Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Even if the name Busby Berkeley doesn’t ring any bells, you know his impact. It’s right there in the pre-Baby Ruth water ballet in Caddyshack and the Dude’s bowling-pin fever-dream sequence in The Big Lebowski. Berkeley turned musicals into lavishly choreographed eye-candy with a hint of pre-Code kink. Gold Diggers of 1933 is spiciest celluloid fantasia and it was just the balm that Depression-era audiences needed. The blowsy Joan Blondell is unforgettable and a cash-hungry Ginger Rogers memorably belts out “We’re in the Money.”
Swing Time (1936)
Picking the best Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers is a bit of a Sophie’s choice between 1935’s Top Hat and 1936’s Swing Time. We’re going with Swing Time simply because it starts off with a roguish Astaire trying to pick up Rogers’ dance instructor by pretending he can’t hoof (as if!). Fueled by little white lies and goofy misunderstandings that would later become the crux of the Three’s Company playbook, Swing Time is living, dancing evidence of the dancefloor duet as a none-too-subtle metaphor for straight-up steamy sex. See it and swoon.
On the Town (1949)
This was the first old-school Hollywood musical I fell in love with. I must have been about 12, and it never even crossed my mind how ridiculous it was that three sailors decided to paint the town (the town, of course, being “New York, New York”) red, Broadway style. Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Jules Munshin star as the light-tripping trio while Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, and Vera-Ellen (as Ms. Turnstile) are the dames they squire while on their 24-hour shore leave. Forget plausibility, this is a stunning time-capsule glimpse of 1940s Manhattan in all of its Automat and Hippodome glory.
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Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
What is there left to say about Singin’ in the Rain? It’s the most famous—and most exuberant—Hollywood musical ever made and it deserves every ounce of its rep. A spot-on satire on the early days of Tinseltown’s Dream Factory via writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, this MGM classic features four of the greatest, most physically impressive performances ever courtesy of Gene Kelly (he’s the one splashing around in puddles and swinging on the lamp post as the heavens open), Donald O’Connor (his vertical leap would humble LeBron), Debbie Reynolds (buoyantly sunny and just 19!), and Cyd Charisse (and those endless legs). Pure joy.
The Band Wagon (1953)
Comden and Green again. Although this time, it’s Astaire (not Kelly) as the star. This glorious musical about the glory of musicals has a subversively meta streak that runs throughout and gives it a sort of contemporary sensibility that the earlier films on this list hadn’t really dared yet. This show about putting on a show was directed by Vincente Minnelli and it looks like no other musical before it either. The lighting, the colors, the humor, the tweaking of movie genres and nudging at Astaire’s advancing age, the salt-and-pepper comic relief from Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant, and best of all…more Cyd Charisse. After catching her femme fatale act in the hardboiled “Girl Hunt Ballet,” she’ll forever be tattooed on your brain.
A Star is Born (1954)
Forget the Streisand and Gaga versions (especially the Streisand one), George Cukor’s 1954 classic with Judy Garland is the best by a mile. This was Garland’s last movie-musical hurrah and it’s proof—as if any were needed—that few mastered the genre like she did. James Mason is mesmerizing as the washed-up, self-destructive actor. (In any other year, Mason would have won the Oscar; he just had the misfortune of overlapping with Brando’s On the Waterfront.) Still, it’s the former Wizard of Oz ingenue who leaves your jaw hanging like an open mailbox. Already fast-tracking toward doom at just 32, Garland gives a performance that is like an exposed nerve—nakedly intense and utterly hypnotic. Most musicals want you to be distracted by melody and movement; here’s one that’s all about acting.
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Funny Face (1957)
Thirty years after starring in the Gershwin stage musical, Fred Astaire gave Funny Face another go, His longness in the proverbial tooth is hardly mentioned. Maybe that’s everyone’s eyes were on Audrey Hepburn, who pulls off her own singing and dancing and then some. As a gamine bookworm who’s discovered by an Avedon-esque fashion photographer, the incandescent Hepburn is whisked off to Paris and transformed into a top model. Pauline Kael was no fan, but even she was capable of getting it dead wrong occasionally.
West Side Story (1961)
Retooling this classic Sharks-and-Jets Best Picture winner in 2021 would seem to be a fool’s errand. But if anyone can pull it off it’s the writer-director team of Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg. Certainly plenty needs updating. The original is a pretty complete whitewash. But it’s also, along with Singin’ in the Rain, a landmark of the Hollywood musical as a capital-A Art form. Romeo and Juliet transposed to the mean streets of ‘50s culture-clash New York, this summit of creative geniuses (Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins) is a litmus test for those still on the fence about musicals. After all, if you don’t love this one (especially after hearing Rita Moreno’s “America”), there’s simply no hope for you.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
If West Side Story hinted at a new rock n’ roll sensibility in musicals, the debut film starring the Beatles confirmed that the medium had veered off into an entirely new direction—from Comden and Green’s urbane wit to Lennon and McCartney’s youthful rebellion. From the opening scene, which pairs the title song’s opening claaanggg! to the Fab Four being pursued by a flock of screaming teenage girls absolutely losing their collective shit, A Hard Day’s Night is truly the first movie musical of the ‘60s. Mixing slapstick comedy, surreal wordplay, Buster Keaton sight gags, and of course those early songs, Richard Lester’s film pushed John, Paul, George, and Ringo to the next level. From there, there would be no looking back.
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Cabaret (1972)
A musical about the ominous dawning days of Nazi Germany hardly sounds like a toe-tapping good time. But who says that musicals have to be as light and weightless as meringue? Director-choreographer Bob Fosse brilliantly pulls off the seemingly impossible thanks to Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-winning performance as Sally Bowles, a free-spirited American expat hunting for decadence in Berlin a bit too late. Just as great is Joel Grey (also a statuette winner) as the Kit Kat Club’s impish, kabuki-faced emcee. The Kander and Ebb songs are infectious and land with the force of a sucker punch.
Purple Rain (1984)
Finally, a musical for the age of MTV courtesy of Prince Rogers Nelson. I’m not sure that many would regard Purple Rain as a “musical” in the traditional sense, but the form has always been elastic enough to be viewed as a big tent. Plus, there’s no shortage of music…and what music it is! The artist’s semi-autobiographical, hardscrabble storyline has moments of heavy-handed melodrama, but it jolts to life whenever the needle drops and His Purpleness (not to mention unsung heroes Morris Day and the Time) picks up his axe and does his slinky Hendrix-as-pansexual-satyr act on stage.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Gen-X movie buffs have been arguing for a while now that 1999 was the greatest, most revolutionary year in movies since 1939. I don’t disagree. But what bothers me is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s deliriously profane musical tends to get left out of the conversation. There’s a degree of old-man-yells-at-cloud churlishness in the backlash that claimed the two wiseasses behind a crude, Colorform TV cartoon had no business making a bona fide musical. But the truth is, Bigger, Longer & Uncut was one of the best and most creative (not to mention most outrageous) musicals of the last quarter of the 20th century. So remove your monocle and lighten up as Terrance and Philip treat you to their magnum opus, Asses of Fire.
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Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Cast into immediate obscurity because of 9/11, John Cameron Mitchell’s adaptation of his gender-bending glam-rock musical has snowballed into a modern cult classic (when, by all rights, it should just simply be known as a classic). Think of it as Rocky Horror…but, you know, actually good. More than ever, Mitchell’s Hedwig
is a rock opera for our times—a bitchy, beautiful odyssey of sexual discovery, heartache, and ecstasy.
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Is Baz Luhrmann’s kitschy, kaleidoscopic Left Bank fantasia too much of everything? Of course it is! But if that’s a crime, then throw the book at us. Luhrmann doesn’t know how to half-step it. And he throws everything into this glorious post-modern bouillabaisse. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman both deserve Nobel prizes for managing to get on the Aussie showman’s wavelength and delivering jukebox hits with commitment and heart. Moulin Rouge! is a musical that casts a hypnotic spell on the viewer—a spell you never want to end. It’s like an absinthe hallucination set to music.
La La Land (2016)
A Best Picture winner (for about five seconds), Damien Chazelle’s thrillingly ambitious and unapologetically romantic musical love letter to L.A. with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a pair of struggling artists whose dreams and disappointments pull them together (thanks to a meet-cute in a traffic jam on the 105 that bursts into a thrilling song-and-dance showcase), then push them apart. La La Land is pure movie magic that manages to be both nostalgic and of the moment. It’s an intoxicating expression of magic, love, and loss in the City of Angels.
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