This year marks the 25th anniversary of Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann’s reinvention of the movie musical. There is little doubt the movie musical was on the decline in the 1980s and 90s. The only real contender during that period was Disney (who released Beauty and the Beast in 1991 and The Lion King in 1994).
The musical was slowly being replaced by what contemporary critics called the “musically oriented film”, starting with 1977’s Saturday Night Fever, then Fame (1981), Flashdance (1983) and Footloose (1984). This trend extended to films whose soundtracks proved irresistible. Think Top Gun (1983), Quentin Tarantino’s bold soundtracks (Pulp Fiction in 1994 and Jackie Brown in 1997), alongside Nora Ephron’s nostalgic throwbacks in Sleepless in Seattle (1989) and You’ve Got Mail (1998).
These poppy soundtracks – full of songs you know but haven’t heard in a while – provided the perfect platform for Luhrmann to introduce a new kind of jukebox musical.
