Time For The Return Of The Musical?

Baz Luhrmann is betting that the movie musical’s time has come again.

The premiere of Luhrmann’s exuberant “Moulin Rouge,” starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, testing audience appetites for a genre that has been out of favor for decades. The movie opens in limited theatrical release May 18 and expands nationwide June 1.

Lavish musical like “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” once a Hollywood mainstay, have become rarities. Even in the 1960s, when “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” “Oliver,” and “The Sound of Music” were packing in audiences and winning Oscars, musicals were fading because of high production costs and a move to cinematic naturalism.

But Luhrmann thinks his musical and others, such as last year’s “Dancer in the Dark” and the upcoming “Hedwig and the Angry Itch,” are at the vanguard of a musical revival.

“We’ve come through a period of extreme naturalism in film, based on how convincing an illusion of reality one can make, and the musical didn’t fit that,” said the Australian director whose credits include “Strictly Ballroom” and “William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet.”

“But audiences today are so aware of cinematic manipulation that they recognize that the illusion of reality is just another form of manipulation.”

The upshot, says Luhrmann: Screen characters bursting into song is an artifice movie audiences once again want to accept.

Exploding with kaleidoscopic images, “Moulin Rouge” is a tragicomic romance based on the myth of Opheus, who journeyed to the underworld to rescue his true love. Set at Paris’ hedonistic Moulin Rouge nightclub in 1899, the movie draws on pop music of the 20th Century.

In one medley, Kidman and McGregor trad snippets from the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”, U2’s “Pride ( In the Name of Love),” Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” The Nat King Cole standard “Nature Boy” and Elton John’s ‘Your Song” are reprised throughout.

Kidman does a show-stopping version of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” her co-star Jim Broadbent leads a bizarrely funny interpretation of Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” and Jose Feliciano adds vocals to a tango take on Sting’s “Roxanne.”

“This is a movie that has to build a relationship with the audience, and using familiar tunes in unexpected ways is one of the ways we do that,” said Marius DeVries, music director for “Moulin Rouge.”

Today’s younger audiences might also be more receptive to musicals because they grew up on MTV, said John Cameron Mitchell, who directed and stars in “Hedwig and The Angry Ich.”

An adaptation of the off-Broadway show, “Hedwig” is the story of an East German transsexual who spins her life story through raucous glam-rock numbers. The movie won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival last winter and hits U.S. theaters in July.

“Five years ago or so, maybe our film could not have been made they way it is now,” said Mitchell.

“But the Clinton, MTV, Internet reign of the last 10 years has changed everything. It’s changed what it means to be young, and music video has loosened things up for young people, it’s kind of natural that narrative goes with rock music.”

Besides Madonna’s “Evita” in 1996, and the occasional cartoon musical like “Beauty and the Beast,” musicals have been pretty much absent from the mainstream for years. “Evita” grossed $50 million in the U.S., a solid but unspectacular return, considering the celebrity of the play and the star.

“The musical language of the big musicals of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s was popular music of the time,” said Peter Golub, who heads the composers’ lab at the Sundance Institute. “Now, what’s on the radio is a whole other thing that doesn’t lend itself to a long-form musical.”

James L. Brooks shot his 1994 “I’ll Do Anything” as a musical, but the songs were cut after poor reaction from test audiences. Woody Allen’s 1996 musical “Everyone Says I Love You” had middling box-office receipts. In 1998, a reissue of “Grease” did well, while a re-release of “The Wizard of Oz” had a U.S. gross of only $12.7 million.

Last year, a movie version of “The Fantasticks” and Kenneth Branagh’s musical adaptation of “Love’s Labours Lost” played in just a handful of theaters.

The somber “Dancer in the Dark,” which won top honors at Cannes last year, caught media attention and an Oscar nomination for best song, but remained a small indie success.

Often standing in for old-style musicals now are movies such as “Save The Last Dance” or “Billy Elliot” which are told in performance settings, where song and dance can be presented more realistically.

“For the most part, people now prefer to have their music integrated into the story,” said director Allison Anders, whose pseudo-musicals include “Things Behind the Sun” which premiered at Sundance in January.

“With the naturalism of movies now, it’s tough to have somebody belting out a tune at the table anymore. You can’t do “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks singing “Light My Fire” on an island.”

Written By DAVID GERMAIN © MMI The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed