Book review: Dangerous Rhythm, by Richard Barrios

by Richard Barrios
Oxford University Press
4 stars
Steven Rea

Richard Barrios calls it that "bump" moment - the pivot point in a film when the characters who have thus far been chatting, spatting, courting and carousing just like normal folk burst into song. Suddenly they're no longer in the real world, but on a plane of existence where an orchestra can swell out of nowhere, where average Joes and Jills sing while showing off their waltz moves, their tap skills, their synchronicity with a line of high-kicking chorines.

It's the movie musical, that strange beast that - when done right - can be sublime, transcendent, inspiring.

Barrios, a film historian with an affinity for the wildly diverse song-and-dance genre, offers a readable, authoritative meditation on the Hollywood musical.

From its nascent days, during the tumultuous transition from silent cinema to talkies, to new hits and misses such as Rent (2005), Sweeney Todd (2007) and Mamma Mia! (2008), he notes the through lines, the breakthroughs, the anomalies, the crises, the trends, the stars.

Musicals, he writes, are the most "conspicuous" of movie categories - whether you love 'em or hate 'em, by their nature they call attention to themselves. "Their risks are as amplified as their budgets and soundtracks, their fiscal and aesthetic stakes are high, and they stand out as much when they fail as when they succeed."