ABSTRACT
Analyzing musicality in relation to different theatrical forms has provided a solid foundation for the analysis. It has helped us identify different kinds of performance space and understand the similarities and differences between French and American musical films in a more dynamic way. However, the evident hybridity of the musical films examined, the often indistinct boundaries between different “performance spaces” as the films have shaped them, means that there are limits to this approach. With this in mind, we now turn to the feelings and emotions the musical numbers produce. This project does not pretend (nor aspire) to be a phenomenological or cognitivist study of the musical film, so “emotions” is taken in quite a loose sense, primarily through recourse to the “utopian” feelings stressed by Richard Dyer in his influential essay on the movie musical, “Entertainment and Utopia”.
