From the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer -- featuring Al Jolson in blackface mugging for the camera -- and Ernst Lubitsch's 1929 film Love Parade (with its sophisticated influence of the Viennese operetta), the film musical has borrowed or was at least influenced by each and every performance form that preceded it.

Al Jolson's mugging was a direct outreach of the low art of vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley, and Lubitsch, with his trademark use of sexual innuendo and double entendre, borrowed both plot and musical style from the operetta. The high art of ballet and the low art of folk dance inform both the musical's dance numbers, and eventually even camera movement. The Broadway stage influenced the film musical, and -- especially in the 1950s with films like Oklahoma (1955) and Carousel (1956) -- Hollywood seemed to rely almost completely on the already existing Broadway production, merely pumping up the visual effects and point of view with use of the camera. Finally, the film musical took its influence from rock music and the recording industry, first with the films of Elvis Presley, and then with the advent of rock concert documentaries. Drawing as it does from a myriad of different art forms, the film musical's appeal cuts a swath across a cross-section of American cultures and socio-economic backgrounds and made its appeal, at least in its heyday, virtually universal. The film musical was the ultimate in innocent, escapist entertainment -- and the American public embraced it ardently.

The American film musical can almost always be classified into one of three narrative structures: the show or backstage musical which includes films such as The Jazz Singer (1927), Anchors Aweigh (1945), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and The Band Wagon (1953); the Americana or folk musical, which includes such films as Hallelujah (1929), The Little Colonel (1935), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and The Music Man (1962); and the fairy tale musical, which includes films such as Love Parade (1929), Top Hat (1935), The Pirate (1947) and The Sound of Music (1965).

Both directly and through its use of the metaphor of the song and dance production number, the film musical reflected the ideals and dreams of its mass audience, and each of these three forms allowed the film audience to dream the afternoon away. The show or backstage musical gave the viewer a privileged look into the entertainment industry itself. The folk musical presented an idealized America, particularly escapist for a country in the midst of war. Finally, the fairy tale musical played to the entertainment appeal of the trials of love and the inevitability of "happily ever after." While today's culture is neither as starry-eyed nor as innocently entertained, the film musical still has an audience as "family" entertainment with animated Disney musicals such as The Little Mermaid (1989), The Lion King (1994), and Tarzan (1999). In general, Hollywood film's appeal has become more specifically targeted (the action adventure film targeted at males 18-30, for example), and there are virtually no live-action musicals made for the big screen. However, television, now the purvey of the mass audience, has become the showcase for new filmed musical productions such as Cinderella (1997) and the upcoming Gepetto (2000).

While there were many film musical directors who made several of the most well-known films in the genre, four directors working during the musical's golden era and one working in the late '60s and '70s made exceptional contributions to, and commentary on, the form: Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian were groundbreakers in the musical's narrative form, while Busby Berkeley's and Vincent Minnelli's use of the camera broke traditional modes of spectatorship by making the audience an active participant in the production number; and in the 1960s and 1970s, Bob Fosse took his own inimitable choreography style and transposed it onto the production numbers, content, and style of his films, creating brilliant elegies of cynicism which were perfect and complete metaphors of American society's tumultuous times.

Through the influence and innovations of these key directors, the film musical moved from being a static performance piece to an almost seamless integration of script, song, dance, and camera movement. While we are concerned here with these filmmakers' contribution to the musical genre, it should be noted that many of their innovations affected film narrative and visual style in general.

One of the basic problems with the film musical is believability, but in films such as The Love Parade (1929) and The Merry Widow (1934), by directing Maurice Chevalier's simple wink or Jeanette MacDonald's sideways glance at the camera, Lubitsch makes the viewer complicit in the make-believe.

Ernst Lubitsch had a fondness for Johann Strauss II and for the structure and content of the Viennese operetta. The obvious link here is to subject matter: the usually overt use of sexual dynamics to further the often spicy romantic plot. Certainly Lubitsch's sensibility is a wonderful early illustration of a basic conflict that exists even today in American culture: the country's puritanical values vs. fun and entertainment. But Lubitsch's contribution to content extends to a more subtle and sophisticated realm. As a genre, the film musical is inherently a mix of real and unreal, for only here do we see people engaged in normal conversation suddenly burst into song or spring into a dance number. Not just satisfied with verbal puns and double entendres, Lubitsch opened the American filmgoer's eyes to irony. By engaging the actors directly with the audience, allowing the viewer to become a participant in the ruse of the musical structure, Lubitsch moves the film musical from the absurd to the sophisticated and timelessly sublime.

While Lubitsch overcame the film musical's believability problem by using irony and making the viewer a party to the ruse, Rouben Mamoulian's films, such as High, Wide and Handsome (1937), emerged the viewer into a world so detailed and seamless that the unreal and unbelievable actually became a kind of heightened reality.

Working in Hollywood at the same time, Mamoulian also brought with him a European stage tradition. Yet, his contribution to the American film musical was turning the syntax of American folk traditions into intimately observed films. Not one moment, note, or frame was wasted. Music is used in concert with the rhythms of daily life to create an enhanced landscape -- with the music working metaphoric magic. Using the example of High, Wide and Handsome (1937), the free-spirited circus performer, Sally Watterson, visits her husband's family farm. Seemingly unsuited for farm work, Sally goes to feed the animals, singing to them, drawing them and the rhythms of the farm into her musical orbit. By the end of the scene, the animals are singing along with her, and the audience has entered a highly-observed world operating on its own terms.

The problems of the film musical's believability extend also to the dance numbers, and Busby Berkeley had a distinctive vision and camera style, so in films such as The Gold Diggers series and 42nd Street, where the eye-level shot captures women dancing in a circle, the cut to the overhead shot might reveal the women to be a flower or even a giant violin.

Berkeley's eccentric and jarring visual style, rather than attempting to subvert the musical's inherent unreality, said instead, "come on, enjoy the view from up here." Berkeley's camera operated on two planes, the conventional proscenium eye-level shot and overhead top shots. Rather than being confined to their seat, the viewers are thrust into the action -- where everything is not exactly as it seems. Viewers become visually complicit in the ruse.

Vincente Minnelli's camera also engaged the viewer, but in a completely different way, so in films such as Gigi (1958) or Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) his roving, graceful camera work turns the viewer from observer to performer, gliding, even dancing along beside the actors.

In Gigi the camera glides through a Paris restaurant with Gaston and his current lady love while the "Greek chorus" of restaurant patrons remains frozen. In Meet Me in St. Louis, the use of the crane helps the viewer navigate the chaos of the party scene, revealing the essence of the scene. Minnelli's use of camera allows the viewer a privileged vantage point, as the camera's mobility points out and highlights patterns and couplings that the film's characters are not yet aware of. Thus, the viewer becomes at once participatory and superior.

In such films as Cabaret, All That Jazz, and Sweet Charity, the genius of Bob Fosse's contribution to the genre was in his ability to take all the structural and visual parameters of the musical created by Lubitsch, Mamoulian, Berkeley, and Minnelli and self-consciously turn them to a new purpose in which irony and complicity became cynicism, anger, and regret -- the sentiments of American society at the time. By the time Fosse began directing film musicals, the genre's heyday was over, and America, while once again embroiled in war, was in no mood to be distracted or mindlessly entertained. Rather than production numbers rising out of life, life itself became a production number. In All That Jazz (1980), even open-heart surgery turns into a Follies-like number. The camera work in Cabaret (1972) creates the constantly unsettling impression that even the scenes that are "real life" are under the microscope of a production -- there is no "real" here.

While the film musical drew inspiration from a wide cross-section of cultural influences, it also drew from the mindset of America's social fabric at the time. One of the most obvious examples of the musical reflecting current societal sensibilities was Silk Stockings (1957) with Fred Astaire as a carefree Hollywood director in conflict with Cyd Charisse's Russian business woman's character.

While the inherent unreality of the film musical genre rests on the role of the production number, a closer reading of the genre reveals that the paradox between the production number and reality actually illuminates the deeper meaning within the structure of the film musical. Parallel structures of good vs. evil, wild vs. tame, male vs. female, rich vs. poor, young vs. old, home vs. work, and work ethic vs. entertainment were always present in American society. The narrative structure of the film musical plays out these paradoxes and conflicts with these conflicting mindsets, seen through the film's characters. The role of the production number -- seemingly in conflict with traditional narrative structures -- then creates a metaphor within the narrative, illuminating the cultural paradoxes that are being resolved in the film. Made during the Cold War, Silk Stockings uses the obvious carefree American vs. frosty Russian conflict. However, other powerful paradoxes are at work as well, namely male vs. female and work vs. entertainment. And all three accurately reflect concerns of American society during the Eisenhower years. The "unreality" of the production number also plays into the hands of a basic structural tenant of the film musical -- the place of make-believe, such as Dorothy's Oz in the Wizard of Oz.

The resolution in the space of two hours of serious societal paradoxes such as good vs. evil requires a great leap of faith. However, within the context of the production number is a special place where conflict can be resolved, paradoxes sublimated, and couples united. The characters use this place to make their leap of faith, and the audience is encouraged to follow along. Dorothy finds the true meaning of home in the make-believe world of Oz in the Wizard of Oz (1939). The drive-in serves as a meeting ground for Sandy and Danny in Grease. In Carousel, the world of make-believe is taken one step further, being explicitly described when Billy and Julie sing {&"If I Loved You," and Maria and Tony sing {&"Somewhere" in West Side Story, further demonstrating that this is center of the world, where life is truer and opposing forces can join an ideal vision of wholeness. Like the characters, viewers suspend the belief of their everyday reality to escape into the world of the musical, and there, maybe, find a truer essence in their own lives.

While the production number serves both as a metaphor for narrative paradoxes and as a launching pad for their inevitable resolution, the act of singing and dancing reveals the most intimate soul of the characters and also of American society at the time. Thus, in Show Boat (1936 and 1951), the rhythms of the work of daily life turn to song and only when Steve Martin sings with his own voice in Pennies from Heaven (1981) is he singing from his own soul.

With its roots in the American folk tradition, singing becomes a natural extension of living, the conflation of words and music expressing joy and sorrow that words alone cannot express. In one of the most seamless and extraordinary uses of song and dance, Fred Astaire in Top Hat (1935) moves imperceptibly from the rhythm of conversation to the rhythm of song in "Fancy Free." And while song serves as an extension of character, it also serves as a bridge or resolution device, bringing together characters previously in conflict. Baron Von Trapp sings with his children in The Sound of Music (1965), drawing the family together. The metaphoric use of song is used in Robert Altman's Nashville; a sing-along of {&"It Don't Worry Me" becomes an ironic comment on the disaffection of this political society, even in the face of violence. The use of song to draw characters together was used powerfully in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, where every character, disconnected and disassociated from themselves and each other joins together to sing {&"Wise Up."

From picking cotton in Hallelujah (1929) to the carnival in Carousel (1956) to the square dance in Oklahoma (1955) to the disco in Saturday Night Fever (1977), the group dance brings the environment and the undercurrents of the group dynamic to life, revealing, like the song does for the singer, the essential soul and emotion of the environment. In both the folk musical and the backstage or show musical, the group dance seemed to spring almost effortlessly from the narrative itself. There is no finer example of the communicative power of dance than Top Hat (1935), with the quintessential dance partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

For the couple, dance is often a conversation, a quarrel, and a resolution in which two different people with opposing agendas find that their goals are less divergent than previously thought. In Top Hat, each dance becomes a metaphorical conversation between Astaire and Rogers as they enter into a presumably (but not truly) adulterous affair. In {&"A Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain," Astaire dances to impress Rogers, but she only mocks him -- but she mocks him by imitating him, thus unwittingly joining him. {&"Cheek to Cheek" becomes a resolution of sorts. By dancing, Rogers gives in to her "forbidden" desires, creating that enchanting moment in which the pleasure of singing and dancing become one.

For the couple, dance is associated with conversation, sexual tension, and desire, while for Gene Kelly in films such as An American in Paris (1951) and Singin' in the Rain dance is an expression of joy, youth, innocence, even childishness -- a perfect metaphor for American society, or at least how American society viewed itself at the time. The solo performer reaches deep to the essential quality of soul, both of the character and of Americana.

In fact, what is most striking about Kelly is that, while he did dance with partners, he was never identified with a standard duet style, like Astaire and Rogers. Instead, he danced with a variety of partners: Vera-Ellen in On the Town (1949), Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (1942) and The Pirate (1948), Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain, and Cyd Charisse in Brigadoon (1954) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). He even danced with Jerry, the cartoon mouse, in Anchors Aweigh (1945). Youth and innocence was the key to Kelly's persona and, in film after film, he paraded it to charm the film's characters and the audience as well. Simply look at this incomplete list of Kelly's films: An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), The Pirate (1948), Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). In every one, Kelly's persona exemplifies the paradox of a man-child. "Be a clown" he sings in The Pirate (1948), and by exemplifying and glorifying the joy of dance, Kelly shows the audience that hope and youth spring eternal.

The cult of youth is a particularly American phenomenon, and in film musicals such as Little Miss Broadway and Babes in Arms, there was always a place for the child stars Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney, who, like Gene Kelly, served as a metaphor for how American society liked to see itself.

Shirley Temple is the obvious example of the child star, a precocious spitfire embodying youth, pluck, optimism, and just a touch of worldliness. In Little Miss Broadway (1938), Shirley Temple plays a Cupid of sorts, organizing a vaudeville show to save a beleaguered hotel and playing matchmaker to a star-crossed rich boy/poor girl couple. The youthful pairing of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney served a similar purpose. In films such as Babes in Arms (1939), Strike up the Band (1940) and Girl Crazy (1943), the twosome solved some problem or other within their community by putting on a show. As America prepared to involve itself in the war against Hitler, what a perfect metaphor these children were -- the energy and resourcefulness of youth righting every wrong and ensuring "happily ever after."

Today the musical exists primarily in the realm of animated musicals such as The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Prince of Egypt, which follow virtually the same models as the golden-age film musicals, delving into societal paradoxes using the same metaphors.

The Lion King (1994) delves into father vs. son, good vs. evil, and responsibility vs. fun. And Tarzan (1999) deals with the particularly timely societal question, "What exactly constitutes family?" However, by virtue of their being animated, the current musical is even one step further removed from reality and, therefore, while sharing subject matter, does not really involve the viewer in the same level of spectatorship. Given that the believability of the musical is in many ways dependent on the viewer's ability to innocently and consciously suspend disbelief and become part of the moment, it is not a surprise that the film musical as we've described it has virtually vanished. In the '40s and '50s, America was a song and dance culture, with everyone, young and old, doing their best to imitate Astaire and Rogers. The film musical became a community meeting place of sorts, where viewers -- no matter what their background -- joined together in the fantasy. Today, popular culture is categorized and subdivided in such a way that 15-year-olds and 30-year-olds rarely listen to the same music, and to the 50-year-old, it's all noise anyway. Ballroom dancing is a lost art and a running joke.

However, the film musical is not completely dead, rather it has become the purvey of the innocent -- children. It is easy to dismiss the film musical as only mindless entertainment, but while it was entertaining, it was so much more. The genre of the American film musical -- by virtue of its use of fantasy, suspension of disbelief, the self-reflective use of camera, and the transcendence of song and dance -- becomes literally and through metaphor the ultimate expression of both American societal conflicts and viewpoint. At worst, it is a timepiece in film history. At best, it is a timeless testament to the American sensibility.