The Missing Genre

In American film, there has been a recent increase in musicals. With films like Mamma Mia, Sweeney Todd, Hairspray, Across the Universe, Dreamgirls, The Producers, and The Phantom of the Opera all released within the past four years fans of the musical have had no shortage of films to watch. Add to that the extraordinary success of Disney's High School Musical trilogy and it becomes evident that audiences are not solely comprised of people looking for a film reminiscent of the classic musicals, but also of young people only first getting introduced to the genre. Still, the rebirth of musicals is exactly that a re-birth. Stateside, the musical is a genre that has been around for decades, bringing an appropriate amount of cheese (with exception of the particularly gory Sweeney Todd) to bring a smile to everyone's face and, perhaps, to get people singing along and maybe even dancing in the aisles. Peruse through the AFI website and you'll find out that while their final list of the Greatest Movie Musicals only consisted of 25 films, 180 films were nominated.

http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/musicals.aspx

Yet, Australian cinema seems to lack such an enthusiasm to the genre. The classic American musicals of yesteryear, think Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, etc, lack a counterpart in Australia. Visit australianscreen.com and see the sparse selection of Australian musicals.

http://australianscreen.com.au/genre/musical/

If the difference between American and Australian opinion on musicals wasn't evident by the vast difference in number, it is also apparent in the theme found in musicals. While most American musicals are overly upbeat, candy-coated versions of society (especially in classic musicals), Australian musicals investigate things like disappearances as seen in One Night the Moon. Even in Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann's musical that had great American success and features a great many references to classic musicals, is about a prostitute with tuberculosis--not quite dance in the aisle material.




Perhaps, it's all a result of the countries being in completely different phases at different times, but, still, the fact that the musical has not been explored much in Australia, but perhaps over-explored in American, is certainly something to think about.

(Images thanks to: http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Moulin-Rouge-Posters_i306935_.htm
and http://www.movie-forumz.org/showthread.php?t=38195)