The organization of Dangerous Rhythm allows Barrios to jump around a bit, but each chapter works pretty much chronologically, meaning the author can use early examples to illuminate more modern work. And, given that each chapter has a starting point somewhere in the beginning of filmdom, Barrios can use prior examples to illuminate the new ones — it sounds more complicated than I’m making it. Suffice it to say, the history covers all the bases, with chapters on the singers, writers, choreographers, directors, race, sexuality, and … whew.
Throughout it all, Barrios is catty and clever, but never snide or condescending. Happily, the author never kowtows to the genre. While he has an obvious love for movie musicals, Barrios is more than willing to call out missteps as handily as gives praise to that which has earned it. A telling quote comes in the chapter, “Music Makes Me,” wherein he discusses the fact that there’s a lot of crap out there, made all the more frustrating by the fact that even crap has moments wherein it can shine: “the unevenness of the work can be confounding, and an awful amount of crud lies under that cream at the top.”
Compliments like that, which simultaneously can refer to a single film and the genre as a whole, are perhaps the best part of Dangerous Rhythm. It’s the acknowledgement of the diamond in the rough, and that most work has something to commend it, that allows for even the snidest comments to sting a bit less (his footnote regarding Bob Fosse dying the day he was to have met with Madonna regarding Chicago is scathing). Hell, even concert films and rock operas, to which Barrios is non-committal, verging on dismissal, have a few to which the author is highly complimentary. <i <Hedwig & the Angry Inch and The Last Waltz garner amazingly kind words.
Even if you’re just trying to figure out where The Wizard of Oz and The Little Mermaid fit into all of this — a question which will be answered — you’ll find something in Dangerous Rhythm to love, even if it’s just adoring Richard Barrios’ tone and way with a phrase. Add into this the fact that the author looks deeply at the construction of movie musicals, and what makes something like Singing in the Rain work so perfectly, whereas something like Paint Your Wagon fails so spectacularly, providing deep analysis and insightful commentary, and you’ll find yourself YouTubing nearly every single scene Barrios mentions.
The book is available now from Oxford University Press.
Source:
http://ift.tt/1jkA3Gf