What this volume discovers is that musicals not only show singing and dancing; they are actually about signing and dancing, about entertainment. This apparently simple insight produces new understanding, both of the actual music used in the films and of such key stylistic devices as the "show within the show," the use of on-screen audiences, dream sequences and "rehearsal" numbers. All help to create, in a notoriously industrialized, commercial and technological medium, an image of a spontaneous, natural art of the people. 

Black and white illustrations.