The 100 Greatest Movie Musicals of All Time

100. ‘High School Musical’ (2006)

Everything and nothing makes this Disney Channel Original Movie special. Plotwise, it does not stray too far from the type of teen romance that was all the rage at the turn of the millennium. There aren’t really any outsized elements that do much of a throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood. The reason this film became such a big cultural shift, to the point where the last film in the trilogy got a theatrical release, is pure alchemy.

The music by David Lawrence excels at being both in and of the time. The cast are all ready for their moment to shine, with leads Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens having the most indelible chemistry. And director Kenny Ortega is completely in his element, crafting memorable numbers that just about every high schooler in their day tried recreating with basketballs, lunch trays, papier-mâché moons, and more because of just how exciting and accessible it all felt. —MJ

99. ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ (2008)

Putting ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ on an all-time best-of list isn’t so much baiting controversy as it is insulting the form. And yet, here the groundbreaking internet musical still proudly ranks — shock ending, abysmal lighting, hammer/penis, and all.

Much like its antihero of the title, Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), this bygone viral sensation is clever and catchy, touching and tragic, but most of all, very ambitious. Made during the 2007-2008 writers’ strike and subsequently streamed for free, ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ was created by Joss Whedon, half-brothers Zack and Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen (also Jed’s spouse). This was years before Joss reached his superhero peak directing “The Avengers,” and even further removed from the filmmaker’s downfall after an apocalyptic “Justice League” rewrite and several toxic workplace allegations.

Problematic associations aside, this aughts hidden gem — about a lovable supervillain and his disastrous attempts to join something called The Evil League of Evil — holds up as a crowning accomplishment in a long history of song-and-dance colliding with geek culture online. Not only does ‘Dr. Horrible’ crackle with the same charm as it did back then (save a few jokes), but it also reflects the post-nerd culture wars still raging in Hollywood today.While battling his pompous nemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and wooing love interest Penny (Felicia Day), Dr. Horrible allows deep insecurity and a frustrating sex life to turn into a kind of self-made demise that’s brilliantly representative of his time. Innovative, artistic, and unknowingly prescient. Think an earlier ‘Joker: Folie a Deux’ or “Gone with the Wind” for incels —AF

98. ‘One From the Heart’ (1982)

After proving the skeptics wrong with ‘Apocalypse Now,’ Coppola took an even bigger roll of the dice on this delirious 1982 musical, buying his own Hollywood studio and betting everything he owned (and then some) on ‘One From the Heart’ as its inaugural film. The movie was a box office failure and forced Coppola to regroup for the rest of the 1980s, but it’s an artistic triumph — a marvel of visual storytelling that’s deeply romantic, intensely personal, and completely awe-inspiring. A love letter to the old Hollywood studio system, it’s a delightful confection in which pure artifice (Coppola built the Las Vegas strip entirely on a sound stage) merges with the most authentic, complex human emotions. Nearly every one of Coppola’s innovations, which were laughed at by the establishment at the time — previsualization, editing on video, etc. — eventually became adopted by the industry at large. Both the movie and the way in which it was made were years ahead of their time. —JH

97. ‘West Side Story’ (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

Steven Spielberg had conquered almost every genre throughout his unparalleled fifty-year directing career, but one remained on his bucket list: the musical. To rectify that, he invited scrutiny by taking on one of the most beloved musicals of all time in ‘West Side Story.’ And per usual, Spielberg delivered. After bringing in frequent collaborator Tony Kushner to update the script, he demonstrated his technical mastery by using new camera technology to bring shots to life in a way that would have been unimaginable in 1961. The result was a film that maintained all the best parts of Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s original film (lavish dance numbers, iconic songs, Rita Moreno), while adding delightfully modern touches (Spanish language scenes, insanely complex camera movements, a star-making performance from newcomer Rachel Zegler). The combination of old and new proved that Spielberg is still unmatched as a purveyor of Hollywood showmanship. —CZ 

96. ‘God Help the Girl’ (Stuart Murdoch, 2014)

A shaggy and melancholic yet oh-so-bouyant pop musical from Belle and Sebastian mastermind Stuart Murdoch (whose character-driven songs always seemed to be written with a camera in mind), ‘God Help the Girl’ is so extravagantly twee that it almost renders that word insufficient, but that’s not a bad thing. Not in this case. Not when you’re talking about a semi-autobiographical movie from someone whose brilliant career has been predicated upon finding strength through sickness, mining joy from ennui, and hearing truth in the shyness that keeps introverted young people from sharing themselves with the world.

Fleshed out from Murdoch’s delicate pop album of the same name and doubling down on its undercurrents of sadness, ‘God Help the Girl’ stars a note-perfect Emily Browning (her performance equal parts Anna Kendrick and Anna Karina) as a Glaswegian waif who falls in with just the right people after being discharged from the facility where she was recovering from a severe eating disorder.

After forming a hipster band with a lovestruck beanpole (Olly Alexander) and his wide-eyed tutee (‘Game of Thrones’ survivor Hannah Murray), Eve gradually begins to emerge from the worst period of her life and straight into that one magic summer that some young folks are lucky enough to share with each other; the one where every feeling arrives at fever pitch, and every song feels like it was written for the soundtrack of your life. Replete with vintage Murdoch tunes that are freshly reanimated by a flawless cast and a vivid 16mm sense of nostalgia, ‘God Help the Girl’ remembers what life feels like right before the world starts closing its doors on you, and it crystalizes those last days of endless possibility so well that you may never forget them again. —DE

95. ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (Jim Sharman, 1975)

A cult favorite that is perhaps more fun to think about than it’s ever been to watch, ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ nonetheless has a deserving place in history as one of the great transgressive musicals. Jim Sharman’s movie staging of the cult horror musical has captured the hearts of queer weirdos for ages with its story of two squares who get the sexual awakening of a lifetime when they stumble upon a castle filled with freaks and owned by a transvestite mad scientist. The cast is uniformly terrific, from Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick as the squares in question to Meat Loaf’s scene-stealing cameo to Tim Curry’s iconically sexy performance as Frank N’ Furter. The film lags hard in its second half, and ends with a thud rather than a bang, but its opening 30 minutes or so is perfection, between iconic songs like ‘Time Warp’ and ‘Sweet Transvestite’ and its perfectly raunchy shock humor. —WC

94. ‘Annette’ (Leos Carax, 2021)

Leos Carax doesn’t do anything halfway. The French auteur has created some of the boldest cinematic images of the past half century, from the talking cars and sewer leprechauns of ‘Holy Motors’ to the meta introspection of his latest project ‘It’s Not Me.’ So it came as no surprise that when he set his sights on making a rock opera, the end result was something truly singular.

‘Annette’ tells the story of a puppet baby, born to a comedian known as ‘The Ape of God’ (Adam Driver) and his opera-loving wife (Marion Cotillard), who begins to establish herself as a generational singing prodigy. The saga unfolds with the messy human drama (and yes, occasional plotholes) you’d expect from a traditional opera, and Driver and Cotillard sing their hearts out through a score composed by indie rock icons Sparks. It’s the kind of imperfect expressionism that easily could have been a mess in the hands of a lesser director, but Carax’s bold style turns ‘Annette’ into the kind of spectacle that’s impossible to look away from. —CZ

93. ‘Devdas’ (Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2002)

We can’t discuss movie musicals without paying credit where it’s due to Indian cinema, even at the risk of opening a Pandora’s Box of Bollywood Blurbs. But if we’re going to talk on-screen opulence, larger-than-life emotions, music and choreography that will leave the audience awestruck, then look no further than ‘Devdas.’

Based on the novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Devdas’ tells the tragic story of its eponymous hero (Shah Rukh Khan), a young man from a rich Bengali family whose parents reject the marriage offer from his childhood sweetheart Paro (Aishwarya Rai). A devastated Devdas drowns his sorrows in alcohol, and in the company of the caring courtesan Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit), while Paro copes with the distance between them and a new life she never wanted.

‘Devdas’ stars three Hindi film megastars in their heyday, but its movie musical sorcery derives primarily from the extraordinary dance talents of Dixit and Rai, sharing the screen for the first time. Under the direction of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, known for his elaborate sets and massive song-and-dance numbers, they deliver hit after hit — from Paro’s song of yearning (‘Silsila Yeh Chaahat Ka’) to Chandramukhi’s introduction (‘Kahe Chhed Mohe’) to an extravagant Durga Puja duet (‘Dola Re Dola’). Do yourself a favor and watch it on the biggest screen possible (and splurge for the HD option if buying or renting online). —PK

92. ‘Dreamgirls’ (Bill Condon, 2006)

At its best, a well-timed movie adaptation can bring renewed interest to a beloved musical that might otherwise have faded into Broadway history. Released in 2006, ‘Dreamgirls’ succeeded in updating the 1981 Broadway show for contemporary audiences while honoring the powerhouse performances that made it a hit in the first place.

Inspired by all-women R&B groups like ‘The Supremes,’ ‘Dreamgirls’ follows a fictional group called ‘The Dreams’ on the emotional roller coaster ride of humble beginnings to super stardom. Original Broadway stars Jennifer Holliday, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Loretta Devine were replaced by Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, and Anika Noni Rose for the movie; though no one can rival Holliday’s star-making tour-de-force performance of the show’s hit number, ‘And I’m Telling You (I’m Not Going),’ Hudson did her predecessor proud, proving herself a formidable dramatic performer and winning an Oscar to prove it. ‘Dreamgirls’ is also one of Beyonce’s best (and only) serious acting roles, making it a rare and precious gem in the queen’s untouchable crown. —JD

91. ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (George Sidney, 1964)

To watch ‘Viva Las Vegas’ is to watch two people falling in love. Sure, Lucky and Rusty spend the movie falling for one another, but we’re also watching Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret fall in love in real-time. Their relationship didn’t work out, but we got this glorious, nutty movie out of it, about a race car driver, a diving instructor, a talent show, and an auto race. Out of all his color films, Presley comes the closest to being a bona fide movie star here, goosed into life by Ann-Margert’s wry delivery and uninhibited dance moves. (Her pelvis moves more than his, if you can believe it.) And the songs are memorable, from their duet (‘The Lady Loves Me’) to the title song to Ann-Margret’s two solos, one a paean to rich older men and the other a one-shot in which she laments that, as hot as she is, she can never compete with a race car. It’s all sublimely silly and deeply charming. —MP

90. ‘Seven Brides For Seven Brothers’ (Stanley Donen, 1954)

Produced during the heyday of the MGM musical, ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ takes a tricky premise — in which a clan of backwoods ruffians abduct and detain their potential mates — and turns it into a one-of-a-kind spectacle. Howard Keel plays a rugged Oregon mountain man, who woos and wins the pretty, practical townswoman Milly (Jane Powell). In turn, she trains her new husband’s six brothers to be more civilized. When the boys’ plans to enchant the local ladies goes awry, they resort to kidnapping. Yes, it sounds alarming. But the movie treats the scheme less like a serious crime and more like the stuff of fairy tales, with the ultimate lesson being that women hold the power to make men behave. Choreographer Michael Kidd and director Stanley Donen take full advantage of the CinemaScope frame, filling the screen with colorful costumes and elaborate dance sequences, cued to the rhythms of hard work and country living. —NM

89. ‘Mary Poppins’ (Robert Stevenson, 1964)

During an eight-month period in the mid-’60s, Julie Andrews appeared onscreen twice as iconic, Best Actress-nominated, singing-and-dancing nannies. She won in 1965 for her winning performance as a no-nonsense enchantress summoned to Edwardian London by a willful brother and sister. Mary’s preferred mode of transportation is umbrella, her carpetbag carries a room’s worth of furniture, and she enjoys tea parties on the ceiling. With the children in tow, she befriends eccentric chimney sweep Bert (Dick van Dyke), and the two are unbearably charming whenever they’re together.

The film is delightfully quirky, unexpectedly deep, and not nearly as saccharine as its marketing would have you believe. Directed by Robert Stevenson, ‘Mary Poppins’ was nominated for 13 Oscars — more than any Disney film to date — and also won Walt Disney the only Best Picture honor for the studio during his lifetime. Needless to say, the 2018 sequel did not live up to that legacy. —JM

88. ‘Cry Baby’ (John Waters, 1990)

Writer-director John Waters made his studio filmmaking debut with this musical comedy for Universal, a love letter to the juvenile delinquent films of his youth. Johnny Depp makes his debut as a leading man (after supporting roles in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Platoon’) in the title role of Wade ‘Cry-Baby’ Walker, a young punk who joins forces with the ‘square’ Allison (Amy Locane) to upend the mores of their uptight Baltimore town. As is typical of Waters, a great deal of the film’s appeal comes from the supporting cast — in this case an eclectic ensemble that includes Iggy Pop, Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, Willem Dafoe, Troy Donahue, and Joe Dallesandro, among many others — though the silly, buoyant musical numbers provide equal appeal. The songs are a nice mix of 1950s hits and originals meant to sound like 1950s hits, all overseen by musical director Dave Alvin of The Blasters. —JH

87. ‘A Star Is Born’ (Bradley Cooper, 2018)

Every generation gets the ‘Star Is Born’ version they deserve, but after nearly a decade spent in development hell and cycling through an enviable array of attached talent (Clint Eastwood and Beyonce, Christian Bale and Jennifer Lopez, the combinations were as endless as they were fascinating), it didn’t seem as if the Millennials and the Gen Z-ers and the Zoomers were ever going to get theirs. And then came…Bradley Cooper?

The lauded actor (and also voice of a cartoon superhero raccoon) pulled out all the stops for his directorial debut, not just slipping inside his rough-and-tumble Jackson Maine, but turning that dedication toward every facet of the feature itself. He hired Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott. He sang all his own songs and made them sound good alongside Gaga’s formidable pipes. Mostly, he found new levels of cinematic craftsmanship and honest heartbreak in a story that had been engineered to do just that, repeatedly.

The film pulled in eight nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Gaga, who ultimately won for Best Original Song), and Best Supporting Actor (Elliott). It was a box office smash and proof positive of Cooper’s directing chops and Gaga’s acting cred, but all that splashy stuff aside, what makes Cooper’s ‘Star’ such a standout are the elements that go beyond box office take and award accolades: the songs and the emotion.

From the spine-tingling chills of Gaga’s raw ‘aww—awww—awwwwww!!!!’ to kick off ‘Shallow’ to the heart-rending final song a distraught Gaga sings to a crowd of assembled peers, the film conceives of a wholly realized musical world for its inhabitants in which they work out what’s happening to them. But the film also lives and dies by the smaller moments, a glimpse from Gaga at Cooper during their first meeting, a barely concealed grimace from Elliott during his last meeting with Cooper, a lovingly prepared last meal. Life might not always be worth singing about, but ‘A Star Is Born’ bridges the gaps between each note, finding music even in the silence. —KE

86. ‘Topsy-Turvy’ (Mike Leigh, 1999)

Coming off small-scale domestic dramas like ‘Life Is Sweet’ and ‘Secrets & Lies,’ it may have seemed odd for British filmmaker Mike Leigh to take on a massive period piece about the making of Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘The Mikado,’ but the attention to detail given in ‘Topsy-Turvy,’ from plotting to costumes, proves why Leigh was exactly the man for the job. Drawing composer Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) and dramatist W.S. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) as the quintessential creative partnership — one indulgent and vainglorious, capable of tapping into the drama only music can provide, the other manic and anxiety-prone, finding wit and inspiration as a way of coping with the frustrations of real life — Leigh builds a tapestry of the Victorian Era’s theatrical community and all the drama that unfolds both on and off stage.

After a lukewarm response to their last few shows, longtime professional partners Gilbert and Sullivan are ready to part ways and pursue solo ventures, but when an idea strikes that draws both of their excitement, they can’t help but hold hands into the breach once more, if for no other reason than to prove they’ve still got it. Interspersed with musical scenes from ‘The Mikado’ and some of their other works, ‘Topsy-Turvy’ dives deep into how the sausage gets made, exploring everything from the business side of art to the emotional whirlwind of workshopping an unfinished piece of work. —HR

85. ‘Lagaan’ (Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001)

The rousing sports melodrama ‘Lagaan’ stars Aamir Khan as Bhuvan, a rebellious young man in a late 19th century Indian farming village, where a prolonged drought has made it difficult to pay the levies demanded by the occupying British army. When Bhuvan crosses a cruel military officer, he ends up getting his whole village involved in a wager, gambling their tax bill on whether they can beat the English at cricket. Writer-director Ashutosh Gowariker develops the underdogs-vs-overlords plot assuredly, dropping an appealing ensemble of stock heroes and villains into a story packed with political intrigue, romantic triangles, and the tension of a high-stakes, three-day cricket match. The Bollywood musical numbers are thrilling too. When the villagers sing in praise of the changing weather or the mysteries of love, the lively tempos and spirited voices provide this historical epic with moments of human-scaled joy. —NM

84. ‘On an Island with You’ (Richard Thorpe, 1948)

No respectable musicals list should be without a swimming musical, a wildly popular MGM creation of the 1940s and ‘50s that had its roots in various aquacade live shows that were popular in the U.S. dating to the early 1900s. One of the originators of the watery spectacles, swimming star Annette Kellerman, starred on Broadway in 1911 in an aquacade called ‘Undine,”’a reimagining of which became Christian Petzold’s 2021 film of the same name.

Other briny stars followed, including Olympian Eleanor Holm. But the swimming musical only truly came to life on the big screen because of Esther Williams, an Olympic swimmer wannabe who missed the Games when they were canceled on account of World War II, and signed to MGM instead to launch a series of her own water-logged musical extravaganzas.

Which one is the best? There’s Williams’ poignant Kellerman biopic ‘Million Dollar Mermaid,’ the dopey (but hilarious) ‘Neptune’s Daughter,’ and the sexy as hell ‘Thrill of a Romance.’ But for our money, ‘On an Island With You’ is the most glorious display of how these films epitomized their time.

The plot concerns a Navy lieutenant (Peter Lawford) who becomes obsessed with Williams’ movie star character after she gives him a kiss during a WWII USO show, and kidnaps her in an attempt to prove his love. Yep: ‘On an Island With You’ is the squeaky-clean MGM musical version of Almodovar’s ‘Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’

It’s as problematic as it sounds, but you’re not thinking about that while such an extraordinary parade of images floats before you, including a dream sequence where Lawford imagines himself having an underwater fight with Ricardo Montalban (who plays Williams’ fiancé). Montalban stars in several films with Williams (including the non-swimming, feminist bullfighting movie ‘Fiesta’) and his magnetism in these films is profound. Sex is on display in MGM’s swimming musicals, despite the veneer of wholesomeness, in a way unique for Old Hollywood. And Williams herself was a trailblazer: pioneer of waterproof makeup and form-fitting swimwear, ‘sporty chic’ begins with her. —CB

83. ‘The Wayward Cloud’ (Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)

Tsai Ming-liang is best known as a master of slow cinema, making films like ‘Goodbye, Dragon Inn’ and ‘Days’ that explore potent feelings of lonlieness and pain through silence and meditative, patient filmmaking. There’s some of that there in ‘The Wayward Cloud,’ but the film peppers its storyline with extravegant musical numbers representing the inner mind of its leads. A sequel to the 2001 film ‘What Time is It Here?,’ the film sees the lovers of that film (Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Shiang-chyi) reunite as a water shortage in Taiwan has most of the populace drinking watermelon juice instead. Lee’s Hsiao-kang is now a pornographic actor, and the film mixes its music with explicit sex that never quite seems as romantic as the vibrant dances. It’s a baffling yet frequently moving spectacle. —WC

82. ‘My Fair Lady’ (George Cukor, 1964)

Eliza Doolittle is an undoubtedly iconic Audrey Hepburn role. The charming flower seller with a Cockney accent perfectly captures Hepburn’s knack for performing dreamy-yet-quirky characters; plus, she sings the stupidly delightful ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ among other classic numbers.

Still, casting Hepburn over Julie Andrews, who originated the role for Lerner & Loewe’s ‘My Fair Lady’ on Broadway, remains a mysterious sort of fork-in-the-road choice for director George Cukor. Sure, Cukor won the Oscar for Best Director, and Rex Harrison, who played opposite Andrews on stage, took home Best Actor for his second stint as Professor Henry Higgins. But even now, seeing Cukor’s hard-earned cinematic skills (he made more than thirty films over his career) in every finishing flourish of ‘My Fair Lady’ makes you wonder what he and Andrews could have done if studios hadn’t deemed her not famous enough.

That said, Hepburn is fearlessly fabulous here, hitting every staccato note and pointed toe with unwavering energy. Rewatching this slice of movie musical history, which boasts exquisite technical prowess but is also just really freaking fun, is made better knowing Harrison thanked his plural ‘fair ladies’ in front of the Academy. —AF

81. ‘The Lion King’ (Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, 1994)

If Disney’s photoreal remake of ‘The Lion King’ rankled some viewers even more than the studio’s other recent retreads, it’s probably because the original still holds up as the best animated musical ever made. A clever riff on ‘Hamlet’ that adds in the one thing that was always missing from Shakespeare’s play (a deranged hyena voiced by Whoopi Goldberg), the Sahara-set coming-of-age tale steered clear of clichéd romance to make it relatable to generations of kids and their parents alike.

The staging brilliantly echoes the classic Hollywood musicals that paved the way for it, with the Busby Berkeley nod in ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ perhaps being the most spectacular illustration. In addition to one of the better Disney scores (courtesy of Hans Zimmer), the film also boasts several classic songs, including Elton John and Tim Rice’s Oscar-winning ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight.’

‘The Lion King’ also claimed three Grammys and ushered in a revolutionary Broadway splendor; Julie Taymor became an instant legend as the first woman to accept a Tony Award for directing a musical on the Great White Way. Somewhere in the stars above, Mustafa is surely proud of the long shadow cast by his iconic son. —JM

80. ‘Grease’ (1978)

The highest-grossing musical film for decades, Randal Kleiser’s film version of ‘Grease’ is, depending on who you are asking, a problematic bit of shmaltz or a stone-cold classic. Yet what absolutely nobody, even its most ardent haters, could argue against is the fact that Kleiser — along with screenwriter Bronté Woodard and co-producer Allan Carr — massively improved on the flawed original musical while transitioning it to screen. Several of the less inspired musical numbers were thrown out, while many absolutely iconic songs — the title track, ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You,’ ‘Sandy,’ and the eternal bop ‘You’re the One That I Want’ — were added. The tonal murkiness of the original, edgier production was also thrown away in favor of a sunnier, less complicated tone more fitting for the nostalgic love story between transfer student Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and bad boy greaser Danny (John Travolta). The result isn’t exactly a great masterpiece. Still, it’s iconic for a reason, an endlessly quotable and constantly entertaining blast of ’50s style that always keeps its tongue far enough in its cheek that some of the more sexist elements don’t rankle too badly. It helps that the movie has true starpower in Travolta and Newton-John’s career-defining performances, and especially in Stockard Channing’s scene-stealing mean girl performance as Pink Ladies leader Rizzo. With actors this good, you won’t care that the teens look like they’re in their 30s. —WC

79. ‘Tokyo Tribe’ (Sono Sion, 2014)

An epic, gaga, and relentlessly ultra-violent Japanese rap opera about the zero-sum gang war that erupts after — spoiler alert — someone makes a big deal about a small penis, Sono Sion’s ‘Tokyo Tribe’ is… well, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Deranged even by the standards of someone who once made a four-hour movie about an apocalyptic cult of upskirt photographers, this-one-of-a-kind extravaganza is teeming with memorable characters, incredible fight scenes, and at least one monster hook that’s strong enough to hold the whole thing together (‘Tokyo Tribe / never ever die!’).

Sono has been dogged by accusations of casual misogyny, and it can be hard to shake the feeling that he’s having his cake and eating it too when it comes to his gonzo satirization of male insecurities. But ‘Tokyo Tribe’ always returns to a Caligulan remix of overcompensation, and it saves all of its most scathing verses for the dicks who fuck everything up. Some people might not be able to feel the beat, while others will be ready to declare their eternal allegiance to Sono by the end of the dazzling first shot. Love it or hate it, there’s nothing else like it. —DE

78. ‘Cabin in the Sky’ (Vincente Minnelli, 1943) 

Hollywood had made all-Black films before — check out King Vidor’s 1929 classic ‘Hallelujah’ — but it wasn’t until World War II that the industry took a serious (if inconsistent) interest in cultivating a Black audience. In fact, it was partly a government-mandated imperative: Black recruits were needed for the Armed Forces, and the military decided that it was important for Black Americans to feel like they were included fully in the country’s fight against fascism.

That effort paved the way for ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ Vincente Minnelli’s adaptation of a successful 1940 Vernon Duke/John Latouche stage musical about a heavenly battle for the soul of a sinner (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) who’s torn between his wife (Ethel Waters) and a temptress (Lena Horne). Though the film had a white creative team behind the camera, there’s not a white person in sight onscreen, and ‘Cabin in the Sky’ finds palpable joy in the sights and sounds of incredible Black performers being showcased by Hollywood’s greatest movie studio.

The plot has echoes of Spencer Williams’ ‘The Blood of Jesus’ and serves as a framework to show off some of the era’s most luminous talent: Duke Ellington and, of course, Waters, with her tremulous warble of a voice putting a definitive stamp on stone-cold classics ‘Taking a Chance on Love’ and ‘Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe.’

Some unfortunate stereotypes are still there, but the takeaway from ‘Cabin in the Sky’ is that this could have been the start of a new, more inclusive Hollywood. Instead, it was a spectacular one-off. MGM shelved the idea of making all-Black movies as soon as the government rescinded its request, and the studio never gave Horne another leading role, instead plugging her into cameo scenes that could be easily cut when her films played in the South. —CB 

77. ‘Las Cosas del Querer’ (Jaime Chávarri, 1989)

‘We will never see each other again. The three of us know it. I can’t live in this damn country anymore.’ Jaime Chávarri’s under-seen but readily available (to rent on YouTube)’“Las Cosas del Querer’ — ‘The Things of Love’ — might be a romantic film about the spirit of camaraderie and the power of a shared artistic vision, but it isn’t shy about the dark veil that can fall over a country during its darkest moments.

Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the movie chronicles the lopsided friendship that develops between a gay singer Mario (Manuel Bandera), his straight crush (Angel de Andres Lopez), and the beautiful folk singer who holds them all together (Angela Molina) through the morass of Francoism.

From the start, Chávarri creates an impenetrable sense that the world is working against these characters, even as they’re celebrated by local audiences for revitalizing war-ravaged communities with their music. For all of the joy that this trio sparks in each other and the people for whom they perform their Andalusian hits, the free country that Mario and his friends sing about bears little resemblance to the fascistic nightmare that foments around them. —DE

76. ‘Funny Face’ (Stanley Donen, 1957) 

Give Fred Astaire credit for keeping up with the times. In ‘Silk Stockings,’ he lampooned the movies’ efforts to maintain pace with TV, and danced to a bit of rock ‘n’ roll — punching his iconic top hat to symbolically retire it. But ‘Funny Face’ remains the greater of the two films he made in 1957, a masterpiece for which he partnered again with genre trailblazer Stanley Donen to deliver a hilarious satire of the culture at large.

Astaire plays a loutish photographer for a fashion magazine who wants to co-opt Greenwich Village beatnik life for his next spread. That means seeking models who can ‘think as well as they look.’ Who better to fit that description than bookstore clerk Audrey Hepburn? She’s an adherent of a new proto-hippie philosophical movement called ’empathicalism.’

Style streaks through every frame of ‘Funny Face.’ Donen tried to replicate fashion photography in cinematic terms: bold colors often appear against white backdrops, so you get the look of a Pop Art magazine spread, hammered home with a frequent use of freeze frame. One musical number even takes place in a photographer’s dark room.

But there’s a critical take here, a view that style always has a pricepoint, and even a nouvelle philosophy movement like ’empathicalism’ is just another brand for sale. So it’s no wonder this movie — a critique of how everything can be commodified — has been commodified itself in an infamous Gap commercial for the brand’s ‘skinny pant.’ —CB

75. ‘In the Heights’ (Jon M. Chu, 2021)

A full-throated celebration of the diverse Latinx community that’s been the lifeblood of Washington Heights since the white flight of the 1960s, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other Broadway mega-hit ‘In the Heights’ paved the way for ‘Hamilton’ by transposing hip-hop, salsa, merengue, and other decidedly non-white sounds into a cadence that would appeal to Broadway audiences.

In hindsight, a movie adaptation seems like a slam dunk, but eyebrows were raised by when it was announced that Miranda’s personal ode to an under-represented community was being turned into a massive summer blockbuster by a filmmaker whose idea of visibility is simply making everyone larger than life. That approach wasn’t available to Jon M. Chu here, so he looked for the spectacle inside the stuff of everyday New York hustle, and — as usual — he found it through movement.

‘In the Heights’ is a portrait of ‘a people on the move,’ and Chu illustrates that idea as literally as possible, not only by channeling it through Christopher Scott’s propulsive choreography but also by physicalizing the inter-generational rhythms of immigrant identity.

Even on its static Broadway set — shaken to life every night and twice on Sunday like a snow globe in a heatwave — ‘In the Heights’ was animated by its fevered insistence that home is something people take with them wherever they go. By cracking that snow globe open and watching it spill onto the actual streets of Washington Heights, Chu has created a film that makes you feel like its characters are dreaming with their eyes open. And while there may be no Cassiopeia in Washington Heights, a star is born in this movie every time someone appears onscreen; whatever the future holds for the likes of Anthony Ramos, Melissa Barrera, and Corey Hawkins, nothing will ever dim the memory of the instant classic that brought them all together. —DE

74. ‘Sing Street’ (John Carney, 2016)

Continuing off his success with ‘Once’ and ‘Begin Again,’ John Carney crafted yet another musical entry, this time reflecting his Irish youth and the tunes that shaped him. The film follows a group of teenagers growing up in inner-city Dublin in 1985 who form what they call a ‘futurist’ band that takes inspiration from groups like The Cure, Duran Duran, The Clash, and more. Compared with their strict, conventional environment, the band and its members represent a big middle finger to the status quo, crafting new tunes for a new era. As with all great coming-of-age stories, ‘Sing Street’ aims to show that no matter your current circumstance, you can always change the tune and chart your own course. —HR

73. ‘Hairspray’ (Adam Shankman, 2007)

It’s not a surprise that ‘Hairspray’ was the John Waters movie to get a Broadway stage adaptation; as intriguing as a ‘Pink Flamingos’ musical would be, the more palatable and accessible ‘Hairspray’ felt somewhat incomplete without the cast breaking out into song, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s catchy, ’60 style tunes slot effortlessly into Tracy Turnblad’s (Nikki Blosky) journey to win the Miss Teenage Hairspray competition on the Corny Collins Show. The stage version won eight Tony Awards in 2002, and in 2007 it received a jubilant and sweet-hearted film version directed by Adam Shankman.  

Energetic and delightfully silly, the movie musical version of “Hairspray” is perhaps the definitive version of the story, with luscious production numbers that throwback to an earlier age of the genre, and tunes like ‘You Can’t Stop the Beat’ you can’t get out of your head. But it particularly succeeds thanks to the pitch-perfect casting of the various characters: Zac Efron is in his prime heartthrob years is the perfect Link, James Marsden lends his 900 gigawatt smile to Corny Collins, and John Travolta returns to the musical genre as Tracy’s mother Edna, doing justice to the original film’s Divine in a performance that’s simultaneously hilarious and shockingly sincere. —WC

72. ‘The Threepenny Opera’ (G. W. Pabst, 1931)

Since its premiere in 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s satire of capitalism and love has been adapted, rearranged, and revised based on who is directing it. In this case, it’s G.W. Pabst bringing to life the sprawling saga of Mackie and Polly and Jenny and all the rest of the motley crew of sinners and the sanctimonious. Brecht quit and Weill got fired, but Pabst’s movie is an indelible production that offers two major pluses: It’s a fascinating glimpse into what German musicals could have been if the film industry had been allowed to flourish, and it preserves original star Lotte Lenya’s performance as Jenny, making the song ‘Pirate Jenny’ hers for all time. Thought lost after the Nazis destroyed almost all prints, the movie (like the musical itself) managed to survive to continue unsettling and inspiring audiences. —MP

71. ‘Sholay’ (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)

‘Sholay’ epitomizes the mainstream Hindi musical, from its meticulous blend of tones (a style dubbed ‘the masala film’) to its wide range of influences, both subtle and overt. It’s a work of populist cinema whose every melody, lyric and spoken word is inescapably iconic in the Indian zeitgeist, with its dialogue track having been sold on shelves alongside its music shortly after release. The film’s success is the stuff of legend — it famously played in one Mumbai theatre for nearly six years — and not without good reason.

Taking after ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and Bollywood Dacoit Westerns like ‘Khotay Sikkay’ and ‘Mera Gaon Mera Desh,’ the film, penned by legendary screenwriting duo Salim-Javed, follows petty criminals Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra), who are hired to protect a small village by the policeman who once put them away, Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar). Every one of the film’s characters makes an immediate impact, from the maniacal, scenery-chewing villain Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), to Veeru’s feisty, fast-talking love interest Basanti (Hema Malini), to Thakur’s reserved daughter-in-law Radha (Jaya Bhaduri), to the bumbling, Chaplin-inspired Jailor (Asrani) charged with keeping Jai and Veeru behind bars.

Like its story and visual cues, the film’s music by R.D. Burman (son of ‘Pyaasa’ composer S.D. Burman) may not be entirely original — the item number ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba’ riffs heavily on Greek singer Demis Roussos’ ‘Say You Love Me’ — but the result is far more affecting than a mere series of knockoffs. From its era-defining musical bromance (‘Yeh Dosti’) to Basanti’s defiant dance on broken glass to save Veeru’s life (‘Jab Tak Hain Jaan’), ‘Sholay’ is a riveting remix of Spaghetti Western and Hindi musical melodrama that transcends the bounds of genre. —SA

70. ‘Donkey Skin’ (Jacques Demy, 1970)

French cinema has never shied away from the sinister undercurrent that runs beneath even the most innocent-seeming fairy tales — just take a gander at the world of difference between Jean Cocteau and Walt Disney’s respective takes on ‘Beauty and the Beast’ — but Jacques Demy’s surreal ‘Donkey Skin’ is still unique for how wantonly it combines taboo eroticism with the high fantasy of ‘happily ever after’ storytelling.

Regular Demy muse Catherine Deneuve stars as a medieval princess who, upon finding herself the subject of her newly widowed father’s sexual attention, flees the kingdom while draped in the skin of a magic donkey that sweats priceless jewels (we’ve all been there). What happens next is something of a darkly enchanted cross between ‘Cinderella’ and ‘The Revenant,’ as Deneuve spends the rest of the movie posing as a peasant with the ass’ carcass hanging off of her head like a curse disguised as a costume.

Constantly referencing Cocteau’s masterpiece (down to the Beast himself Jean Marais reprising the role of a twisted royal) while feigning an innocence that only makes its underlying perversion seem all the more pronounced, ‘Donkey Skin’ delivers all of its lilting music like a siren luring you deeper into a place where beauty and sin inhabit each other like the voices of a harmony; it makes you sing along to the sound of your own crawling skin, even as you trust that Demy won’t follow through on the film’s creepiest threats. A good fairy tale is scary and seductive in equal measure, and this remains one of the very best. —DE

69. ‘The Pirate’ (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)

Gene Kelly and Judy Garland are two of the great musical stars, open-hearted performers who were able to convey so much joy and sorrow through song and dance. Their best collaboration together is Vincente Minnelli’s “The Pirate,” a soaring romance set in an idyllic version of the Caribbean. Garland is young, rich Manuela, who fantasizes about being swept away by the fabled dark pirate captain Macoco. Before her wedding to her town’s mayor, she encounters Kelly’s womanizing circus performer Serafin, who instantly falls head over heels in love and passes himself off as Macoco to win her over. Romance founded on trickery and deceit is always a dicey proposition, but ‘The Pirate’ overcomes its potentially gross premise thanks to the dazzling performances from Kelly and Garland, whose chemistry burns through the screen. Kelly is alternatively dashing and foppish as the in-over-his-head Serafin, and brings energy and charm to ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ predecessor ‘Be a Clown.’ Garland is even better, using her sharp, soulful voice in songs like ‘Mack the Black’ to sell the sizzling romantic fantasy. —WC

68. ‘Street Angel’ (Yuan Muzhi, 1937)

One of the earliest sound films in Chinese cinema and a classic of the country, ‘Street Angel’ is a blend of romantic drama, slapstick comedy, and leftwing Chinese messaging. Painting a vibrant picture of life in the lower-class of Shanghai, the film follows the love story between a trumpet player (Zhao Dan) and a teahouse songstress (Zhou Xuan), while a cast of criminals, musicians, renters, business owners, and other working-class attempt to scrape by day after day. Two songs — ‘Song of the Seasons’ and especially ‘The Wandering Songstress’ — became classic standards in the country. In the film, sung by Xuan, they’re powerfully emotional moments that bring the film’s stirring portrait of life on China’s margins together in exquisite fashion. —WC

67. ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ (Henry Selick, 1993)

Leave it to Tim Burton to create a movie that is both a Halloween and a Christmas classic. But how could this charming tale of Halloween Town citizens’ obsession with stretching their muscles for Christmas be anything but? Macabre and touching without ever approaching maudlin, this tale of Jack Skellington’s attempts to bring a love of Christmas to his horrifying friends and neighbors — before taking over the holiday for themselves — is aided immeasurably by the stop-motion animation that renders it more charming than creepy. And the songs somehow combine the catchy novelty of seasonal classics with musical theater pizazz, making ‘This Is Halloween’ and ‘Oogie Boogie’s Song’ instant favorites. —MP

66. ‘Stormy Weather’ (Andrew L. Stone, 1943)

Opening three months after MGM’s all-Black musical ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ 20th Century Fox’s attempt at capturing that same audience falls short of its predecessor as a narrative. This story, the tale of a Black ex-soldier (Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson) rising to the top of showbiz in the years after World War I, is pretty much just a thin framework for showcasing musical numbers.

But what musical numbers! Far more dazzling than those in ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ these set pieces offer as much for the eyes as the ears: There’s the title song, sung by Lena Horne — loaned out by MGM after her one and only starring role for Leo the Lion in ‘Cabin’ — rendered with as much atmospheric spectacle as you can imagine. There are performances by Fats Waller (including his signature ‘Ain’t Misbehavin”) and Cab Calloway.

And finally, to close out the movie, you’ve got one of the most spellbinding routines ever put on film. Just minutes before the film ends, Harold and Fayard Nicholas appear in their tuxedos and put on a dance number to ‘Jumpin’ Jive’ unlike anything else you could see in Hollywood. Like whirling dervishes by way of acrobats by way of tap dancers, they don’t just hoof, they twirl, do splits, front flips, and back flips too. Precision and joy have seldom gone hand in hand with such grace.

When Fayard Nicholas died in 2006, the Associated Press noted that Fred Astaire declared the Nicholas Brothers’ set piece here ‘the greatest movie musical number he’d ever seen.’ Just look at the way they’re able to come out of a split without using their hands! Who else can do that? The Nicholas Brothers alone would have enshrined ‘Stormy Weather’ as a classic of its genre. —CB 

65. ‘The Pajama Game’ (1957)

A classic feel-good dance musical, ‘The Pajama Game’ is just as enchanting onscreen as it was on the Broadway stage. There’s a lot of continuity in terms of the creative team between the original 1954 stage version and the 1957 adaptation — George Abbott, who wrote the original musical’s book with Richard Bissell, returned to direct alongside Stanley Donen, and most of the Broadway cast returned to reprise their roles. The most notable exception is Janis Page, who was replaced in the role of firebrand union worker Babe by Doris Day. Thankfully, Day fits seamlessly in with the rest of the cast, and her sparring relationship with pajama factory superintendent John Raitt is a treat to watch. For all that the movie sometimes feels overly stagey, the extravagant production design and Day’s movie star presence make its lighthearted romp feel unquestionably cinematic. That said, the actual star of ‘The Pajama Game’ has and will always be Bob Fosse’s early career choreography, which still feels sharp and decidedly modern today. —WC

64. ‘The Gang’s All Here’ (Busby Berkeley, 1943)

There’s Busby Berkeley musical numbers where you think you know what you’re getting; but then there’s Carmen Miranda taking control of a Busby Berkeley musical number while wearing a giant strawberry and being somehow more charismatic and more iconic than the entire Freed Unit. ‘The Gang’s All Here’ is delightfully unhinged for a film that allegedly purports to be about a soldier’s fun and romantic night out on the town in the Year of Our Lord 1943. The staying power of ‘The Gang’s All Here’ is in its ability to be more than what it says on the tin, visually, and with a surprisingly bittersweet emotional valence, too. Both are cemented by the last 15 or so minutes of the film, which go to a place that, even if we described it, has to been seen to truly be believed.  —SS

63. ‘Le Million’ (René Clair, 1931)

One of the earliest classic musicals, both in France and worldwide, ‘Le Million’ paved the way for the art form to develop and for sound to be used not as a gimmick but as a potent tool for storytelling. The story of an artist searching desperately for a missing lottery ticket after his creditors came to collect, it’s funny and lively, mixing its musical numbers with a potent screwball sensibility that proved influential to filmmakers like the Marx Brothers. In a review, Pauline Kael described the movie as ‘René Clair at his exquisite best; no one else has ever been able to make a comedy move with such delicate, dreamlike inevitability.’ —WC

62. ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ (Mel Stuart, 1971)

Ask 100 people what the first live action movie musical they ever saw was, and ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ will be one of the most common answers. A perenial childhood favorite, the most iconic moments of Mel Stuart’s Roald Dahl adaptation — “Candy Man,” the reveal of the chocolate river, the terrifying ferry ride, the Oompa-Loompa song — have become so thoroughly embeded in the public conciousness that it’s difficult to rewatch the film with fresh eyes. But it’s a film that holds up to nostalgia; the movie’s story of five kids’ journey to visit the world’s most magical chocolate factory remains gorgeous and thrilling, with great songs and production value creating a truly genuine sense of wonder. And it’s all carried by a perfect Gene Wilder, in his most iconic role, as Willy Wonka. Playful, warm, droll, even slightly scary, he’s unforgettable, turning a cartoon into a complex and slightly unknowable human. —WC 

61. ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ (K. Asif, 1960)

While its original 4:3, mostly black-and-white version is unusually hard to find (compared to its gaudy 2004 colorization), K. Asif’s ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ remains the gold standard for Indian historical epics. A folkloric legend based on the real Mughal prince Salim — later known as the emperor Jahangir — the film follows the young emir, played by a dashing Dilip Kumar, as he falls for a young courtesan dubbed Anarkali (Madhubala), who also happens to have caught the eye of his father, Emperor Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor).

The production was tumultuous, to say the least, with filming first kicking off in 1946, but being derailed by the post-independence partition of India and Pakistan the following year. Filming would eventually restart in 1953, but would soon be followed by further delays and astronomical expenses stemming from the two-year long construction of a hall of mirrors for one of the film’s few Technicolor scenes.

However, the resultant musical number, ‘Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya’ — composed by Naushad and sung by the angelic Lata Mangeshkar — would go on to become one of the most lavish sequences in Hindi cinema, and much of the film’s nearly 200-minute runtime would match its enormous scale.

Although, despite its grandeur, the film has no dearth of intimate moments; the mellifluous black-and-white number ‘Teri Mehfil Mein,’ for instance, uses the devotional qawwali tradition to tell a subtle story of the innocent Anarkali and her scheming rival Bahar (Nigar Sultana) battling for Salim’s affection. A father-son saga writ large through opulent sets, operatic performances and spellbinding cinematography, ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ is a feast for the senses. —SA

60. ‘Victor/Victoria’ (Blake Edwards, 1982)

One of the great musicals during the genre’s relative downturn during the ’80s, ‘Victor/Victoria’ mines a lot of pleasure from placing one of the shining jewels of the art form, Julie Andrews, in a decidedly less child-friendly context than ‘Mary Poppins’ or ‘The Sound of Music.’ A remake of a transgressive 1933 German film, the movie casts Andrews as a struggling British soprano attempting to find work in 1930s Paris when she gets roped into a scheme by cabaret performer Toddy (Robert Preston), who passes her off as a man impersonating a woman and christens her Victor, becoming a new sensation in the city’s cabaret scene. Things get more complicated when Victor falls in love with Chicago mobster King Marchard (James Garner), who’s confused about his feelings for what he thinks is another man. Delightfully queer and sly in its look at gender and performance, ‘Victor/Victoria’ is also just a wildly fun musical, giving Andrews terrific numbers to interpret like now-standard ‘Le Jazz Hot.’ —WC 

59. ‘Top Hat’ (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

OK, yes: There are a couple of numbers in ‘Swing Time’ that you could argue are more graceful and visually surprising than anything going on in ‘Top Hat.’ But the sheer variety of song and dance numbers put on by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in this 1935 Mark Sandrich film are a thing to behold, as is the fact that Astaire and Rogers still bat a thousand in terms of how they compliment each other and overwhelm the simple set pieces, seeming to dance straight into our hearts. If you close your eyes and listen, Fred Astaire’s singing voice isn’t a stunner. But just look at him. Look at all the feathers on Ginger Rogers’ dress. Look at how he and Rogers echo each other as they move, and Astaire singing ‘Cheek to Cheek’ becomes maybe the most delicate, heartfelt musical number in Classic Hollywood cinema. ‘Top Hat’ has a story, but really the film follows its two masters at the peak of their powers and what they do together is simply the tops. — SS

58. ‘A Night at the Opera’ (Sam Wood, 1935)

One of the Marx Brothers’ funniest comedies, ‘A Night at the Opera’ is also a top-tier musical. The Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico) are cast as the comic friends of Ricardo and Rosa (Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle), two aspiring singers who they attempt to fix up while humiliating stuffy Italian tenor Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), who also desires Rosa’s hand in marriage. The backstage opera antics are hilarious, with several sequences like the overrun ship-cabin setpiece. But the film also pays real attention to the art of opera, including scenes from ‘I Pagliacci’ and ‘Il Trovatore’ and the original song ‘Alone,’ which trained singers Jones and Carlisle crush with ease. Much like ‘Looney Tunes,’ ‘A Night at the Opera’ recognizes that the contrast between the melodrama of opera and the lunacy of comedy only makes the latter funnier. —WC

57. ‘The Muppet Movie’ (James Frawley, 1979)

The Muppet canon is host to many musical favorites, from Christmas classic ‘Muppet Christmas Carol’ to the utter zany delight of ‘The Great Muppet Caper.’ But all exist in the shadow of ‘The Muppet Movie,’ an earnest, funny delight that remains undefeated among the Henson creations’ filmography to this day. Following Kermit as he leaves his swamp home in Florida to pursue an entertainment career in Los Angeles, the film presents the origin story for the iconic ‘The Muppet Show’ as a rock-rolling road trip film, with killer celebrity cameos and comedy. But what really lifts the movie above the ones that followed is its undefeated score of films courtesy Paul Williams, including toe-tapper ‘Moving Right Along’ and tearjerker ‘I’m Gonna Go Back There Someday.’ And we don’t even need to mention ‘The Rainbow Connection,’ a song about chasing your dreams that has transcended Muppetdom to become a standard. —WC

56. ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)

Busby Berkeley is just on a different level. Really, he’s on multiple levels at once where an extremely dirty, extremely giant musical number about PDA with disembodied violins can co-exist, in the same breath, with a searing indictment of post-WWI indifference to veterans and America’s chronic and violent distain for the most vulnerable in our society that is also a giant musical number. ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ is probably most noticeable to our contemporary eyes for its pre-Hays Code abandon. Dick Powell’s pocket square is about the only thing showing refinement and restraint in Mervyn LeRoy’s backstage romp, but it’s Berkeley’s choreography for the musical number that’s the true star here. The sheer scale of them, the focus on geometric precision and editing rhythm, to say nothing of the visual gags, are all past the limit of what most imagine even big Hollywood musicals can be — for 1933 or for any other year. —SS

55. ‘Tommy’ (Ken Russell, 1975)

Nobody did maximalist cinema like Ken Russell — and the proof is in the baked beans. What other auteur would bring The Who’s concept rock album about a “deaf, dumb, and blind” pinball champion to life in such a gratifyingly unhinged way? Forget the infamous cascade of baked beans that engulfs Ann-Margret as Tommy’s mother; who could forget the sharp vignettes starring the era’s biggest names riffing on their images in ghoulish and grotesque ways? There’s Elton John singing “Pinball Wizard.” There’s Tina Turner belting “Acid Queen” to high heaven (and low brow). But “Tommy” is Ann-Margret’s show (she scored an Oscar nom for Best Actress). She sings, she dances, she wears more eyeliner than Elizabeth Taylor, and she marries show biz professionalism with high-camp, high-strung hysteria to an unforgettable degree. The movie may feel like a time capsule, but Ann-Margret is never anything less than magnetic. —MP

54. ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ (Aditya Chopra, 1995)

The Bollywood classic ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ found a massive audience not just in India but abroad, where its story of romantically entangled ‘NRIs’ (non-resident Indians) resonated broadly. Kajol plays Simran, the daughter of a traditionalist convenience store owner in London; Shah Rukh Khan plays Raj, a carefree playboy who agitates Simran when the two meet on a train trip across Europe. Inevitably they fall for each other, as Raj encourages Simran to be more adventurous and she gets him to stop treating life as one big joke. The plot is simple but the locations are spectacular and the themes ring true, as writer-director Aditya Chopra engages with the real concerns of Indians living abroad — some of whom struggle to maintain a connection to their cultural roots while surrounded by western materialism. And yes, there are boffo musical numbers: bright and bouncy and surprisingly sensual, featuring performers sporting some of the coolest fashions 1995 had to offer. —NM

53. ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951)

Three years after the artistic and commercial triumph of ‘The Red Shoes,’ the writing-producing-directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made this even bolder musical experiment, an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s fantasy opera that remains the gold standard for cinematic choreography. The performers dance not only with each other but with the camera, of which every move is impeccably timed to both the boldest flourishes and the subtlest gestures. The fact that there wasn’t a single spoken word of dialogue allowed Powell and Pressburger to, ironically, shoot this great musical as though it were a silent film; everything was done to playback, and untethered from a cumbersome blimp and sound equipment the camera was liberated to take on a life of its own. The film is a visual marvel, with its three sections — which tell the stories of each of the women who break the heart of the title poet character — given its own bold color palette. What makes the film memorable is not the pictures, however, but their seamless integration with the vocals and orchestration. —JH

52. ‘The King and I’ (Walter Lang, 1956)

A very, very liberal look at the real history of Anna Leonowens — a British writer who served as a teacher to the Siamese king Mongkut — ‘The King and I’ hasn’t aged flawlessly in its depictions of its Asian characters, even if it was progressive at its time. Still, the musical holds up as a ravishing romantic tragedy, and the film is particularly vibrant thanks to its brilliant casting. Yul Brynner, who originated the role of King Mongkut on stage, is regal and commanding, making a potentially reductive character extraordinarily complex. Deborah Kerr (whose voice was dubbed over by Marni Nixon) is also a lovely Anna, sparkling with intelligence in the role. Together, the two make for one of musical cinema’s most potent romantic duos, especially in the ‘Shall We Dance?’ sequence, filmed in a stunning wide shot that feels sweeping and truly cinematic. —WC

51. ‘Chicago’ (Rob Marshall, 2002)

Few musical masters have leapt from stage to screen with the polished panache of Rob Marshall. A Broadway dancer turned five-time Tony nominated choreographer and director, Marshall earned his first Oscar nomination for his 2002 adaptation of Kander & Ebb’s ‘Chicago.’

‘In this town, murder is a form of entertainment,’ quips Queen Latifah as the shady Matron Mama Morton, a scene-stealing alto role previously performed by Jennifer Holliday. Here the warden is speaking to accused killer Roxie Hart (a fabulously raw Renée Zellweger just hinting at what she’d do in ‘Judy’), but she might as well be breaking the fourth wall. Equipped with razor-sharp dark humor and faultless choreography, Marshall delivers the sordid tale of two Windy City murderesses (Catherine Zeta-Jones literally and figuratively kills as Velma Kelly) through his keen understanding of live audiences. More than most, this Best Picture winner meets the frenetic magic of live performance. It earned five other wins and seven more nominations from the Academy, making ‘Chicago’ one of the most awards-showered movie musicals in Hollywood history. —AF

50. ‘Pennies From Heaven’ (Herbert Ross, 1981)

‘You come out of the movies and the world’s changed,’ Steve Martin intones, and damn it if ‘Pennies From Heaven’ doesn’t prove him right. It’s a film that’s a little bit at war between its Edward Hopper-esque non-musical fantasy of the Depression and a pair of star-struck, lonely cads (Martin and an extremely game to not sing Bernadette Peters) and its musical fantasy sequences modeled on the glamor of Fred Astaire. Never the twain shall meet — until, tragically, they do. ‘Pennies From Heaven’ smartly attacks the joys and problems of escapism using the language of Hollywood musicals. Which is a high-falutin way of saying that the film, like all of us moviegoers, is in love with something that can never really love it back. But boy, Christopher Walken’s sexy tape number is maybe worth carrying that torch. —SS

49. ‘Carmen Jones’ (Otto Preminger, 1954)

Otto Preminger’s camera keeps its habitual distance, with the added oomph of Cinemascope, in ‘Carmen Jones’ and if the numbers feel at a bit of a remove, well, there is still a lot of life (and glorious Technicolor) to enjoy in this 1954 musical.  The film transposes the original Bizet opera to the WWII war effort, with the oppression of African Americans brushing up against the image of a united home front. It’s a stage for a tragic love story, to be sure, but also a case where the original operatic melodies feel surplus to requirements, especially fighting against the modernized lyrics. Performances by Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte gamely attempt to bridge the gap, and between them and the costumes and, again, the color, ‘Carmen Jones’ can still pull rank as a classic ’50s melodrama. —SS

48. ‘The Sound of Music’ (Robert Wise, 1965)

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final musical together opens with a cherubic Maria (Julie Andrews) serenading the Swiss Alps as if each peak and valley were enamored with her. Its reputation among young cinephiles may have cost it points with older ones, but they would be mistaken to discount this cinematic masterpiece simply for having a heart of gold. Lest we forget that director and producer Robert Wise edited ‘Citizen Kane,’ the hills truly do come alive under his lens; every shot is stunning.

As Maria and her merry brood march exuberantly through Vienna’s mazes and meadows in sweetly tailored drapes, the landscape vibrates off the screen to their rhythms. Andrews and Christopher Plummer brought a quiet passion to their chaste onscreen romance, proving that — just like their movie — kid-friendly doesn’t have to mean unsophisticated. —JD

47. ‘RRR’ (S. S. Rajamouli, 2022)

‘RRR’ isn’t a perfect film — as many have dissected, it contains themes of Hindu Nationalism and casteism that can’t be divorced from the story. At the same time, it truly feels like a perfect movie when you’re watching it. A high-octane dudes-rock action film mixed with a delirious musical, ‘RRR’ fictionalizes the story of real Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.), and their fight against the British Raj rule. The action is as kinetic and over-the-top as the dance numbers, while the brotherly love between the two leads makes for a touching foundation for the epic. Still, ‘RRR’ is best known now for having some of the best musical choreography in recent memory, especially in the breakout song ‘Naatu Naatu.’ —WC

46. ‘La La Land’ (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

Easily the most acclaimed movie musical since ‘Chicago’ in 2002, ‘La La Land’ wears its influences and the genre’s history proudly on its sleeve. Homages to ‘An American in Paris’ and ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ flood the story of Mia (Emma Stone) and Seb (Ryan Gosling): an aspiring actress and jazz pianist who meet and fall in love while attempting to make their dreams come true in Los Angeles. Plenty of musicals come out every year, but when ‘La La Land’ came out in 2016, it felt like a pointed message: musicals are back baby! It’s the type of thing that might feel a bit presumptuous, if it wasn’t for the fact that the film itself was so good.   

Stone and Gosling are indelible in the lead roles, channeling the type of sparkly chemistry found in classic movie musicals but reimagining it for the modern day. (Complaints about their lack of vocal prowess formed pretty much the moment the film hit theaters, but it’s hard to deny that Stone doesn’t sell the hell out of ‘Fools Who Dream.’) Chazelle’s story finds the exact right mix of romance and melancholy which makes great musicals really sing, and the numbers he stages — like the breathless highway traffic opener ‘Another Day in the Sun’ or the toe-tapping ‘A Lovely Night’— are unforgettable. And Justin Hurwitz’s score and songs, like the Oscar-winning ‘City of Stars,’ are some of the finest written for any movie this century. ‘La La Land’ often feels like its begging to be put into the musical film pantheon, but its hard to begrudge that when it so thoroughly succeeds. —WC

45. ‘Golden Eighties’ (Chantal Akerman, 1986)

The late, great Chantal Akerman — of the ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ Akermans — wasn’t exactly known for making light and frothy matinee fare, so it’s somewhat understandable that potential investors were a bit gun-shy when the Belgian auteur began fundraising for a musical in the grand tradition of MGM’s Technicolor classics at the start of the 1980s (an effort that she preserved in the documentary ‘Les Annees 80s’). Akerman was ultimately forced to pare down her vision, but ‘Golden Eighties’ is all the more sublime for its intimate scale.

A shoebox musical that’s almost entirely set within the ultra-artificial confines of a Brussels shopping mall and backdropped by the post-war dispersal of Europe’s remaining Jewry (because this is still a Chantal Akerman film, after all), “Golden Eighties” chronicles the romantic entanglements of regular people as they criss-cross into a single lovelorn knot.

A playful and capricious energy takes hold from the very first shot — a whip-pan sight gag for the ages — and only grows stronger as the girl-crazy Robert (Nicolas Tronc) fends off the affections of two beautiful hairdressers who work at the salon next to his parents’ department store, and fawns over a third. Meanwhile, his Holocaust survivor mother (Delphine Seyrig) has a chance encounter with the American soldier who fell in love with her during the war, and old feelings come bubbling up to the surface in the span of a single note. The heart wants what it wants, and nothing is better at keeping a beat.

‘Golden Eighties’ may seem gossamer thin on the surface, and even spontaneous in its casualness and organic ‘choreography’ (a lot of well-posed crowd shots and excellent use of an all-male, ultra-fashionable greek chorus), but the songs are catchy as hell, and Akerman is attuned to sea changes both large and small. Is it ever too late for poptimism to save the day? Is romance only for the young? Do we ever stop shopping for a better deal? Akerman’s musical outlier may not have become a hit, but it knows full well that a little bit of love is always good for business. —DE

44. ‘The Hole’ (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)

A wild, truly original romance, ‘The Hole’ marries musical numbers with apocalyptic storytelling to tell one of the most touching love stories in Taiwanese cinema. Tsai Ming-liang’s film is set in a Taiwan ravaged by constant rain and a strange disease that makes those who catch it crawl on the floor and crave dark, cramped places. Locked in their apartments during this odd apocalypse, two neighbors (Yang Kuei-mei and Lee Kang-sheng) on adjacent floors bicker through a small hole that forms through their floor/roof, but slowly form a connection. The absurdist humor combines with dreamlike dance sequences featuring music from the 50s pop star Grace Chang, puncturing the dreary world with luxury and grace. It’s an indefinable but wildly captivating work. —WC

43. ‘The Little Mermaid’ (John Musker and Ron Clements, 1989)

If you were someone in the 1980s who thought that Hans Christen Andersen’s short story ‘The Little Mermaid’ was too dark for an animated Disney movie, you were correct. The House of Mouse plays fast and loose with its source material, but went on to create an enchanting story about life under the sea and one spunky creature’s desire to literally rise above it. The 16-year-old Ariel (Jodi Benson), daughter of King Triton (Kenneth Mars), is obsessed with humans, the lives they lead, the objects they possess, the way the walk around on those — what do you call em? Oh, feet. Her fascination with surface life leads to an obsession with a human prince, and eventually right into the preying jaws of sea witch Ursula (Pat Carroll), who gives Ariel three days to live as a human and win over Prince Eric (Christopher Daniel Barnes).

Disney’s animation team entered a golden era with vibrant ocean visuals and an early use of motion capture to inform characters’ movement and the studios’ final film using hand-painted cel animation — but also with the Broadway-inspired soundtrack from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman which went on to win multiple Grammys, Oscars, and a Golden Globe. The audio and visual elements cohere at a different level than many musicals, with Disney having to outsource the work of drawing bubbles just so we could get a multisensory (and Oscar-winning!) banger like ‘Under the Sea.’ It’s easy to get immersed in the score and songs of ‘The Little Mermaid’ even decades later, to just close your eyes and picture Ariel’s world and the brilliant characters inhabiting it. —PK

42. ‘Purple Rain’ (Albert Magnoli, 1984)

When this rock musical hit theaters, pop culture embraced it as a multi-platform phenomenon, but how could it not? The hottest music star of the moment created and starred and performed in a semi-auto-fictional romance with a Platinum record soundtrack, which took three singles to the top of the charts and sold 25 million copies worldwide. Team Prince shot the $7.2-million feature in the Minneapolis environs that had nurtured him and his Revolution band (Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman) and pals, including scene-stealer Morris Day and The Time.

The Purple One stars as a loose version of himself, a striving multi-talented performer looking to make his way in the world, and who has to deal with struggles, both internal and external, to shoot to superstardom. It’s a familiar enough story, but backed by Prince’s own star-wattage and personal touch, ‘Purple Rain’ is still one of the most authentic, propulsive, and exciting movie musicals ever made.

The movie grossed a total $72 million around the world and landed an Oscar for Best Original Song Score. For all of the film’s shortcomings and eccentricities, it always feels like the pleading romantic anthem ‘When Doves Cry’ expressed everything that Prince wanted to say, and wrapped it up in a colorful and fantastic musical storyline to boot. —AT

41. ‘New York, New York’ (Martin Scorsese, 1977)

Let’s be honest: Martin Scorsese’s attempt at a big studio musical is a bit of a mess, but it is one of the weirdest, coolest, and most interesting messes ever made. Sandwiched between ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull,’ and fueled by equally large stacks of Hollywood money and cocaine, ‘New York, New York’ is a backstage musical about Francine Evans and Jimmy Doyle (played by Liza Minnelli and Robert DeNiro), the couple who wrote the eponymous ode to the city that never sleeps.

The soundstudio artifice becomes a playground for the director to explore if he could make his gritty, unfiltered version of the musicals of his youth; toss in some jazz, some deep-seated depression, and a storm of troubled relationships on and off-screen, and you’ve got a film that makes you reconsider both the genre and Scorsese himself from a completely different perspective. —CO

40. ‘Once’ (John Carney, 2007)

Frames frontman Glen Hansard and Czech singer-songwriter Markéta Irglová had already released one album as The Swell Season before Hansard’s old bandmate, filmmaker John Carney, approached them about turning their work (and, eventually, their own relationship) into a scrappy musical romance about a mismatched duo who find salvation in their street tunes. Perhaps that’s why the 2007 indie hit feels so intimate and real, as if Carney somehow managed to slip his camera (and a script) between two people just as they were beginning to explore how their emotions could inspire a romance and an enviable album filled with hits.

Shot over the course of just 17 days (and chronicling about half that time in actual narrative), the Indie Spirit winner and box office hit follows first-time actors Hansard and Irglová as loosely imagined versions of themselves, both singer and songwriters, struggling to make it on the streets of Dublin. When life (read: music) brings them together, they set about on a charming journey that sees both of them opening up to each other and the world around them.

While parts of the film keep things at a remove — the characters are never named, and important biographical details are slowly meted out over time, with a language barrier to boot — the chemistry between the duo, both emotionally and musically, ensures it keeps a firm hold on the audience’s heart. Rife with instant hits, like the Oscar-winning ‘Falling Slowly’ and the truly clever ‘Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy,’ it’s the sort of film that will leave you singing out joyfully after a watch, only to remember, perhaps too late, the pain of the journey there. —KE

39. ‘The Blues Brothers’ (John Landis, 1980)

When God sends you on a mission, you have no choice but to get the band back together. John Landis’ 1980 classic saw Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi adapting their sharply-dressed ‘Saturday Night Live’ characters for the big screen — and offering a timeless dose of Chicago cool that resulted in one of the city’s definitive movies. While the film might be most notable for its incredible car-chases and quotable one-liners, it also provides a musical feast for blues fans, as legends like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin show up for musical numbers. No matter how modest its ambitions might have been, ‘The Blues Brothers’ now exists as one of the best cinematic documents of the musicians who shaped 20th century blues and soul. Whether your preferred musical genre is country OR western, the film deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest musicals of the 1980s and the best movie to emerge from an ‘SNL’ sketch. —CZ

38. ‘The Legend of the Stardust Brothers’ (Tezuka Makoto, 1985)

‘We are twins / we are super strong and sexy / we are the Stardust Brothers!’

The story goes that Tezuka Makoto — son of Tezuka Osamu, the legendary manga artist behind the likes of ‘Astro Boy” and ‘Kimba the White Lion’ — met a musician named Chikada Haruo who’d written a soundtrack to a movie that didn’t exist. The year was 1985, Tezuka the younger was a 22-year-old filmmaker who was eager to step out of his father’s shadow, and ‘The Legend of the Stardust Brothers’ was waiting to burst into the hearts and minds of people around the world. That’s not exactly how things played out for a lightning-in-a-bottle musical that’s still in search of its cult (both in Japan and abroad), but watching Tezuka’s manic and relentlessly playful film today, it’s easy to imagine a future where it finds the love it deserves.

The story is the stuff of classic backstage musicals, albeit with a glam rockabilly twist that wouldn’t be out of place on a Sunday afternoon in Yoyogi Park. Punk rebel Kan and new-waver Shingo are bitter rivals who reluctantly agree to join forces after an evil music executive — backlit in his tower office like an anime villain — orders them to Voltron together into a synth-driven supergroup. Together with their number one fan, Kan and Shingo rocket to the moon and back in a wild journey that reimagines the typical rise-and-fall saga with the ‘anything goes’ dementedness of a Sono Sion movie.

From the ear worm of ‘London Boots’ to the greatest ‘becoming an overnight sensation’ montage in musical history and a cast that includes cameo appearances by the likes of ‘Tokyo Sonata’ director Kurosawa Kiyoshi and ‘Lupin the 3rd’ creator Monkey Punch, ‘The Legend of the Stardust Brothers’ is a breathless eruption of repressed artistic energy that captures the excess of ’80s Japan as it winningly enshrines one of the most glorious bands that never was. —DE

37. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ (Howard Hawks, 1953)

Howard Hawks’ effervescent technicolor musical is most iconic for that saucy little number where Marilyn Monroe’s pure-hearted gold-digger Lorelei sings about how diamonds are a girl’s best friend surrounded by a gaggle of gentlemen callers. And while that defining image, copied decades later by stars like Madonna and Kylie Minogue, successfully conveys the film’s playful femme appeal, out of context it’s easy for the audience to miss that ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ has a brain beyond its lust for dresses and jewels. The story of how Lorelei and her best friend Dorothy (Jane Russell) take a cruise to Paris so Lorelei can wed her rich fiancé Gus (Tommy Noonan) is fizzy fun, as the two get tangled up in Gus’ father’s efforts to stop the wedding, and the vivacious and practical Dorothy finds a kindred spirit in private detective Malone (Elliott Reid). But it’s also smart and knowing in its exploration of how women of the time moved through the world, and never condemns Dorothy or Lorelei for seeking men based on attraction or wealth. Monroe and Russell’s warm performances, as polar opposites but loyal friends, give the brightly-colored film its heart, making these two little girls from Little Rock figures to root for. —WC

36. ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ (Ethan & Joel Coen, 2013)

Some might argue that the Coen brothers’ wounded and circular portrait of a peripatetic folk artist in 1960s New York is more of a character study than a bonafide musical, but few movies have ever conveyed such raw feeling through songs, and few movies have ever so intrinsically valued the ability to sing them (an irony the penniless Llewyn Davis might appreciate with a bitter laugh and some blood in his teeth).

Nevertheless, we understand how the film could seem like an outlier on this list: In a genre synonymous with lavish spectacle and exuberant joy, the most piercing moments of the Coen brothers’ masterpiece are implosive, hushed, and almost entirely motionless. One is even quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

Grieving the loss of his musical partner, resenting the commercial failure of his album, and seething at a cold world that seems to have burnt out its warmth, Llewyn (Oscar Issac) hitches a ride to Chicago in order to perform a last-ditch audition for an industry type named Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). Pointing at Llewyn’s record, Grossman asks him to play something from ‘Inside Llewyn Davis.’ Sitting in the middle of an empty club, Llewyn begins strumming away at ‘The Death of Queen Jane,’ filling the ancient English ballad with all of the beauty that he can’t seem to find in his life. Isaac’s performance is genuinely heart-stopping, special even in a film where the actor crushes us with a new tune every 20 minutes.

But what makes this particular scene stand out isn’t its supernatural grace, but rather how much more desperate and deserving that grace becomes each time Llewyn looks up at the stone-faced man sitting across from him, checking to make sure that he’s hearing this.

By the time the song is over, there’s virtually no doubt that Llewyn’s rendition is one for the ages. But this isn’t that kind of movie. ‘I don’t see a lot of money here,’ is all Grossman can muster, and the truth of the matter is that he’s probably right. Unfortunately for Llewyn, you just can’t put a fair price on a gift like that, even if it betrays its cost with every note. —DE

35. ‘French Cancan’ (Jean Renoir, 1955)

Before there was ‘Moulin Rouge!’ there was the historic Moulin Rouge. In between, there was ‘French Cancan,’ a heavily fictionalized account of the foundation of the historic French nightclub. Jean Renoir’s film stars a marvelous Jean Gabin as Henri, a womanizing and ambitious nightclub owner who angers his former lover Lola (María Félix) by taking on and bedding the beautiful ordinary girl Nina (Françoise Arnoul), intending to make her and the cancan a centerpiece of his new venture. As Nina gets embedded in showbiz, she’s pulled in many directions by men who desire her — from old boyfriend Paulo (Franco Pastorino) to foreign prince Alexandre (Giani Esposito) — even as she only truly has love for Henri. Slowly, however, she learns that dance might be the only thing in the world she can really depend on. ‘French Cancan’ looks like a confection, with stunning technicolor and cancan dance sequences that could make your heart stop. At its core though, it’s a decidedly bittersweet story about how stardom and art come at a cost, and how a performer’s stage becomes their whole world. —WC

34. ‘The Cloud-Capped Star’ (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)

A milestone of Bengali filmmaking, Ritwik Ghatak’s ‘The Cloud-Capped Star’ is a devastating melodrama that sets its central tragedy against the backdrop of the Partition of Bengal in 1947. Supriya Choudhury gives a stunning performance as Nita, the eldest daughter of a family uprooted by the Partition who finds her own desires consistently undermined and ignored by a family that relies heavily on her, and whose chance at love is crushed and thwarted. Famous for its soundtrack of classic Indian music, the film’s sole light comes in the form of Nita’s relationship with her brother Shankar (Anil Chatterjee). A pivotal scene where Shankar sings a classic song to Nita proves to be the film’s most moving, enriching an already indelible story of loss. —WC

33. ‘Cabaret’ (Bob Fosse, 1972)

Anyone who’s never seen Bob Fosse’s masterpiece probably knows it as the movie that robbed Francis Ford Coppola of his Best Director Oscar for ‘The Godfather.’ The Corleones may never admit it, but Fosse deserved it.

The same may be said of Liza Minnelli, who earned the Best Actress statuette that eluded her mother, Judy Garland, as well as the six other Academy Awards won by this loose adaptation of the Broadway musical. One of those movies with an inner darkness that truly does sneak up on you, ‘Cabaret’ begins in 1931 Berlin and charts the Nazis’ rise so gradually that, like everyone in the Kit Kat Klub each night, you won’t realize they’ve fully arrived until it’s much too late. In that way, it’s yet another film that feels far more relevant today than it should have to.

Life may only be a cabaret, but eventually the show stops and the curtain comes calling for us all. —MN

32. ‘Hair’ (Miloš Forman, 1979)

One of the most provocative and political musicals to ever make it on Broadway, the original ‘Hair’ premiered in 1968 as a sign of a changing America. Telling the story of a tribe of hippies living a counterculture life in New York City and fighting against conscription to the Vietnam War, it introduced rock to musical theater, and shocked audiences with its frank treatment of sexuality and taboo topics. Released 11 years later, the movie version of ‘Hair’ didn’t quite have the same shock effect in its favor. But it’s still a terrific work in its own right, distilling the original, largely plotless musical into a more cinematic arc, while adding a particularly heartbreaking twist ending. Miloš Forman’s movie also benefits from a terrific cast that includes great work from leads like John Savage, Treat Williams, and Beverly D’Angelo, as well as the iconic songs from the original, including the title track, ‘Good Morning Sunshine,’ and the stirring anthem ‘Aquarius.’ —WC

31. ‘An American in Paris’ (Vincente Minnelli, 1951)

‘An American in Paris’ is best remembered for its iconic 16-minute ending, a psychological ballet expressing the inner psyche of its main character after his love appears to have been lost from him forever. It’s justifiably famous, one of the greatest uses of dance as storytelling in cinematic history. Don’t let that distract from the rest of the delightful comedy, however; Kelly has rarely been more charming than he is as a starving artist plugging away in Paris, who falls for a local girl Lise (Leslie Caron) who also happens to be engaged to his friend Henri (Georges Guétary). Utilizing the music of George Gershwin, the film proves sprightful and energetic, with songs like ‘I Got Rhythm’ and ‘S’Wonderful’ proving energetic playgrounds for Kelly and his costars to showcase their talents. By the time of the iconic ballet, the Paris of ‘An American in Paris’ is so enchanting it’s hard not to wish you can stay there forever. —WC

30. ‘Pink Floyd: The Wall’ (Alan Parker, 1982)

Alan Parker directed numerous musicals over his lifetime, from weirdo kids’ gangster drama ‘Bugsy Malone’ to ‘Fame’ to ‘Evita.’ And yet, his greatest contribution to the form is ‘Pink Floyd — The Wall,’ a film interpretation of the prog rock band’s iconic album. Surrealist and impressionistic, the rock opera casts Bob Geldof as ‘Pink,’ a musician looking back on his life and childhood through a swirl of drugs and hallucinations. Animated sequences and impressionistic visuals make the classic album and its themes of social and personal turmoil more potent. And the songs are just as great on film as they are on the album, from classics like ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ to new song ‘When the Tigers Broke Free.’ —WC 

29. ‘On the Town’ (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1949)

‘On the Town’ infamously took many, many liberties in adapting the original Leonard Bernstein musical to the big screen. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen had the majority of the original Bernstein score dropped in favor of new songs by Roger Edens, feeling the original score was too complex for movie audiences; the legendary composer boycotted the production in retaliation. Still, the story of three sailors going on misadventures and finding love on 24-hour shore leave in New York City remains a total delight in this altered version, showcasing Kelly and Donen’s mastery of the genre in their directorial debuts. A whirlwind of energy that combines graceful dance numbers with romantic comedy, ‘On the Town’ also doubles as a love letter to New York City, featuring scenes shot at the Brooklyn Bridge, Rockafeller Center, and Columbus Circle that capture the vibrancy that makes the city so romantic. —WC 

28. ‘A Woman Is a Woman’ (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)

If all Jean-Luc Godard needed to make ‘Breathless’ was a girl, a guy, and a gun, then all he needed to create the Cinemascopic romantic comedy ‘A Woman Is a Woman’ was a love triangle between Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Claude Brialy. Both an embrace and a rejection of the trappings of the American musical comedy, ‘A Woman Is a Woman’ is one of Godard’s chicest and most accessible movies. But while the film seems on the surface less tricky than many of Godard’s other ’60s films, it’s nevertheless replete with his typical self-reflexive streak and eager to shatter the fourth wall.

‘A Woman Is a Woman’ is not well-remembered for its songs, which are defined by their intentionally unpolished sound mix and playful out-of-step choreography (which is charming in its deceptively unrehearsed casualness). Godard’s trusty DP Raoul Coutard floods modish neon light into the film’s Paris setting in a way that appears grounded in the city but deliberately artificial elsewhere in a bid to evoke the cheeky, inherent fakeness of a stagy movie musical. Among the musical highlights, ‘Chanson d’Angela,’ for one, stands as one of the most iconic Anna Karina moments ever. She’s sexy, seductive, but coy with a sly grin, and ultimately out of reach. —RL

27. ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ (Norman Jewison, 1971)

Tevye the milkman said it best when he bellowed: ‘Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.’ And to any Jewish musical lover (a redundant distinction if ever there was one), ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is a tradition as sacred as lox on a bagel or schmoozing at shul.

One of the rare musicals with both a profound dramatic narrative and an unforgettable score, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s eminently hummable tunes would inspire many a lullaby and carpool sing along for generations to come. Inspired by Sholem Aleichem’s short stories, librettist Joseph Stein penned the screenplay for the 1971 screen adaptation of the 1964 musical, reworking his Tony-winning book for the screen. Under the guidance of a young Norman Jewison, the film is one of the most faithful, and successful, stage-to-screen musicals of all time. 

It’s hard to go wrong with such great material, yet many have failed in their attempts to translate the epic nature of a live Broadway show to the comparatively flat screen. Led by Israeli actor Chaim Topol as the indefatigable narrator Tevye (though the decision not to cast Zero Mostel was controversial at the time), the movie delivers all of the laughs, tears, and chills of the musical.

Though it omits two excellent songs, ‘Now I Have Everything’ and ‘The Rumor (I Just Heard),’ the movie’s added scenes pack some cinematic dramatic heft, such as the Rabbi cradling the Torah out of the ark for the last time. From its rousing opening to its plaintive final notes, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is nothing less than a cinematic tradition. —JD

26. ‘Swing Time’ (George Stevens, 1936)

No question ‘Swing Time’ is the best-directed film in the exuberant Astaire-Rogers RKO canon. With help from composer Jerome Kern and choreographer Hermes Pan, director George Stevens elevates the usual romantic misunderstandings with four of the most transcendent song-and-dance numbers ever executed. ‘Never Gonna Dance’ feels like two people making love in front of our eyes with their clothes on, while the Oscar-winning ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ — played as comedy in the movie — became Astaire’s biggest hit record. Katharine Hepburn famously said of Astaire-Rogers: ‘He gives her class. She gives him sex.’

But while Fred was lauded as the greatest musical dancer of all time (and under-rated for his fine tenor), Ginger had to do it backwards in clingy gowns, feather boas, and heels. Truth is, they both worked and sweated their butts off to soar so lightly. —AT

25. ‘Nashville’ (Robert Altman, 1975)

Smack dab at the apex of the New Hollywood, Robert Altman pushed cinematic storytelling to a whole new level with his shaggy 1975 epic ‘Nashville.’ Though Joan Tewkesbury wrote the script as an outsider looking into the country music scene, Altman’s film drops us right into it.

His gifted ensemble including Ronee Blakley (whose Barbara Jean gets one of cinema’s most grand tragic finales ever), Karen Black, Ned Beatty, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Lily Tomlin, Shelley Duvall, and Jeff Goldblum, many of whom composed and performed their own songs for this Tennessee-set snapshot of the region’s country music universe.

The Keith Carradine-written ‘I’m Easy’ won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but the soundtrack album features plenty of other standouts that have a charmingly amateurish vibe due to being penned by whatever cast member was singing them. As ever in the films of Altman, a thrum of political unrest runs below a chatty, jittery ecosystem of ordinary people, whose worlds ricochet across the filmmaker’s trademark overlapping sound design and dialogue. —RL

24. ‘Kiss Me Kate’ (George Sidney, 1953)

George Sidney’s adaptation of Sam and Bella Spewack’s ‘Kiss Me Kate’ is one of the wildest, wackiest takes on Shakespeare you’re apt to see during the studio era. The film is about a company of Broadway players who modernize Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ only for the events to take on an added sense of mimicry.

But, really, this isn’t a movie that you’re necessarily watching for the story. The opening number sets the tone when Ann Miller’s dimwitted Lois Lane (no, not that one) jumps on the coffee table of Broadway star Fred Grahame (Howard Keel) to perform the song, ‘Too Darn Hot.’

The film was very of its time, right down to initially being presented in 3D. It’s a razzmatazz of the strange and bizarre, from Howard Keel’s overly flamboyant costumes and guyliner to Miller’s rendition of ‘Tom, Dick, or Harry’ culminating with her shouting ‘a-dick, a-dick.’ But while ‘Kiss Me Kate’ is unintentionally hilarious you can’t deny the power of its beautiful Broadway score, from ‘Why Can’t You Behave’ to the soaring ‘Wunderbar.’ Add to that a top-notch cast of musical mavens, including the late, great acrobatic dancer Tommy Rall and a pre-directing Bob Fosse, and you have a truly underrated musical gem. —KL

23. ’42nd Street’ (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

There are few visual pleasures more satisfying than Busby Berkeley’s choreography. In ’42nd Street,’ opulence, precision, and unadulterated joy ripple out like the concentric circles of ribbon dancers spinning wildly onscreen. Credited with kicking off the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, vaudeville actor-turned-director Lloyd Bacon films the classic showbiz tale with a keen eye, finding more beauty than the story required.

Allentown, PA hasn’t quite been the same since little Peggy Sawyer left in search of Broadway stardom. The movie boasts hummable tunes like ‘Shuffle Off to Buffalo,’ ’42nd Street,’ and ‘You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me.’ It’s the song you’ll love the melody of, ’42nd Street.’ —JD

22. ‘Hedwig and The Angry Inch’ (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)

One of the most iconic queer stories ever told, John Cameron Mitchell adapted his star-making off-Broadway musical effortlessly to the screen, giving a whole new generation its very own ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ The movie launched a varied and impressive filmmaking career for good reason. He plays the titular character, a role he reprised in a recent Broadway revival.

Hedwig is a force onstage and on screen: Soulful, provocative, funny, yearning, and deeply philosophical. Her journey is as much about gender and cultural identity as it is about heartache and hormone-fueled lust. Mitchell’s language may not jive with current norms around trans identity, but Hedwig was ahead of her time. Drawing from Plato, her lessons are evergreen. We all could use a many-gendered oracle to teach us the origin of love. —JD

21. ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ (Jacques Demy, 1967)

A sneakily bittersweet masterpiece that hides its melancholy inside a multi-tiered wedding cake of exuberant musical numbers, ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ is easy to mistake for a confection. In part, that’s because its story is a seaside romance about a pair of elegant twins (actual sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, appearing together for the only time before the latter’s sudden death) who daydream of falling in love and leaving their sleepy hometown.

In part, that’s also because Jacques Demy made the film in the wake of his devastating ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg,’ and anything short of ‘Schindler’s List’ would seem upbeat by comparison. But despite Michel Legrand’s zesty songs and some of Norman Maen’s jazziest dance choreography, this wonderfully colorful gem beats with a heavy heart.

Not even an appearance by Gene Kelly can distract from a film that longs for the joy that’s always just beyond your fingertips; a film so tormented by unknown happiness that one of its characters can’t even see he lives around the corner from the love of his life. —DE

20. ‘A Star Is Born’ (George Cukor, 1954)

There are now four versions of ‘A Star Is Born,’ but George Cukor’s 1954 masterpiece stands above William Wellman’s 1937 original, the widely maligned 1976 Barbra Streisand vehicle, and even Bradley Cooper’s beloved re-imagining from just a few long years ago.

A gut-wrenching melodrama tucked inside a flawless musical, Cukor’s version hinges on a premise that was already familiar by the time he got to it: James Mason plays a Hollywood star who falls in love with (the talent of) Judy Garland and helps make her a star while his career (and alcoholism) rapidly descends, but it’s Cukor’s sober view of the crumbling studio system that still proves revelatory. Garland’s off-screen woes also shine through, as the actress’ personal experience with controlling mine lends a palpably self-reflexive streak to musical numbers that are themselves preoccupied with the nature of performance.

‘A Star Is Born’ had a troubled production, and the 154-minute theatrical version cut a few crucial dramatic moments. The film was beautifully restored when they found Cukor’s pre-cut audio tracks, with production stills (think bad Ken Burns) added over the lost scenes. It’s the type of thing that’s an amazing DVD extra for fans, but difficult to integrate into the experience the first time you’re seeing the film and marveling at how fresh it feels in spite of the story’s intrinsic familiarity. —CO

19. ‘Pakeezah’ (Kamal Amrohi, 1971)

One of the most beloved classics of ’70s Bollywood cinema, ‘Pakeezah’ was a truly mammoth undertaking. Production began in 1956 and lasted 15 years, during which the star Meena Kumari and director Kamal Amrohi divorced, the cinematographer Josef Wirsching died, and the film shoot was abandoned for five years. While that sounds like a recipe for disaster, ‘Pakeezah’ and its story of the star-crossed love between a prostitute and the son of a wealthy family became the biggest Hindi film of its year and is now considered a masterpiece, thanks to its extravagant filmmaking and Kumari’s devastating performance; it would be her last, as she passed a month after the movie’s release. —WC

18. ‘The Band Wagon’ (Vincente Minnelli, 1953)

Made just as the older singer-dancer began to consider retirement, this late Fred Astaire showcase marked a comeback not only for him but also for the musical genre itself, as director Vincente Minnelli and MGM producer Arthur Freed gave the ultimate backstage musical everything they had.

Astaire, in the self-reflexive role of fading star Tony Hunter, brings poignancy to ‘I’ll Go My Way By Myself’ as he contemplates failure in all its forms, only to be uplifted by his theater gang’s ‘let’s put on a show’ ethos as they throw out their hideous Faust failure in favor of a light-hearted revamp centered on Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s rallying cry ‘That’s Entertainment!’ Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant dazzle as a witty husband-and-wife writing team inspired by the movie’s (platonic) screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green, while dancer Cyd Charisse memorably wrapped her long legs around Astaire during ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ Sublime. —AT

17. ‘West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty’ (Med Hondo, 1979)

An underseen and underappreciated masterpiece, Med Hondo’s ‘West Indies’ uses the format of a Broadway musical revue to tell the story of West Indies oppression across centuries. Based on a play by Daniel Boukman, and made with a budget of $1.35 million that makes it one of the most expensive African film productions of all time, Med Hondo’s film stages a history lesson of French imperialism in the West Indies on an enormous slave ship set. Mixing Brechtian theater conventions with stunning dance numbers, while always feeling intensely cinematic, ‘West Indies’ burns with anger and passion against the powers that be. There’s no other musical like it. —WC

16. ‘It’s Always Fair Weather’ (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1955)

The classic MGM dance musicals are often seen as pure fantasies, candy-coated confections set in worlds that only barely resemble our own. But the last great entry in the canon is a startlingly adult and achingly mature story of friendship and the passage of time, anchored by a wonderful performance by Gene Kelly as a cynical fight promoter with deep self-loathing. As a soldier in World War II, Kelly’s Ted was best friends with Doug (Dan Dailey) and Angie (Michael Kidd), and the three left the service with promises to reunite in 10 years. That passage of time — which saw all of the men’s dreams curdle in directions they didn’t anticipate — leaves the three as virtual strangers, and even as they reconnect over one wild day, it’s clear that their bond was more fleeting than they realized.

Kelly co-directed ‘It’s Always Fair Weather’ with Stanley Donen, his ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ collaborator. Together, the two stage some of the most inventive musical moments seen on film, including a riff on ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz set during an awkward reunion lunch, a boxing ring number led by a fantastic Cyd Charisse, and an exuberant roller skate dance that ranks among Kelly’s best onscreen moments. But even the vivid beauty of the dance numbers feels bittersweet in service of the poignant story, which ended Kelly and Donen’s partnership with a fitting wave goodbye. —WC

15. ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (Richard Lester, 1964)

Long before One Direction or the slew of boy bands populated the late ’90s, there were The Beatles and the legions of screaming fans that followed them across the U.K. Smartly capitalizing on the Beatlemania sweeping the world, Richard Lester’s ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ exposed audiences to the Fab Four’s personalities with a day-in-the-life snapshot that followed the band from backstage to center stage.

Filled with madcap humor and a slew of memorable hits, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is still a delight. Although the Beatles were behind several more films, including the truly magical animated film ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was the film that introduced John, Paul, George, and Ringo to the world and set the precedent for all band films to come. —JR

14. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (Victor Fleming, 1939)

As iconic musicals go, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ nearly takes the cake. First, there’s the stunning transformation as the film shifts from monochrome to dazzling technicolor, a feat which likely seemed as magical to 1939 audiences as transporting over the rainbow.

Then there’s Judy Garland, clad in those sparkling ruby slippers and singing one of cinema’s most famous songs with a voice that could set the coldest hearts ablaze.

‘The Wizard of Oz’ has it all, from a truly terrifying Wicked Witch to a lovable ragtag team of misfit creatures who travel the yellow brick road singing along with Dorothy in her quest to get back home. The film’s enduring charm is its ability to help us see that what we seek is often already inside of us, but we sometimes need a nudge (or a trip to Oz) to tease it out. —JR

13. ‘The Red Shoes’ (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

There are few things more cinematic than dance; it’s an artform that can convey desire, longing, lust, and overwhelming emotions with just the placement of bodies. And no film ever portrayed dance as well as ‘The Red Shoes,’ Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s iconic ballet melodrama. Moira Shearer stars as Victoria, a talented young dancer who gets the chance of the lifetime when she’s signed on to a ballet based on Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale ‘The Red Shoes.’ But when she falls madly in love with the ballet’s composer Julian (Marius Goring), she’s forced to choose between greatness in dance or her own personal romance. What results is a tragedy for the ages, one told through some of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking dance shown on film. —WC

12. ‘Moulin Rouge!’ (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

When it opened over 20 years ago, Australian maestro Luhrmann’s greenscreen-heavy spectacle was a polarizing bombshell. This recasting of the Orpheus myth, with the ‘underworld’ in this case being the erotic demimonde of Paris’s famed Belle Epoque nightclub, seemed to elicit only the most extreme opinions, whether in praise or in condemnation. And the detractors were dug in, arguing that Luhrmann’s MTV aesthetics would forever ruin the musical. Maybe even cinema. With the clarity of hindsight it’s obvious that, at worst, it didn’t alter the form at all — there’s basically no other director who can mimic Luhrmann’s singularly manic style, and the parade of awful, stagey movie musicals that followed from ‘Rent’ to ‘The Producers’ to ‘Nine’ to ‘Les Misérables’ suggested the music video had never even been invented.

With its soundtrack of rehashed pop tunes, ‘Moulin Rouge!’ can’t even claim to have invented the jukebox musical, as ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ with its song score of recycled 1920s and ‘30s hits, pursued the same ‘what’s old is new’ idea. At best, ‘Moulin Rouge!’ reinvigorated the idea of the musical, even as a one-off. With the incessant flow of one reinterpreted pop hit into another there is simply more energy in the first 45 minutes than in most other musicals combined. It will exhaust some and exhilarate others. With 3,569 shots, it is the ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ of musicals.

But pure pastiche has rarely felt more alive because Lurhmann actually takes the time and care to reimagine all the old elements he’s sticking in his blender, down to the reused songs, almost all of which receive top-to-bottom transformations: The Police’s ‘Roxanne’ becomes the electrifying dance ‘El Tango de Roxanne’; Queen’s ‘The Show Must Go On’ becomes a poperatta-style anthem for the entire cast, like ‘One Day More’; ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ gets a Bollywood makeover as ‘Hindi Sad Diamonds.’ ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ along with the concurrent ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, is also one of the last truly great fusions of CGI with practical effects and model work. After all the worries about ‘Moulin Rouge!’ being the future, the real sadness is that — ‘Fury Road’ aside, really — there’s been nothing else quite like it. If only we could have an existential crisis for cinema in the manner of a ‘Moulin Rouge!’ once again. —CB

11. ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ (1986)

Premiering at the Orpheum Theatre Off-Broadway in 1982, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ from future Disney legends Alan Menken and Howard Ashman was an immediate hit, very much in contrast with the 1960 Roger Corman film of the same name that inspired the musical and has since garnered a cult status. The show won the 1983 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical and went on to run for five years, all but guaranteeing an eventual film adaptation. With David Geffen as one of the producers on the stage show, the project was floated to the likes of Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, a protege of Corman’s, before finally landing in the lap of ‘The Dark Crystal’ and ‘Muppets Take Manhattan’ director Frank Oz.

A satire of sci-fi B movies and musical comedy itself featuring a massive anthropomorphic plant puppet, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ is the perfect material for Oz’s sensibilities. The film centers around Seymour Krelborn, a lowly florist (Rick Moranis) who discovers a new breed of plant that only feeds off blood. As the plant grows thanks to Seymour’s personal contributions, it begins to attract the attention of a clamoring public, as well as Seymour’s secret crush Audrey (Ellen Greene). Featuring a dynamic rock & roll and Motown-inspired score and one of Steve Martin’s funniest performances, the film is both a visual throwback and a narrative advancement, paying homage, while also knocking down walls for new types of musical stories to be told. Unfortunately, Oz was forced to change the original dour ending after poor test screening scores, giving the theatrical release a somewhat happier conclusion, but it does still exist on the director’s cut released in 2012. —HR

10. ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991)

The first animated film to land a nomination for Best Picture — and the only one to accomplish that feat back in the days when the field of contenders was still capped off at five — ‘Beauty and the Beast’ continued the Disney renaissance while also presenting a huge departure from tradition for the re-emergent studio, who brought in screenwriter Linda Woolverton to adapt an 18th-century French fairy tale rather than develop a script from storyboards. With an Oscar-winning score by the ‘Little Mermaid’ team of Howard Ashman (who died eight months before the opening) and Alan Menken and several of the most memorable songs in movie musical history, animated or otherwise, this lush romantic fantasy marks the high point of Disney’s Jeffrey Katzenberg era.

The classical tale also paved the way forward, as the film memorably pioneered CGI dolly camera effects for the swirling centerpiece ballroom waltz with Beauty (animated by James Baxter and Mark Henn and voiced by Broadway star Paige O’Hara) and her magical, courtly Beast (animated by Glen Keane and voiced by Robbie Benson).

But the real stars of the show aren’t the title characters, but rather the enchanted castle servants who’ve been transformed into household items. Angela Lansbury is nothing short of legendary as the unbreakable Mrs. Potts; she nailed the film’s immortal title ballad in a single take that will continue to resonate for lifetimes to come. —AT

9. ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ (Brian De Palma, 1974)

A glam rock cover version of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ that marries a satire of the entertainment industry with the tragic sincerity of its victims, Brian De Palma’s ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ almost had to be a flop in order to earn its cult — a Faustian bargain for a film that hinges on them. But no movie this inspired, this sharp, or this devilishly subversive was ever in any real danger of being forgotten.

De Palma’s most natural synthesis between camp and classicism (one indelible sequence marries surf rock with ‘A Touch of Evil’ in a singular use of split-screen), ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ feels eternal from the moment it starts. That Rod Serling narration, The Juicy Fruits, Paul Williams’ sinister Swan… it all seems as legendary as its source material, even before William Finley’s dorky genius dons that iconic helmet and begins to terrorize the new venue owned by the man who stole his music.

‘Suspiria’ legend Jessica Harper is sensational as the wide-eyed Phoenix, and Gerrit Graham elevates the one-note Beef into a grade-A caricature of corporate sex appeal. But this movie belongs to Williams, whose silly but operatic songs expose the undying soul of rock & roll even as his character tries to sell it at any cost. —DE

8. ‘Love Me Tonight’ (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)

During the Depression, in the early 1930s at Paramount, Ernest Lubitsch wasn’t just a prominent director; he was a house brand. His witty, sophisticated humor — rooted in Hollywood’s vision of the European aristocracy — glided by with a liberated (pre-Code) attitude about sex.

With ‘Love Me Tonight,’ ever-serviceable studio director Rouben Mamoulian took stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Rodgers and Hart songs, and somehow out-Lubitsched the master himself with a formally playful film about a tailor (Chevalier) who tries to pass himself off as a nobleman after he falls in love with a Princess (MacDonald). The opening of Paris as a city symphony is one of the greatest sequences ever filmed and ‘Isn’t it Romantic?’ is somehow even more cinematically inventive. —CO

7. ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)

‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ is many things to many people. For some, it’s the most precious of all Vincente Minnelli musicals (produced by Arthur Freed at MGM), made when the director was most in love with his star, Judy Garland, who was never better. For others, it’s a fantasy vision of Americana they’ve only ever known on screen. And for at least one of the people involved, it was nothing less than a nightmare. Minnelli was infamous for torturing child actress Margaret O’Brien with memories of a dead dog during the scene when her older sister (Garland) sings the holiday classic ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,’ but O’Brian long denied the story, saying she could cry on cue. That song helped to turn the movie into a Christmas staple for many families who respond not only to the young romance at its core, but to an elegiac celebration of a lost idyll.

Sure, we remember the exuberant ‘Trolly Song,’ but Mary Astor and Leon Ames sitting at the piano singing ‘You and I’ is the movie’s emotional core. It brings you back, potentially to a place you’ve never been, or perhaps to a place that never was. —AT

6. ‘West Side Story’ (Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, 1961)

A movie that predated most of us and will surely outlive us all, ‘West Side Story’ might open with some of the most iconic shots of New York City ever committed to celluloid, but so much of its magic results from the hermetically sealed (and obviously staged) snow globe of a world that Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins created for this big-screen version of the Broadway hit.

Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s songs could have propped up even the latest adaptation, and the doomed romance at the center of the story all but tells itself. But ‘West Side Story’ is an essential film because it sets itself against a vividly enchanted version of the Upper West Side, an unreal place where every brick and drip of spray paint feels touched by the technicolor love between Tony and Maria. Or maybe it’s just because Rita Moreno is there to pave over any flaws, the Puerto Rican star delivering a performance so full of life that it makes the whole movie seem real. —DE

5. ‘Pyaasa’ (Guru Dutt, 1957)

In ‘Pyaasa,’ director Guru Dutt casts himself as Vijay, an impoverished bard whose poetry captures the clash between idealism and harsh reality in a newly independent India. The film in turn embodies this tug-of-war through a tale of looking forward, towards a complicated future, and looking wistfully backward at the same time. The disillusioned poet becomes torn between two seemingly impossibly romances, as he crosses paths with both a kindly Calcutta sex worker named Gulabo (Waheeda Rahman), who comes to possess the only copies of his poems, and with his former flame from when he was young and quixotic, the now-married Meena (Mala Sinha), whose jealous husband happens to be Vijay’s publisher.

Along with legendary cinematographer V.K. Murthy, Dutt paints with light and shadow in dreamlike fashion, but the film’s masterstroke is its music composed by S.D. Burman and written by poet and lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi. Between the buoyant romance of ‘Jane Kya Tune Kahi,’ the smoky nostalgia of ‘Hum Aapki Aankhon Mein,’ the lamentations of ‘Yeh Duniya’ and the tongue-in-cheek ad jingle ‘Sar Jo Tera Chakraye’ — which Vijay pens for his masseur friend Abdul (Johnny Walker) — ‘Pyaasa’ runs the gamut of musical mood and tone, and yet it feels like following a wild butterfly along a singular journey as it flutters on the wind. —SA

4. ‘Dancer in the Dark’ (Lars von Trier, 2000)

‘Dancer in the Dark’ is a punishing experience enlivened by an all-time performance from Björk who deservedly won Best Actress at Cannes for walking through hell with von Trier — and through the hell of von Trier — and arriving intact on the other side. She’s a bursting tap of emotion as Selma Ježková, a Czech immigrant put through the wringer in 1960s America, escaping her lot in life through song and dance.

While the non-musical sequences are grounded in von Trier’s shaky, vérité, low-budget style, the music numbers make for a thrilling contrast, delivering some of the director’s most colorfully expressionistic and forward-thinking cinema.

The choreography — unforgettable in the train-track-side ‘I’ve Seen It All’ or the exuberant crash-bang-pop of ‘Cvalda’ that turns factory hardware into a churning orchestra — complements the singular genius of Björk’s music so magnificently that even a song about a simple walk to the gallows feels touched with the divine, an effect that allows this kitchen-sink tragedy about the myopia of capital punishment to rattle your soul from the inside out. —RL

3. ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1954)

The most beloved 12 notes in all of film history have got to be the bouncy refrain the title song in the most iconic movie musical ever made. There’s nothing Hollywood loves more than a movie about itself, and not only did ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ set the bar high, it set it celebratory. 

Co-directed by Gene Kelly and his ‘On the Town’ collaborator Stanley Donen, and the inspired staging makes theatrical bits work for the screen — no small task. Of course, they had help from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ cinematographer Harold Rosson, who photographs their vision in gorgeous technicolor.

It’s tough to imagine a 2017 version of the story, with all we’ve learned recently about the film industry’s dark underbelly, but it’s clear the rain is pouring down on Tinseltown. ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ will never go out of style, but we could all use a little of Don Lockwood’s romanticism, Kathy Selden’s pluck, and Cosmo Brown’s joie de vivre right about now. The winning trio of Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor turned crackling onscreen chemistry into a game for three. O’Connor’s scene-stealing knockout, ‘Make ‘Em Laugh,’ turned unbelievable physical feats into gut-busting farce. It’s the coolest that clown work has ever looked. —JD

2. ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ (Jacques Demy, 1964)

Jacques Demy’s lush wartime romance is all song, all the time, fetishizing its magical colors and titular umbrellas as much as each tender exchange and musical note.

Transforming the sweeping language of classic MGM musicals into a more intimate setting, Demy’s drama finds the soul-searching Geneivieve (Catherine Deneuve in one of her most iconic roles) falling for the steady Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), only to find their relationship complicated when Guy vanishes into the Algerian War. A child is born, and Genevieve falls into a loveless marriage, only to reunite with him on a snowy night outside a gas station for a bittersweet exchange that became instant film history. Demy’s movie is at once joyous and melancholic, regarding life as a constant melody in search of its next verse. —EK

1. ‘All That Jazz’ (Bob Fosse, 1979)

Even though it preceded his death by eight years, ‘All That Jazz’ now seems a kind of self-eulogy for Bob Fosse. The prodigiously gifted multi-hyphenate, whose record-setting eight Tony Awards for choreography have yet to be matched, took on the Herculean task of staging the original production of ‘Chicago’ while also editing ‘Lenny’ — and then dramatized the experience in his penultimate film a few years later.

As a glance behind the curtain of an elaborate Broadway musical, ‘All That Jazz’ is as stressful as it is exhilarating; as a glimpse into its creator’s singular headspace, it’s essential. Roy Scheider is best remembered for fighting a certain shark in ‘Jaws,’ but he’s even better as the Fosse stand-in wrestling with his inner demons here — an effort that earned him his second Academy Award nomination and helped ‘All That Jazz’ become the rare musical to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

He’s aided in that endeavor by Jessica Lange, Leland Palmer, and Ann Reinking, among others, who make for invaluable supporting players in a fever-dream fantasia that ends the only way it can: with the star directing his own death. —MN