Chicago: The Oscar Winning Musical

In 2003, the little golden guy went to Chicago, the first musical to win in thirty-three years. Now, the possibility of a musical film winning Best Picture had been almost realized two years prior when Moulin Rouge! was nominated for the category but failed to nab the trophy away from A Beautiful Mind. Regardless of the win-loss record, film musicals seemed to be making a comeback or at least gaining attention as worthwhile forms of entertainment. It also seemed to be worthwhile for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, hooking Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Renee Zellweger, and Queen Latifah into the cast. Backed with star power and easy to get stuck in your head show tunes, Chicago presented the epitome of a film musical, typifying the genre for a more contemporary audience.

The iconography of a musical even for stage hinges upon the lavish production. We expect extravagant costumes, scenery, lighting, elaborate dance numbers, and powerful vocals. That is simply what is expected of a musical or musical film. According to Cara Ann Lane (2003), “…All of these patterns contribute to the film musical’s reputation of being larger than life. Movies in this genre pull their audiences into a fantastical world, while, simultaneously, providing them with tools for identifying how the movies create the fantasy” (p. 74). Beginning with the look of Chicago alone, it is easy to detect its musical roots. The initial settings and scenery of the city and Roxie’s transition to life in the jailhouse appear very stage-like. They look stylized, flat, and almost whimsical in a way as to suggest hand painted backdrops that could be lifted away by a pulley system. The film revolves heavily around a female cast, all of whom are decked out in everything from drab uniforms to sequined flapper dresses, and all without a single hair out of place. Certainly, the film remains a work of visual art, just as a production on a stage. It’s all about spectacle.

Chicago delivers all of the “fantastical” qualities of a stage musical and then some through its employment of certain strategies that are only made possible when musicals make the leap to film. Certain liberties are taken when making the adaptation, and the film musical is only enhanced by these. Again, Lane of Film & History (2003) notes one tactic, “…when presenting acts in a theater or club venue, the films make use of camera angles that do not correspond to a theater audience’s perspective, displaying events from points of view that would be impossible for an actual theater audience to witness—such as a view of the audience from the stage or a view of the stage from the ceiling” (p. 74). Our scope is not limited to what we can see from our seat, around the head of the person in front of us, or with our binoculars. The film plays out in front of the camera, our own, personal moving theater seat. This sort of mobile perspective is very apparent in one of the film’s most recognizable numbers performed by Queen Latifah.

All of the numbers in Chicago also utilize another interesting privilege that liberates musicals upon their transition to musical films. In the consciousness of leading lady Roxie Hart, played by Renee Zellweger, all performances become not only occurrences in the plot, but they seem to transcend into the play within a play territory. It’s as if we see each song twice, once in the content of the plot, and another nondiegetically as a separate cabaret number performed by the featured cast member. Carla Hay (2003) of Billboard explains: “Chicago is a captivating film that effectively wraps a movie within a movie: the reality of what happens in the characters’ world, interwoven with the idealized version that plays out in Roxie’s mind. The musical numbers spring from her imagination, in which she sees life as one big performance” (p. 1). Perhaps the most dazzling example is when her own murder trial instead becomes a three-ringed circus act. They’re not just singing about a circus in a courtroom. They are literally singing about a circus at the circus and then sometimes also in the courtroom.

 The film Chicago is presented with as much allure and mystique as the world of show business that it seems to satirize, a common characteristic of film musicals. We want to suspend our disbelief of reality for a short period of time and simply accept the show-stopping numbers as reality, but at the same time, we are always called upon to specifically notice how spectacular and extraordinarily these numbers of accomplished. Chicago is no exception, “…Both the presentational technique and the narrative events in Chicago provide a means for the audience to accept and challenge the fantasy world of the film—a contradiction that defines the film musical genre” (Lane 2003, p. 74).

References:

Hay, C. (2003). Can ‘chicago’ spell a comeback for the movie musical? (Cover story). Billboard, 115(2), 1.

Lane, C. (2003). Chicago (review). Film & History, 33(2), 74-75.