magic.
Best Number: The simple folksiness of “The Bare Necessities,” of course.

17. “Show Boat” (1951)
There’s a bit of a conundrum here as the lesser-seen 1937 version of this Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical, starring Irene Dunne and directed by James (“Frankenstein“) Whale, is overall the better film, and even features the definitive Paul Robeson rendition of “Ol’ Man River.” But once you’ve seen the eye-popping Technicolor of George Sidney‘s 1951 version, it simply becomes the definitive one, despite its many flaws. Pitched at a blowsy, lurid height, even the pared-back racial agenda of this version — and the whitewashed casting of Ava Gardner as the half-black Julie who falls foul of anti-miscegenation laws — can’t reduce the film’s eye-popping impact and tempestuous involvement in its heroine’s predicaments. Melodrama maestro Douglas Sirk never made a musical, but if he had, we have to believe it would have turned out something like 1951’s “Show Boat.”
Best Number: It’s not Robeson, but William Warfield makes stunning, shivery work of “Ol’ Man River” here, reorienting the film despite the fact that so many of its black roles were curtailed or cut.

16. “Top Hat” (1935)
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers headlined nine films as a partnership, and in many ways “Top Hat,” only their third starring vehicle, is the apotheosis of that remarkable career. It has everything that made their films such escapist masterpieces: a flimsy-beyond-belief plot based around the simplest of misunderstandings that can quickly be cleared up; exotic, uppercrust locales; jawdropping costumes; Irving Berlin music that took on a life outside the film (“Cheek To Cheek,” “Isn’t It A Lovely Day” and “Top Hat, White Tie And Tails” in particular); and, of course, the dancing. The insubstantiality of the framework that supposedly holds it all together is impossible to ignore (and results in the slightly surprising placement of this film below their real masterpiece, “Swing Time“), but that said, if we could only preserve one sequence from Classic Hollywood cinema to explain the level of whipped-cream, effortless-seeming, pure-entertainment perfection it could attain, it would be the scene below from “Top Hat.”
Best Number: “Cheek To Cheek,” of course, with its famous feather dress that was such a bone of contention between the two, but that floats like a cloud as they move. And boy, do they move.

15. “Funny Girl” (1968)
William Wyler‘s adaptation of the Broadway hit of the same name is so inextricably associated with star Barbra Streisand (who also led it on stage) that it really is impossible to imagine one without the other: The film brought Streisand her Oscar and would be by far the best musical she ever made. The latter-day sequel “Funny Lady” was ill-conceived; and her remake of “A Star Is Born” felt especially pointless as “Funny Girl” basically has the same plot, plus characters you care about, and jokes. In this loose biopic of Broadway darling Fanny Brice, it’s perhaps not surprising that Streisand knocks every single tune out of park, though they’re often melodically complex and wordy. But what is less expected, and what still makes it feel fresh and engaging after all these years, is her warm, witty embodiment of Fanny’s talent, insecurities and goofily self-deprecating humor.
Best Number: There are a few showstoppers, but “People,” here sung to the deeply dishy Omar Sharif, has rightly become a Streisand anthem, and you can see why below.

14. “La La Land” (2016)
Well, here it is, in case you were wondering — Damien Chazelle‘s bright yet bittersweet, inventive, engaging, “betting has closed on Best Picture thankyouverymuch” modern musical. Don’t let the predictable and surprisingly vitriolic backlash fool you: This is a lovely film that respectfully homages about half the other films on this list, but also dips those conventions and cliches in a slightly scuffed newness that makes it feel contemporary. Designed as a movie and not adapted from Broadway show, featuring original songs, and boasting an entirely winning performance from Emma Stone (and a solid one from Ryan Gosling), there is nothing really to hold against “La La Land” except its early success and eager-to-please likability. Sure, it is slight in plot and light on characterization, but that also applies to about 90% of musicals, and the real proof of its value is, within this escapist genre, just how thoroughly it allows you to escape.
Best Number: Tricky one — “City Of Stars” has become its anthem, the lovely “Audition” is a personal favorite, but probably the opening track “Another Day Of Sun” is its most impressive song-and-dance production. It’s not available online yet, though so you’ll have to make do with this trailer, scored to “Audition,” which gives the best idea of the film’s sweetly sad vibe.

13. “Mary Poppins” (1964) 
There are so many reasons that we should hate “Mary Poppins”: Quite aside from the chipper, perfectly enunciated chirpiness of Julie Andrews‘ magical-tyrant nanny, Dick Van Dyke‘s chim-er-ney sweep accent is ludicrous; it’s two hours and 20 minutes long; uses effects that ought to look creaky by today’s standards; has songs about “jolly holidays” and “banks;” and boasts a plot that we can still never quite remember, despite having seen the damn thing about 700 times. And yet, not only do we not hate Robert Stevenson‘s “Mary Poppins,” just trying to imagine the kind of person who possibly could is making our heads ache. That level of monstrousness is literally inconceivable. Seriously. You hate “Mary Poppins”? You’re a monster.
Best Number: Kind of torn over “Supercalifragalisticexpialidocious,” with its animated characters interacting with the live action Mary and co., but we think “A Spoonful Of Sugar” with its “magical tidy-up” routine just shades it.

12. “An American In Paris” (1951)
In good ways and bad, Vincente Minnelli‘s “An American In Paris” bears all the hallmarks of being Gene Kelly‘s passion project, the film he wanted to stand as his crowning artistic legacy. The Best Picture winner is stunning to look at, lavishly decorated and costumed, and full of Kelly’s impeccable choreography. But it is also overlong, thin on plot and at times almost parodically self-indulgent. Yet somehow its ungainliness, despite the grace of the dancing, makes it more impressive than a smoother film might have been — from its most intimate little wink-and-nod tap routine to its bombastic 17-minute ballet finale, this is a musical whose ambition is perhaps matched only by its faith (at times a little misplaced) that the audience can be made to love the pure rhythm and motion of dance as much as Gene Kelly obviously did.
Best Number: It’s about ten numbers really, but that 17-minute ballet sequence, in which Kelly and co star Leslie Caron dance through Paris cityscapes inspired by classic French iconography, goes from sexy to silly to suave, all scored to George Gershwin‘s wonderful music.

11. “Swing Time” (1936)
No one’s more surprised that we’re putting Fred ‘n’ Ginger’s fourth starring feature above their third, but a rewatch clinches it: “Swing Time” is, on almost every level bar fame, a better and more accomplished film than “Top Hat.” It’s hardly Ken Loach, but under George Stevens‘ deft direction, the plot here does make a semblance of sense, and the dancing, ah, ye Gods, the dancing! Even the number with Astaire in regrettable blackface is pretty incredible, considering he’s dancing with three silhouettes of himself. It also boasts two of Jerome Kern‘s best songs in “A Fine Romance” (“I’ve never mussed the crease in your blue serge pants, I never get the chance”) and “The Way You Look Tonight,” and the climactic choreography to “Never Gonna Dance” is apparently regarded as the pinnacle of the partnership’s dancing abilities (and therefore of anybody’s ever, presumably) by dance scholars.
Best Number: With all due apologies to those same scholars, we are totally in love with this earlier routine, if for nothing else than Rogers’ expression of dawning, seemingly authentic joy (at around 1:11 in this clip)