Film scholar David Bordwell refers to the years 1917–1960 as the classical era of filmmaking in Hollywood. Bordwell defines the era’s style as being governed by straightforward narrative considerations, i.e., the need to follow well-defined characters through a chronological sequence of events, or plot. The technical elements of filmmaking—camera movement, lighting, editing, draw attention to the film as film rather than to the story are avoided.
Within this definition, the musical films of the 1930s are anomalous in that they interrupt narrative to present musical performances only tangentially related to the plot. In one film directed by Busby Berkeley, for example, a scene begins with a shot of an audience watching a singer. The singer’s face then fills differently motivated and constructed sequences abut so closely—fit comfortably within Bordwell’s definition of the classical style?
Bordwell’s response is that the musical, no less than comedy or melodrama (two other staples of the classical era), evolved from popular live theater. The musical’s conventions, Bordwell argues, cue viewers to expect a different structure—alternating narrative scenes and self-contained performances—from that of other genres, a structure that audiences are prepared for eventually come to accept them as conventions before generalizing about the realism of certain film styles.
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