Dismissal and elevation: Mamoulian’s musical numbers and the early sound era

Though the musical numbers in Applause (1929) and Love Me Tonight (1932) are decidedly different, they share two characteristics: both were highly unusual at the time of their release, and both were directed by the same man: Rouben Mamoulian. This article examines these differing numbers as the work of a director with a surprisingly unified vision of cinema, and assesses their level of innovation within the early sound era. In these films, Mamoulian, an unabashed intellectual, put into practice theories of medium specificity and stylization that he had developed in his theatre work, theories that have received little scholarly attention. Believing that an artist uses medium-specific tools to transform the subject matter so as to express an artist’s personal viewpoint on the material, Mamoulian sought cinematic ways to stylishly dismiss and deride his numbers in Applause and elevate them in Love Me Tonight. In doing so, Mamoulian charted early and important ways in which musical numbers could be conceptualized and executed.