Wonderful Design

Glamour is an elusive aspect of cinematic style. This book critically examines previous scholarship on glamour; defines the concept as a compound of artifice, allure, and magic; and examines the phenomenon at work in the genre of the film musical. The focus is on the role of music in representing glamour, and the stylistic and semiotic conventions by which glamour is embodied in sound. The book develops an analytical framework that applies across media, the better to appreciate music’s collaborative role within multimedia spectacle. First, glamour is situated as one of a handful of “style modes” orienting stylistic treatment in musical numbers. Second, glamour is shown to blend four distinct aesthetic parameters: sensuousness, restraint, elevation, and sophistication. Instead of being interpreted in relation to film narrative, the musical number is treated as a semiautonomous locus of meaning and expression, with its own formal demands and the power to eclipse narrative logic. Dozens of musical numbers are analyzed, drawn from more than eighty films, exploring glamour from the perspectives of arranging and orchestrational technique, the fantasies awoken in the spectator, and the invocation of magical belief. Anticonsumerist critiques of glamour are evaluated alongside counterarguments upholding glamour’s transformative and sustaining potential. Concluding discussion shows how the musical genre has affinities with the hybrid aesthetic of “magical realism.”