ic that marks the classically integrated musical. In the early thirties the backstage musical provided a fertile ground for the genre's development. It provided a basic narrative structure for song and dance: the show's numbers become the film's numbers as the camera invades theatrical territory, most notably in Busby Berkley directed sequences of thirties Warner Brothers musicals. The backstage musical developed into the show musical constructed not only around a theatrical production but also, for example, the creation of a fashion magazine, a high school revue, a Hollywood film and the musical biography. In the theme of putting on a show is the potential for reflexivity not present in other classical genres. The romantic couple remain centrally related, both causally and symbolically, to the success of the show. The parallel triumphs of the couple and the show become a central motif. In late studio musicals exemplified by The Band Wagon (1953), Singin' in the Rain (1952) and A Star is Born(1954), this duality of romantic love and the hit show is challenged during the course of the film only to be reasserted at the end. It is post-studio musicals, such as Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) and All That Jazz (1981), together with the special case of Nashville(1975), which critically deconstruct this duality. In Cabaret and Nashville on-stage numbers are the means of throwing the realism of the enclosing narrative into relief. In All That Jazz the ironic use of `That's Entertainment!' (used affirmatively in The Band Wagon) turns the classical formula upside down: entertainment can only be accomplished at the expense of personal happiness. These musicals indict the audience visible on the screen and, by implication, the film's audience. The decadence of Weimar (in Cabaret) gives way to the warped presence of Nazism. The optimism of performances on the stage in Nashville contrasts with the tawdry reality off-stage in what amounts to an indictment...
