{"id":36110,"date":"2017-02-11T15:38:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=36110"},"modified":"2020-08-01T16:45:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T21:45:13","slug":"la-la-land-singin-in-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2017\/02\/11\/la-la-land-singin-in-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"LA LA LAND: Singin’ in the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

La La Land<\/strong> (2016)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

In\u00a0our Film Studies program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of our aims is to \u00a0integrate critical analysis of movies with a study of film history. Sometimes that means researching how conditions in the film industry shape and are shaped by\u00a0the creative choices made by\u00a0filmmakers. We also study how filmmakers draw on artistic norms, old or recent, in making new films. This effort to put films into wider historical contexts is something that you don’t get in your usual movie review.<\/p>\n

Take, yet again, La La Land<\/em>. Awards and critical debates continue to swirl around the surprising success of this neo-musical. Two entries on this blog have already considered what the film\u00a0owes to 1940s innovations in Hollywood storytelling (here<\/a>) and to more basic norms of movie plot construction and the classic Broadway “song plot” (here<\/a>). But there’s plenty more to say.<\/p>\n

Enter three Madison researchers\u00a0as guest bloggers. Kelley Conway<\/strong> is an authority on the French musical from the 1930s to the present and author of an excellent book<\/a> on Agn\u00e8s Varda (reviewed here<\/a>). She also gave us\u00a0an earlier entry<\/a> on films at the Vancouver Film Festival. Today, in an oblique rebuttal to some complaints about the principals’ singing and dancing in\u00a0La La Land<\/em>, she situates Damien Chazelle’s film within\u00a0a\u00a0trend toward “unprofessional”\u00a0musical performance.<\/p>\n

Eric Dienstfrey<\/strong> studies developments in acoustic technology and how those have affected the way movies sound. In his contribution, he traces how\u00a0film’s recording methods shape the auditory texture of the numbers, with special attention to the soft boundary between diegetic (story-world) sound and non-diegetic sound.<\/p>\n

Amanda McQueen<\/strong>\u00a0is a specialist in Hollywood and TV musicals of the last fifty years. Here she considers how \u00a0La La Land<\/em> is designed to overcome audiences’ current\u00a0resistance to “integrated” musicals. She proposes that it offers one way to revive the genre for modern Hollywood.<\/p>\n

These experts take the conversation in new directions I think you’ll enjoy. They remind us that a movie coming out today automatically becomes a part of history; it’s just that the history is sometimes hard to discern. Along the way they show the virtues of thinking beyond the talking points\u00a0put out by the PR machine or circulating endlessly in reviews. In my view, good film criticism involves ideas and information as well as opinions<\/a>, and all three are on vivid display here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amateurism as authenticity<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Everyone<\/a><\/p>\n

Everyone Says I Love You<\/strong> (Woody Allen, 1998).<\/em><\/p>\n

Kelley Conway:\u00a0<\/strong>For me, La La Land<\/em>‘s\u00a0references\u00a0to classical Hollywood musicals and to the films of Jacques Demy provide a major source of its pleasure. (Sara Preciado\u2019s video essay<\/a> demonstrates the film\u2019s homages)\u00a0The film\u2019s nods to other traditions remind us of something about the relationship between Hollywood and other national cinemas: mutual influence is the norm.<\/p>\n

Directors associated with the French New Wave absorbed and subverted Hollywood genres. Hollywood directors of the late 1960s and \u201870s, in turn, were inspired by the narrative ambiguity and stylistic playfulness of the New Wave. Sometimes, the influence travels full circle in quite a direct way. John Huston\u2019s Asphalt Jungle<\/em> (1950) directly influenced Jean-Pierre Melville in the making of Bob le flambeur<\/em> (1956), while Tarantino\u2019s Reservoir Dogs<\/em> references both Melville\u2019s minimalist gangster films and Hollywood heist films.<\/p>\n

La La Land<\/em> demonstrates a similarly rich exchange between Hollywood and France. In 1967, Jacques Demy\u2019s Demoiselles de Rochefort<\/em>\u00a0paid loving homage to Hollywood films such as Singin\u2019 in the Rain, West Side Story, <\/em>and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em>. Chazelle\u2019s film returns the favor, adopting the dancing pedestrians and location shooting of Demoiselles\u00a0and the saturated colors, recitative, and downbeat ending of Parapluies de\u00a0Cherbourg<\/em>. Chazelle is equally smitten with classical Hollywood; La La Land<\/em> brims with references to the choreography, costumes, and set design of Shall We Dance<\/em> (1937), Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/em> (1952), The Band Wagon<\/em> (1953), West Side Story<\/em> (1961), and many others.<\/p>\n

La La Land<\/em> not only cites the style of other musicals, it also develops and tweaks narrative elements from older musicals in interesting ways. For example, Chazelle\u2019s film, like Demy\u2019s Parapluies de Cherbourg<\/em>, thwarts the creation of the couple. In Parapluies<\/em>, the Algerian war initially separates Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and Genevi\u00e8ve (Catherine Deneuve).<\/p>\n

\"Umbrellas<\/a><\/p>\n

Later, an unplanned pregnancy and her mother\u2019s machinations push Genevi\u00e8ve to marry a wealthy jeweler. At the end of the film, when they run into one another at Guy\u2019s gas station, they exchange only a few perfunctory words; Guy even declines Genevi\u00e8ve\u2019s invitation to meet their daughter. There is neither anger nor the warmth of nostalgia in their exchange; just a delicately drawn emotional distance that leaves viewers feeling wistful.<\/p>\n

\"Umbrellas3<\/p>\n

In contrast, the relationship between Mia and Sebastian fails because they decide to put their romance on hold in order to pursue their dreams. \u201cWhere are we?\u201d Mia asks Sebastian after her audition for the film role that will take her to Paris and launch her career. \u201cWe\u2019ll just have to wait and see,\u201d he replies. Five years later, he owns a jazz club and she has become an A-list actress, but she is married to someone else and has a child.<\/p>\n

When they cross paths at his club, Chazelle supplements Demy\u2019s delicate gas station meet-up with an exuberant fantasy montage, a kind of dream ballet often used in the classical Hollywood musical, in which the couple manages to stay together. The production number is full of invention and energy, combining animation, simulated home movie footage, a trumpet solo, and a tribute to the \u201cBroadway Melody\u201d number of Singin\u2019 in the Rain<\/em>. As Mia prepares to leave the club, she and Sebastian exchange tender glances and rueful smiles. She departs as he launches into his next song. The love is still there, the film suggests, but Sebastian and Mia chose art over love and they would probably make the same decision today. Different from Demy\u2019s characters, Sebastian and Mia are not victims of implacable destiny, but committed artists. It\u2019s an ending that feels fresh to me.<\/p>\n

As Amanda McQueen reveals below, La La Land<\/em>\u00a0conforms to various trends in the 21st<\/sup> century musical. Consider just\u00a0one element: song performance. Neither Ryan Gosling nor Emma Stone possesses a powerful, belt-it-out voice. Instead, much of the singing in La La Land<\/em> is modest, thin, and breathy. Take, for example, the number \u201cThe Fools Who Dream,\u201d a climactic moment in the film.<\/p>\n

\"Audition<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked by the casting director to tell a story, Mia begins a poignant monologue (\u201cMy aunt used to live in Paris\u2026\u201d) in a quiet speaking voice marked by a bit of vocal fry. She slowly moves into an a capella<\/em> ballad and, after a few bars, is accompanied by piano. Eventually, the music swells, Mia goes big (\u201cHere\u2019s to the ones who dream\u2026\u201d), and then the song winds back down to the concluding notes, delivered a capella<\/em>. The staging of the song \u2013 black background, circular camera movement, a big swell of emotion, a long take \u2013 is reminiscent of the splashy production number in Agn\u00e8s Varda\u2019s New Wave masterpiece Cl\u00e9o de 5 \u00e0 7<\/em>. But Stone\u2019s voice reminds me of the wonderfully whispery, intimate singing voices of Birkin, Bardot, and Karina.<\/p>\n

As Eric Dienstfrey points out\u00a0below, the techniques used in the recording of the songs affect\u00a0our impression of the story world and our sense of the film\u2019s aesthetic achievement. In a Song Exploder<\/a> podcast about the creation of this song, composer Justin Hurwitz emphasizes the difficulty of shooting this one-shot production number. He explains that Stone performed the song live on set, as opposed to lip-synching it. Hurwitz speaks of his struggle to keep up with Stone while accompanying her on set:<\/p>\n

Because I was letting Emma lead the song, I was reacting to her. So a lot of times the piano is a little bit behind the vocal. It sounded like a recital or something where you know the singer is leading it and the piano is there to accompany. That\u2019s what happens when two people make music together; things are not perfectly in sync. That\u2019s why it feels musical and why it feels real and honest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Directors of many recent film musicals similarly seek to create the impression of aural and emotional authenticity, either through non-professional singing or on-set recording. Woody Allen\u2019s musical Everyone Says I Love You<\/em> (1996) employs actors who are not professional singers, and Baz Luhrmann\u2019s Moulin <\/em>Rouge (2001) uses the relatively modest singing talent of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor in a mixture of playback and live recording. Likewise, publicity for\u00a0Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> (2012) made much of the fact that Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe performed their songs on the set.<\/p>\n

Christophe Honor\u00e9 also tends to employ singing performances by non-singers. Here, in Dans Paris\u00a0<\/em>(2006), a couple breaks up over the phone while singing in a breathy, halting fashion.<\/p>\n