| re: I challenge anyone to find a better version than THIS | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 01:01 am EDT 05/22/24 | |
| In reply to: re: I challenge anyone to find a better version than THIS - DistantDrumming 09:01 pm EDT 05/21/24 | |
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| With all due respect, and acknowledge the degree to which we surely see eye to eye on musical films we love... I couldn't disagree with you (and Sondheim) more on this. I don't think any good musical theater song just stretches out a moment into 4 or 5 minutes... and the ones that are just a musical expression and expanding of a moment or feeling (rather than a mental monologue, or a plot-forwarding song, etc), are so unique and bursting from the moment that they actually, to me, lend themselves very well to film when done right. Just as they do on stage. The ones that don't... don't. I think this is the same kind of generalized notion that sounds true but often enough isn't, to the point that the exception to the rule isn't an exception, it just means there are many elements and the rule isn't the rule. It's the same to me as the oft-repeated notion that in musicals you sing when the emotion is too big to speak, you sing when speaking isn't enough. I think we can look at probably every single musical, including by the writers who repeat this casually, and find this not to be applicable to all songs or moments or musicals, great ones and bad ones. But it is an essential truth to how *some* songs happen, to why some things are musicals rather than plays, but it's been spoken as if it applies to all. I really can't imagine a single camera move or smart edit or line of dialogue that can give me what "Maria" gives me for Tony in that moment, or what "Send in the Clowns" gives us for Desiree. Most of what we actually find memorable in movies is not a single look or camera move. Norma Desmond's face as she descends the staircase in the film Sunset Boulevard is not everything it is without her first giving her "and now, Mr. DeMille" dialogue. Just as in The Sound of Music, the title song in the movie has that incredible location and camera work and feels perfect for the song... the song that creates that feeling on stage on a stationary, motionless single set. The King & I as a movie doesn't render "Shall We Dance" redundant and tedious because we could cut it and replace it with 3 seconds of the King and Anna exchanging looks. I'm sure you could do the scene and have them dance and we would get it, but the song is the scene, the dialogue is in the verses (where she sets the scene for how the man and woman come to dance together at a Western ball), and the chorus happens while they dance. It takes nothing from it to have them sing. But yes, you could probably achieve it without the characters singing. But what of "A Puzzlement"? The fact that he's singing because it's a musical, established from the beginning, actually makes it feel natural that we hear his thoughts rather than him saying it to someone... without the song, we would not get this info or insight into him, or he'd be giving it as a soliloquy. "Oh What a Beautiful Morning"... we would certainly not get the same feeling and understanding of Curly, or the setting of the tone and place, if we just saw him riding in, stop look around and breath it in. The difference between how a movie would introduce us to the dance hall in Sweet Charity without a song vs how it's done through "Big Spender" is massive, and I don't think you could do everything that number does in camera movement, editing and short bits of dialogue. Same with what "Rich Man's Frug" gives us. A good musical, with good songs and good numbers, utilizes music and lyrics to do more than what can be done without them. Even if without them we could "get the picture"... this gives us more. A film director and screenwriter adapting a stage musical to film should get that, and if they're doing a musical where they don't, they have to figure out how to set it up so it does, or they probably shouldn't be working on the film of that musical. I'm glad we both love the movies of King & I and Annie. :) |
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