The Wizard of Oz (1939)
When it comes to song and dance films, the audience is no longer unfamiliar, this unique genre has not only not been eliminated in the long river of history, but even intermittently emerged masterpieces, such as "Philharmonic City", "Circus King" and so on.
Looking back at the origin and history of song and dance films, we cannot ignore the importance of "The Wizard of Oz". For Chinese audiences, it is not only a classic children's enlightenment masterpiece, but also one of the first batch of Hollywood films to be introduced.
Dorothy, a peasant girl in The Wizard of Oz, is involved in a magical dream world, where she meets new people, defeats villains, and learns the principles of life. It's a modern fairy tale that combines joy and fear, and even in the last 80 years, it's still one of the most fantastic films of all time.
Among other things, the most prominent thing about The Wizard of Oz is not the breathtaking special effects, not the bright and dazzling colors, nor the unforgettable performance of Judy Garland, but its music.
Like the song "Over The Rainbow", they have become an integral part of popular culture, and the most interesting part of the film is how the music blends with the story and plot of the film world, and shows us the form and style of the song and dance film.
To explore the contribution of The Wizard of Oz, we'll start with musicals that predate song and dance films.
European stage musicals of the early 20th century
Musicals predate movies, and the combination of story and music dates back a thousand years, when stage musicals were very different from today's song and dance films.
Mass stage musicals have emerged in the early 20th century, evolving from several different forms, such as cabaret comedy* and operetta*, incorporating music into the storyline.
However, the most popular forms of stage musical theatre are vaudeville* and black burlesque*, which consist of a series of different performance forms in which musicians, artists and comedians sing the same play, but lack a storyline to connect them.
Cabaret comedy*: Refers to a kind of song and dance performance that was very popular in Europe and the United States before the 20th century, used in songs and dances, adding humorous and exaggerated elements to make people laugh.
Operetta*: Similar to traditional operas and musicals, but the boundaries between them are blurred, the operetta scenes are smaller and less serious than operas, and the theme is also entertainment for the general public.
Vaudeville*: Also known as burlesque comedy, it combines magic, acrobatics, animal taming, and cabaret, and was once very popular in North America.
Black burlesque*: Is another popular stage performance form in the United States, mainly based on burlesque performances and song and dance, painted by white people with black faces to imitate black people, in the performance of making fun of and ugly black people to achieve the purpose of entertainment, there is a strong sense of discrimination, but in the concept at that time, society is accustomed to this, such performances are very popular.
A poster for a burlesque cabaret performance in 1900 shows the transformation of the characters in the play from white to black
A common feature of all forms of cabaret is that the performers are separated from the audience. Although the actors can break the fourth wall, the spatial layout of the stage performance has been finalized.
The performer stands on the stage, the audience can only sit under the stage, with a fixed perspective, and the song and dance film exceeds these restrictions.
Stage musicals
A unique feature of film art is that the world in which the characters and stories take place intersects with the real world in which the audience lives, and by changing the narrative rules of traditional films, the boundaries between watching and participating are gradually blurred, and the audience enters the world of film.
The cabaret isn't born that way, and it evolves in a way like the journey of the protagonist Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz, from the bleak prairies of Kansas to the colorful wizarding world.
The origins of song and dance can be traced back to when the art of cinema first attempted to combine moving picture with sound.
At the end of the 19th century, record recording equipment, such as the acoustic active cinema, combined dioramas for single-view and emerging gramophone technology to bring opera and orchestra to the mass realm.
These early recording devices had obvious flaws, the sound and picture were difficult to synchronize, the volume was small and distorted, but the biggest drawback was that the photographic lens could not be moved, but it was a monotonous record of the stage performance, which had not yet become a unique art form, and the problem was not solved with the arrival of sound films.
Video recordings from the end of the 19th century
The earliest song and dance films on the screen, either like "Jazz Singer" by combining music and story, but the characters in the film are still performed on stage to the audience, or like "1929 Hollywood Burlesque", which is essentially a large-scale vaudeville show, the plot is not continuous, and the audience watches the movie and watches the play in the theater.
Most of these early song and dance films set the story on Broadway or the musical theater, making the appearance of music reasonable.
Jazz Singer (1927) was epoch-making, but it wasn't an excellent song and dance film
After a few years of this phenomenon, the song and dance film slowly developed into what we see today, and the actors would suddenly jump out of the story and suddenly sing.
This high degree of subversion of the rules of film art requires the audience to reach the corresponding level, and it is almost impossible for the budding early sound films, because the audience has not yet adapted well to the form of sound films.
In fact, early sound films didn't even introduce non-narrative sound elements*, such as background music or sound effects.
Non-narrative sound elements*: Also known as non-drama sounds, as opposed to plot sounds. Drama sound refers to the sound related to the facts, such as the actor's lines, the sound the actor makes when he makes the action, and so on. The most common example of non-drama sound is music that is used to enhance the plot.
Early Kabuki Piece, Hidenaka Shu (1929)
Fearing that voices of unknown origin would confuse the audience, it wasn't until the 1920s that song and dance films were freed from rigidity and stage constraints.
Melody of Broadway was the first film to feature an advance-recorded soundtrack that allowed the camera to move through the scene, showing the audience the movements and choreography from multiple angles. Suddenly, the viewer moves from seeing only a panoramic view of the stage to being able to observe close-ups of the characters' faces, giving perspectives that cannot be experienced in a theater.
Soon after, the invention of mobile photography unleashed creative freedom and helped the cabaret develop its most iconic technique, which was that the characters would suddenly sing and dance involuntarily.
Melody on Broadway (1929) is no longer just a depiction of the grandeur of the stage
Ernst Liu Beiqian's first sound film "XuanGong Yanshi" is the earliest song and dance film in the history of film that allows characters to step off the stage and enter the world.
The film incorporates music into the storyline and takes the cabaret film a big step towards a golden age of prosperity and dreams.
"The History of Xuan Palace" (1929) A song and dance film that walks off the stage
In 1933, Busby Berkeley choreographed three classic song and dance films, namely "Hua Qing Chun Nuan", "1933 Gold Rush Girl", and "Forty-second Street", which further promoted the technology of mobile photography.
Busby Berkeley is known for his intricate and sometimes fantastic dance shots, he did not choreograph with a stage perspective facing the audience, but let the dance serve the camera, usually the camera is first pointed at the stage, then moved around the room, using close-ups, horizontal shakes, high-position photography to shoot beautiful geometric patterns, which theater audiences can not appreciate, only with the lens can capture the scenery.
Dance styling in Forty-second Street
The Gold Rush Of 1933
Throughout the 1930s, the popularity of song and dance films among the public was intermittent, and the emergence of superstar dance groups, such as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, pushed the song and dance films step by step to glory.
But in fact, the famous filmmaker Arthur Fried was the one who brought the cabaret to the Golden Age, and he changed the entire genre of cabaret with his first film, The Wizard of Oz.
Arthur Fried's song and dance technique is superb and natural, and he allows the songs to emerge naturally from the plot, so that the balance of music and narrative and theme is very obvious in the structure of The Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz is a typical chapter-style film, and the story is mainly composed of small fragments, from the family life of the protagonist Dorothy, to the encounter between Oz and other protagonists, accepting and completing the test, and finally returning to his hometown.
Each plot is strung together by songs, some to suggest the character's motivations, and some to boost the plot.
This is the first time in the history of film that the song and the storyline of the song and dance film have been fully integrated, and the new information conveyed by the characters of the film cannot be obtained by the audience from other sources, and if the music is removed, the entire narrative logic and structure will be broken.
However, the music in "The Wizard of Oz" also has an important role, for example, before Dorothy came to Oz, she had broken the narrative and internal logic of the film and began to sing, so that the audience could directly experience her inner feelings, this music appeared in the transition zone between reality and fiction, combined with her voice throughout the film, becoming a song that only the audience could enjoy.
Dorothy who began singing before coming to Oz in the future
This combination of ambiguity, narrative and non-narrative sound in cinematic space can only exist in this virtual world. Magic happens here, and if the audience wants to experience this wonderful, it must completely dispel the doubts in their hearts and accept this film world that is neither completely realistic nor completely fictional. Once the audience sets foot in this wonderful new continent, they will be confronted with a whole new law of logic.
This virtual world has two functions, the first is to pre-process the fantasy elements in The Wizard of Oz.
For example, the talking scarecrow and the iron man like a kettle are very ungrounded, once the audience opens their hearts to these characters and lets the characters connect with the real world, once we understand the unique magic of the song and dance film, it is no longer difficult to accept the wonderful things in "The Wizard of Oz", not only that, but also immerse ourselves in the story.
Tin man in The Wizard of Oz
Secondly, this has a greater impact on promoting the development of the song and dance film genre.
The shift in narrative frees characters from the traditional film rules to show magic realism, which will become an important feature of Hollywood song and dance films, once the song and dance film abandons the inherent logical structure, the content changes with it, so that suddenly the whole city can sing and dance together.
Characters can freely express emotions and explain the plot with music, music can also have an impact on the environment in which the characters are located, even if the film seems to take place in the real world, the characters can suddenly have superpowers, and the dialogue of the characters can cross time and space. While still using traditional continuous editing, lovers can even get rid of gravity in the film.
The protagonist of "Philharmonic City" who floats to the sky and dances together
Arthur Fried developed one of the most important features of the cabaret genre by abandoning traditional filmmaking rules, which was to bring the audience into the narrative and give them a sense of immersion.
The best example of this is his later song and dance film, Song in the Rain.
With the song "You Were Meant For Me," in a Hollywood studio, the non-continuous scanning shots mimic the elegance of Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds.
The protagonist of the dance in "Song in the Rain"
Actually with the camera as the third dancer in the scene, the audience's perspective becomes part of the choreography, and you can find the source in The Wizard of Oz.
When the camera follows the protagonist Dorothy from the small door of the dark brown wooden house into the colorful world of Oz, the audience and the characters enter the new world together and experience the same feeling of surprise.
Step into the kingdom of color
The Wizard of Oz is a brand new genre in which director Arthur Fried casts a spell on the nation of Oz, drawing audiences to the characters, the world, and the story.
This spell, which has lasted for 80 years without expiry, has changed the feel and tone of the song and dance film, upgrading the song and dance film to an art form unique to the film; it creates a fairyland, as colorful and magical as the Oz country; it makes the song and dance film a paradise, allowing the audience to escape the troubles of the world.