Why movie musicals matter – to this author anyway

Do movie musicals matter? Most readers, even those who love them, will embark on Richard Barrios’s short history of the genre with the thought: not much. They’ll very likely, I’m afraid, finish it holding much the same opinion. But not mattering much doesn’t prevent the best film musicals from being captivating. This is a book by someone who is indeed captivated: a love letter for the best of musical cinema and a blown raspberry for the worst.

Barrios is sensitive and scholarly about the ebb and flow of the popularity of musical film over the years — the dunts administered to it by 1934’s killjoy Production Code, by changes in cinema distribution models, by the rise of pop music and television, and above all by the boom-and-bust effect of a big hit appearing to presage the return of the musical (even though Cabaret and Les Misérables, in different generations, proved dead ends).