Rouben Mamoulian summary

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Rouben Mamoulian, (born Oct. 8, 1897, Tiflis, Georgia, Russian Empire—died Dec. 4, 1987, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.), Russian-U.S. director. After training as an actor at the Moscow Art Theatre, he moved to London in 1918, where he directed operettas and musicals. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1923, he worked for the Theatre Guild and directed the play Porgy (1927); he later directed the original production of its musical adaptation, Porgy and Bess (1935), and later musicals such as Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945). Invited to direct the film musical Applause (1929), he won acclaim for his innovative camera work; his later films include City Streets (1931), Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo, Becky Sharp (1935), The Gay Desperado (1936), Blood and Sand (1941), and Silk Stockings (1957). He was noted for the skillful blending of music and sound effects with an imaginative visual rhythm.

musical Summary

Musical, theatrical production that is characteristically sentimental and amusing in nature, with a simple but distinctive plot, and offering music, dancing, and dialogue. The antecedents of the musical can be traced to a number of 19th-century forms of entertainment including the music hall, comic

directing Summary

Directing, the craft of controlling the evolution of a performance out of material composed or assembled by an author. The performance may be live, as in a theatre and in some broadcasts, or it may be recorded, as in motion pictures and the majority of broadcast material. The term is also used in

film Summary

Film, series of still photographs on film, projected in rapid succession onto a screen by means of light. Because of the optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision, this gives the illusion of actual, smooth, and continuous movement. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film