Dangerous Rhythm

Insightful, exuberant, and witty, Dangerous Rhythm offers a fresh, sometimes revolutionary take on a uniquely American institution: the movie musical. Combining chronicle with critique and analysis, award-winning historian Richard Barrios lays out the whole of the musical's glorious and rocky existence, from Al Jolson to Les Misérables.

This is a book by someone who is indeed captivated: a love letter for the best of musical cinema and a blown raspberry for the worst...

Richard Barrios's survey of the genre dives vividly into all its contradictions, its seemingly accidental triumphs, and its most effortful, well-meant failures. He knows the litany of films inside out, and there's not much that gets past him: the book is somewhere between a stern celebration and a wake...He has sharp words for every scar on his weathered, ageing, occasionally miraculous art form. And rightly so.

Barrios knows his stuff, and musical film aficionados are well advised to get a hold of Dangerous Rhythm. He combines vast knowledge of the subject with tangy writing, resulting in a hard-to-put-down read.

Few people can discuss early-talkie musicals and television's Glee with equal authority. Richard Barrios sees it all as part of a continuum, which is what makes his wide-ranging book so relevant. His sense of humor and lively prose style transform a scholarly treatise into a highly enjoyable reading experience.

Simultaneously a rigorous dissection of and a valentine to the movie musical.

[A] hugely readable, authoritative meditation on the Hollywood musical.

[Barrios] writes about his subject authoritatively...and always directly. He does so with an absence of heavy theorizing and an abundance of strong opinions. Part of what makes Dangerous Rhythm enjoyable to read is its idiomatic prose.

Barrios knows this material inside out, which allows him to step back to make often inspired observations.

Over the years, there have been many books written about the American film musical, ranging from the superficial to the academically analytical. Few have the sheer readability - and concentrated insight - of Dangerous Rhythm, an enjoyable (and highly informative) volume.

Richard Barrios worked in the music and film industries before turning to film history with the award-winning A Song in the Dark and Screened Out. He lectures extensively and appears frequently on television and in film and DVD documentaries. Born in the swamps of south Louisiana and a longtime resident of New York City, he now lives in bucolic suburban Philadelphia.