The 100 Greatest Movie Musicals of All Time

It’s Musicals Week at IndieWire. With “Wicked” about to sparkle over theaters, we’re celebrating the best of the movie-musical genre.

The musical sometimes feels like a relic of a long-dead Hollywood studio system. But IndieWire’s picks for the 100 best movie musicals of all time show that the musical remains a genre that captures movies’ ability to create story worlds that move freely between reality and fantasy better than any other. The worst examples come from filmmakers who give license to music, color, and movement to run amok; the best transcend artifice and integrate songs that become expressions of pure character emotion. Musicals offer endless possibilities, but success demands a complete mastery of the medium.

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The best movie musicals of all time have faced obstacles as varied as their creators’ styles and tastes. That’s in part because its integration of at least two art forms — music and film always, but sometimes also dance — demands an unusually high-caliber of multi-faceted talent from those attempting its complexities.

After Lee De Forest invented the “talky,” the opportunity oozing from that new tech prompted an industry rush on musicals in the last days of the 1920s. That went over well with audiences at first. But by the end of the ‘30s, movie musicals were a dime-a-dozen, leaving people fatigued and rapidly turning music films into the Marvel debate of mid-century cinema. Who needed another film with “Broadway Melody” or “Big Broadcast” in the title?

Of course, historic hits throughout the ‘40s, ’50s, and ‘60s, including “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Singin’ In The Rain,” meant Hollywood’s best movie musicals were still to come — with story and emotion put first. The genre saw another decline in popularity later in the 20th century when action flicks reigned supreme. But such is the ebb and flow of the genre, which has been (incorrectly) declared dead more than once.

2024 brings to cinemas “Wicked,” an adaptation of the mega Broadway musical reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz.” Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the film promises to be the biggest live-action musical in many a year, and should hopefully dispel rumors that the genre is dead and buried. Sure, few current stars could learn the choreography of Busby Berkeley, Jerome Robbins, or Bob Fosse, and adapting a medium developed and most suited for the stage requires innovative direction. But the skills of contemporary movie musical champions, like Steven Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the promise of Disney-backed animated musicals tell us the curtain will never close on this movie moment.

From “A Star Is Born” and “Swing Time” to “Chicago” and “West Side Story,” here are the 100 best movie musicals, films hat represent the height and incredible range of the genre.

Alison Foreman, Sarah Shachat, Harrison Richlin, Christian Zilko, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Proma Khosla, Eric Kohn, Anne Thompson, Ryan Lattanzio, Jude Dry, Kristen Lopez, Jenna Marotta, Jamie Righetti, Michael Nordine, Siddhant Adlakha, Christian Blauvelt, and Noel Murray contributed to this list.

[This list was originally published in June 2021 and has since been updated.]

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