The monumental film adaptation of the monumental stage musical of Victor Hugo’s monumental novel about revolutionaries in Paris, Les Misérables, arrived in theaters this Christmas with a noisy French fusillade. It just won three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture, Musical or Comedy, and is now in prime position for Oscar glory with eight nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Hugh Jackman), and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway). With $187 million banked at the box office as of Jan. 10, it may well wind up being the most financially successful film musical ever. Just in time, too, because the genre’s recent pull hasn’t always been, as they like to sing on Broadway, “money, money, money.”
Illustration by Kagan McleodIn early Hollywood, the musical was the premier category—closer in import to the superhero movies that crowd today’s theaters during the summer. “It was the type of film that kept the studios alive, allowing them to make all their other movies,” says Miles Kreuger, founder of the Institute of the American Musical in Los Angeles. A hundred musical films were made in 1930 alone. That changed with the gradual dissolution of the studio system in the ’50s, and although numerous successful musical films were released through the ’60s—The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and Oliver! among them—the productions grew noticeably bigger and more cumbersome. Compounding that financial bloat, throughout the blockbuster-driven ’70s the core moviegoing audience shifted from women, who historically supported musicals, to teenage boys. From that decade on, despite occasional bright spots, the genre was effectively toxic; and after the turmoil of the ’60s, the idea of characters spontaneously breaking into song felt anachronistic and quaint. For every success like Grease, there were a half-dozen failures like The Wiz or 1776.
