Dreivierteltakt in frühen Film Musicals

Abstract

The waltz, mainly associated with Vienna and the operetta, was outdated when film musicals came into being, which utilized more modern dances. Nevertheless, the waltz appeared in this new media, although with other purposes-nostalgia being among them. The paper examines three Walzerlieder: Cole Porter’s song “Wunderbar” from Kiss Me, Kate, in which the protagonists remember a previous Broadway show; in Lloyd Bacon’s film musical Wonder Bar, an extended Valse amoureuse, which illuminates eroticism in a night club; and, in Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris, Ira and George Gershwin’s song “By Strauss”-a hommage to the waltz, owned by the older generation, as contrasted to youth drawn to more modern trots and tunes, as found in “I Got Rhythm.”