Top ten unexpected musical moments in movies
The musical genre is perhaps the most underrated (how can you not love Busby Berkeley?) in cinema, but delightful, moving, beautiful, surreal, impromptu, spontaneous, unexpected musical – whether dancing or singing or both – moments often occur in non-musical films, sometimes in quite bad films (and not exactly great songs), as the following list demonstrates. But the mix of sound and image somehow works to create something sublime.
1. Mauvais Sang (1986)
Song: Modern Love David Bowie
This extraordinary scene of Denis Lavant running, coughing, stumbling, dancing, cartwheeling and punching himself to the tune of David Bowie’s Modern Love is one my favourite film sequences ever – it’s certainly the reason Modern Love is my favourite David Bowie song. (Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha has a homage to the scene with Greta Gerwig dancing through NYC to the same song.) See also Denis Lavant dancing at the end of Beau Travail.
2. Bande à Part (1964)
Dance: The Madison
Anna Karina and her two male admirers dance the Madison, a popular 1960s line dance, in a Parisian cafe completely oblivious to them. Just joyful. The sequence is Quentin Tarentino’s inspiration for the famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction (which doesn’t belong on this list as it isn’t spontaneous at all; it’s for a dance contest). Tarentino named his production company, A Band Apart, after the Godard film.
3. Big (1988)
Song: Heart and Soul / Chopsticks
Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia spent weeks rehearsing the famous scene on a giant floor piano in a Manhattan toy store.
4. Rush Hour (1988)
Song: War Edwin Starr
Best bit of the film.
5. Ten Things I Hate About You (1999)
Song: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You Frankie Valli
Someone singing to a loved one in public is the ultimate romantic gesture, fraught as it with complete embarrassment and humiliation. Naturally, it always comes off okay in the movies.
6. 13 Going On 30 (2004)
Song: Thriller Michael Jackson
The song was also used to great effect by the inmates of a Filipino prison.
7. Pretty in Pink (1986)
Song: Try a Little Tenderness Otis Redding
8. Almost Famous (2000)
Song: Tiny Dancer Elton John
9. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Song: Singin’ in the Rain Gene Kelly
Malcolm McDowell terrorises a couple with ultraviolence whilst singing and dancing the Gene Kelly classic.
10. A Bigger Splash (2015)
Song: Emotional Rescue Rolling Stones
Ralph Fiennes does Jagger.
Just outside the top ten:
Train wreck (2015)
Song: Uptown Girl Billy Joel
Though this sequence is to woo back her boyfriend, it comes just after alcoholic/nymphomaniac Amy Schemer has got drunk and tried to rape a 16-year-old boy. I personally wouldn’t go anywhere near her.
Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten film musicals
Modern Love