Singing a Different Tune

In “Dancer in the Dark,” a desperate woman who is going blind works a double shift in a manufacturing plant. In her dazed state, the rhythmic clanking of machinery becomes a syncopated fantasy song and dance number.

In “Prison Song,” a young man behind bars spews out his rage and frustration at the injustice of his situation. The interior monologue is translated onscreen into a rap rhyme routine.

And in “Moulin Rouge,” set in 19th century Paris, the characters burst out in 20th century songs by the likes of Madonna and Elton John.

The musical film is making a comeback--but as these three upcoming films indicate, the genre is being turned around and made to dance in ways Fred and Ginger never imagined. Over the next few months a handful of new movies will attempt to reinvigorate--and in some cases test the boundaries of--the musical film.

The American film musical, one of cinema’s most enduring staples, largely has been confined to Disney animated movies in recent years. With infrequent revival attempts like the all-singing “Evita” (only a moderate success), movie musicals have largely been confined to behind-the-scenes show business tales like “The Commitments” or documentary performance films like “The Buena Vista Social Club.” For more than two decades audiences have largely turned a cold shoulder to performers bursting out into song; that is, unless they were cartoons.

But old genres never really die, they just lie dormant waiting for someone to resuscitate them the way Ridley Scott did with sword ‘n’ sandal epics (“Gladiator”), Steven Spielberg with war films (“Saving Private Ryan”) and Clint Eastwood with westerns (“Unforgiven”).

In that spirit, some intrepid directors are hoping to reinvent the movie musical in a variety of ways:

* Baz Luhrmann will mix and match musical styles in the lavish Christmas release “Moulin Rouge” starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor.

* Joel and Ethan Coen’s upcoming Depression-era “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” starring George Clooney, interweaves traditional Southern blues and spiritual musical performances into its narrative.

* Lars von Trier’s recent Palme D’Or winner at Cannes, “Dancer in the Dark,” starring Icelandic pop singer Bjork, is a dark drama about blindness and capital punishment that includes fantasy musical numbers.

* Darnell Martin’s “Prison Song” is another serious urban drama featuring characters who reveal their innermost thoughts and emotions through song.

* British stage director Stephen Daldry’s film debut, “Billy Eliot,” will incorporate classical and contemporary choreographed sequences.

Further down the road are screen adaptations of the recent off-Broadway rock hit “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” about an almost transsexual’s tortured life; Mariah Carey’s screen debut, “All That Glitters,” a rise-and-fall drama set in the music industry in the 1980s; and the ever-gestating “Phantom of the Opera” starring Antonio Banderas, based on the blockbuster stage extravaganza by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Already this year, Kenneth Branagh’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” brushed up Shakespeare’s comedy with ‘30s musical numbers from the likes of Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin (though critics and audiences found it underwhelming). And the young dancers in love musical “Center Stage” did modest business this spring.

“Center Stage” producer Laurence Mark notes that “people are looking for fresh nonformulaic movies, so it would seem to be an opportune moment to turn back to musicals, of which there’ve been very few in recent years.”

The prime moviegoing generation of 18- to 25-year-olds has little memory of the classic MGM musicals or even “The Sound of Music” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”--which means they don’t come into these films with preconceived ideas, according to Vincent Patterson, musical director of “Dancer in the Dark.” Not that there isn’t surprise when Bjork starts singing. But it’s the shock of the new, not a built-in intolerance.

Younger audiences have also been conditioned by MTV to see performers act out their songs on film. Often they are love songs, but not always. Performers like R.E.M. and Madonna (and Bjork, of course) frequently act out small dramas or extravagant fantasies in their videos. So they may not be so taken aback when Bjork does so in the context of a dramatic film, especially when they are set up as fantasies.

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“Dancing in the Dark” is shot in documentary style, and the musical numbers are fantasy extensions of that. Imagine MTV’s “The Real World” in which the characters are allowed to occasionally show what’s going on beneath the surface, Patterson suggests.

The film’s choreography is also free-flowing. The characters who dance in the film, Bjork included, had little or no training as dancers. So Patterson used little syncopation or precision in staging the numbers.

“The movement is much more idiosyncratic,” he says, so it blends more easily with the reality of the drama.

Similarly, Martin’s “Prison Song” uses hip-hop rhyme from the film’s performers--among them, Q Tip--to express emotional interior monologues within the context of a serious drama about “young blacks and Latinos being pushed out of the school system into the prison system,” says the director.

“The songs are windows, kind of like asides, which come out during moments of desperation,” she says. “They express passionate moments and express raw emotions.”

Both films are risky ventures to be sure. “Dancer in the Dark” was greeted with equal amounts of applause and derision when it was screened at Cannes. But they are risks worth taking, says New Line Cinema production chief head Michael De Luca, whose company will release “Prison Song” (the Fine Line specialty division will distribute Von Triers’ film).

“Popular music is a big part of everyone’s life,” he says. “Audiences want to see something different, a twist in the storytelling. People are ready to handle the genre again if it’s handled the right way.”

And since none of the musical projects at his company represents large investments, says De Luca (New Line is releasing the film version of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” next year), they leave room for experimentation without being fiscally dangerous.

Tom Rothman, a senior movie executive at 20th Century Fox, says the studio’s decision to greenlight Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge” was based solely on the director’s vision and his past ability to contemporize Shakespeare with “Romeo and Juliet,” as well as his earlier dance pastiche, “Strictly Ballroom,” and not on the sudden push to do musicals.

“No offense to the punditocracy, but you can’t make generalizations about any genre. Besides, we don’t make genres; we make individual pictures,” Rothman says.

Producer Eric Fellner, who is bankrolling the Coen brothers’ and Daldry’s films, says each of those projects suitably integrated musical elements as a unique way of telling its story.

“We have no musical comedy-trained performers in either film, but George Clooney sings and dances (in ‘O Brother’), and it pushes the story forward in a completely wonderful and funny way.”

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Not all upcoming musicals try to be as daringly dramatic as “Dancer in the Dark” and “Prison Song.” But all of them are attempting to introduce an emotional undertow through the use of music. Although out and out musicals have been rare, movies are constantly utilizing music to establish mood and comment on action. For instance, when Tom Cruise lip-synced Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 1983’s “Risky Business,” it became the movie’s signature moment. And Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” refashioned by Whitney Houston defined the emotional center of the 1992 musical romance “The Bodyguard.”

The Coen brothers’ “O Brother” blurs the boundaries of the musical film by using period music organically, though most of it is regional (the film takes place in the American South) and less familiar to audiences. Singer-songwriter T-Bone Burnett, who composed the score, says the Coens’ script included numerous musical pieces even before he came on board.

“Music is woven into the story,” says Burnett. “To call it a musical wouldn’t be misrepresentation. Music is an additional character, it’s atmosphere, it’s environment. It gives you a sense of time and place. And we tried to be true to the period, by recording everything with 1930s recording techniques and equipment.”

With “Moulin Rouge,” says Rothman, Luhrmann pushes the musical forward.

“You can’t go back to the old styles and the old ways of doing things,” he says. “Originality is essential, and as with ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Baz uses new cinematic grammar to tell his story.”

Rothman says that while “ ‘Moulin Rouge’ advances the musical stylistically, it also builds on the strengths of what made musicals so satisfying in the first place.

“A musical is a complete cinematic experience,” Rothman says. “They sing, they dance, they laugh, they cry. Movies have a need to compete with all other leisure choices. We have to get people to turn off the computer and come to the theater by providing a big-screen experience--with the emphasis on experience.”