Ahh, the musical! A given genre for romance. The songs, the dance numbers, the swinging costumes. Along with all those tunes, love is in the air.
With all that romance floating around, it was tough to pick the three most romantic musicals. But we finally settled on three that we love. They’re all classics, but we did consider modern musicals. Moulin Rouge? Maybe. Grease? Hmm. Ultimately, for our top 3, we stuck with these older films.
See if you agree with our choices.
Without further ado, here’s our top three Most Romantic Musical Movies…
Using the backdrop of Hollywood’s tricky transition from silent cinema to the sound era, this fun MGM musical from 1952 could earn the top prize solely on Gene Kelly’s exuberant performance of the title song, as he declares his head-over-heels love for Debbie Reynolds. But Kelly seals the deal when he sings the Brown/Freed standard “You Were Meant for Me” to Reynolds as they dance across a naked soundstage. If you don’t feel in you own tingling heart that they really were meant for each other, then you’re dead. Or not at all well.
Available on DVD from Warner Home Video
Maria feels pretty, Tony senses something’s coming and the Jets and the Sharks are the ones to stop ’em once and for all tonight in this Oscar-winning 1961 big-screen adaptation of the landmark American musical, based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Original Broadway director/choreographer Jerome Robbins and Hollywood journeyman Robert Wise shared the directing credit (and an Academy Award, one of 10 awarded to the film, including Best Picture) for bringing the musical’s everlasting score, sizzling choreography, darkly contemporary themes and tragic tale of an ill-fated love to startling cinematic life.
Available on DVD from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
3. My Fair Lady
Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, this 1964 musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is the classic tale of a fun-loving woman showing a stuffy man how to live and love, a storyline tried again and again in movies but never with this much delight. The lovely Audrey Hepburn plays Eliza Doolittle, the fun-loving woman who’s a poor London flower girl and doesn’t talk proper. Rex Harrison is Professor Henry Higgins, the stuffy man who makes a bet that he can turn Eliza into a woman of high society. Set to a rousing Lerner/Loewe score, the rest is romance history.
Available on DVD from Warner
For personal reasons I would include “The Sound Of Music” but it would be difficult to decide which of the three named titles it would replace. But “My Fair Lady” would still be in there.