Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The poet Frank O'Hara once wrote that of all the American poets only Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane were better than the movies. While O'Hara's selection of poets is debatable, I think his point is applicable to this wonderfully witty analysis of the first generation of movie musicals: it's as much fun to read as the movies Barrios writes about are to watch.
I was rather perplexed by the previous review that stated this book had no central thesis. It is, I believe, a serious misreading of the book. Barrios states quite clearly that the first generation of movie musicals were a matter of trial and error. Hollywood needed to find out what would--and what would not--work on FILM regarding musicals. This is one of the reasons why Barrios's analysis is so insightful. Busby Berkeley, for example, is such a great choreographer precisely because he realized that FILM choreography is a different art form from dancing on stage. His wonderful combination of vision and movement *as captured ON FILM* continues to delight us today. But Berkeley could not have known this without the previous examples of movie choreography that was filmed as if it were a theatre performance. Hollywood learned from its mistakes.
And Barrios's writing is quite simply a delight. So much film analysis misses the popcorn for the postmodern theory. Whereas even a truly awful film can be a secret delight (as Barrios acknowledges over and over again), really dry criticism is like week old popcorn: pretty tasteless and hard to swallow. But I must admit that I laughed out loud again and again as I read about one disaster after another, all preserved on film for us to gaze at in wonder (as in "I wonder how in the world they thought THAT would work on film?"). And his analysis of the great musicals of the period made me long to be sitting in the third row from the back, transported to another world as only a really wonderful movie can do. The book is extensive in witty and incisive reviews of the good, the bad, and the truly ugly of early music musicals precisely to bear out Barrios's central thesis: that Hollywood did not approach the movie musical with preconceived notions of what would work like gangbusters on the screen. Rather they learned from their mistakes after watching gangs bust out in unintended laughter at some of the real bombs of the musical genre. And Barrios's book is the only one I am aware of that so truly captures the spirit of the age: hey guys, let's film a musical and see if it works.
The auteur theory, while often instructive and interesting, has done some serious disservice to film criticism. It has led us to believe that directors all have these preconceived, "unified visions" that are applied to every film project they undertake. But I believe that Barrios is far closer to the truth: Hollywood laid some eggs and THEN learned to make some delicious omelettes.
And Barrios is something that most film critics and historians are not: as much fun to read as the movies he analyzes are to watch. Put some butter on the popcorn, put your feet up and enjoy a book that is truly a joy to read.
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A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film
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