A Film Canon

Like The Jazz Singer, The Broadway Melody uses theatrical spectacle to express the momentousness of sound, but extends this gesture so as to make it the foundation for a new cinematic genre - the backstage musical - which always focuses, in some way, on the unlikely star; that is, a figure who finds her customary silence unexpectedly broken. To this end, Beaumont adopts the modernist narrative of urban revelation, but condenses the New York cityscape to Broadway and, for the most part, to a single theatre. Apart from the opening and closing sequences, there are no exterior shots, forcing the frenetic, hyperbolic pace of metropolitan life into a series of tap sequences, and importing its heterogeneity into the life of the theatre, presented as a collaboration of diverse, often antagonistic, individuals; or, more accurately, as a space in which social stratification is simultaneously confirmed and subverted. In the same way, Beaumont emphasises the syncretic origins of the musical spectacle itself, both by detailing the gradual integration of discrete songs and acts, each with its own proprietor, manager, or some other form of vested economic interest, as well as emphasising the fickleness of producer 'Zanfield', who remains as oblivious to his subjects as a city mayor. The result is a condensation of the perils of urban survival into the tension between sisterhood and personal ambition, as well as a strong anticipation of the socially conscious, Depression-inflected musical films of the early 1930s.