Richard Dyer has written extensively on film musicals, as well as on the use of songs in film. In particular, his 1977 article ‘Entertainment and Utopia’, is still required reading for film students now. In the Space of a Song collects much of Dyer's later work on this subject into a single volume for the first time. Presented with a new, extensive introduction that begins with a consideration of what exactly makes songs and singing special, it is to Dyer's credit that he strikes a balance between rich, lyrical enthusiasm for film songs and musical numbers and razor-sharp analysis of their construct and function. So, although he begins with a meditative reflection on the almost uncanny pleasure of song – its attachment to feeling and emotion, the physical pleasure of singing, and the transcendent power of song's ‘extremely rich semiotic mix of words, music and voice’ (p. 3) – he soon turns to what is at stake in this rich, pleasurable semiosis. Thus, the analysis running through the chapters of this book uses as a starting point Dyer's main assertion in the 1977 article: that musical numbers are utopian. Yet, he rekeys this question in various contexts in conjunction with the main follow-up question posed by ‘The Colour of Entertainment’ (1995) – for whom are musical numbers utopian?

Dyer's concern is primarily with how the performance of song in film displays constructs of gender, sexuality and race, but fundamentally his analysis of this construct starts off with the operation of the song within the generic construct of the film musical. The primary focus of his attention to song is as a function of narrative, staging and screen performance, rather than a musicological analysis of song in film, or even a Michel Chion-esque ‘audiovision’. At the same time, his analysis is not at all deaf to sound or music, and the vividness of his highly engaging writing style strongly evokes the sounds, melodies and voices of well-known musical numbers and film songs, but by the same token, Dyer is primarily a film academic, not a music academic. This is indicated in the title, In the Space of a Song – it is the audiovisual filmic space with which he is most concerned, rather than a purely musical conception of song: ‘Songs in films take up literal but also temporal and sometimes metaphorical space. They impose musical time and length on spoken and acted narration. They allow voices to fill or carry over space and, in dance, permit – even incite – bodies to do the same. This can be lovely, but it may also be disruptive, threatening, subversive. If a song may expand on the narrative moment it may also interrupt its drive’ (p. 30). The commonly articulated criticism by those who dislike musicals is that it doesn't seem ‘real’ for people to spontaneously burst into song; hence the power of the song in film to be disruptive, even as film strives towards song's streamlining within the constraints of classical narrative integration. Musicals aspire to realism, despite being commonly regarded as non-realistic.

This tension at the heart of the Hollywood musical genre, between the linear demands of narrative, versus the potential narrative disruption of the musical number, is of particular concern in Chapter 2, entitled ‘The Perfection of Meet Me in St. Louis’. Through his analysis of the 1944 MGM musical, widely regarded by critics as the ‘perfect’ musical, he demonstrates the contradiction at the heart of its perfection. On the one hand, it displays a deft integration of its musical numbers, as the songs propel the narrative forward and celebrate familial togetherness. On the other hand, its drive towards realism, in particular through the pursuit of authentic period costume and historically accurate sets, paradoxically makes it seem less real, displaying ‘… a realism that has been egged up some way towards the realm of marvel’ (p. 64). Dyer's formal analysis of genre sets the groundwork for his argument in which he demonstrates what is truly at stake. Despite his infectious love of musicals he lays bare the power struggles at the heart of their utopian joy: ‘Whether song will be found disruptive rather than joyous – whether its specialness may seem to interrupt or distract attention or take up space and time inappropriately – is bound up with who is singing what, where, why and to whom’ (p. 31). Dyer is concerned especially with the position of women in the musical, asserting that while they're given the space to sing in Meet Me in St. Louis, it is the male characters that call the shots. Women claim time and space in the musical number which they cannot claim elsewhere, yet this claim is safely contained within the number.

The shorter Chapter 3, ‘A Star is Born and the Construction of Authenticity’, considers how two of the numbers in A Star Is Born (1954) refer to the constructed nature of stardom, self-consciously and self-reflexively, and, although short, provides contextualisation for the other facets of analysis of star performance of songs in the later chapters. Chapter 4, ‘“I Seem to Find the Happiness I Seek”: Heterosexuality and Dance in the Musical’, shows how heterosexuality is constructed through couple dances in a number of classic Hollywood musicals, in particular those of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Dyer observes how the couple dances tend to start out emphasising sameness, yet as sexuality becomes more explicit, the choreography shifts towards an emphasis of difference. The thread that continues to run through all the chapters is an observant attention to how musical numbers and film songs perform sexuality and race. While Dyer's tone is always one of enthusiasm for the films he discusses, and an acknowledgement of their emotional power – ‘Musicals are discourses of happiness’ (p. 101), ‘… the numbers constitute definitions of happiness’ (p. 101) – he always strives to unpick their constructs, asserting: ‘These happinesses are not socially innocent’ (p. 101). Hence Chapter 5's main argument that On the Town presents a form of jazz music ‘recoverable by whites’ (pp. 107–8), and how in the ‘white musical’ as Dyer defines it, the song and dance of musical numbers are essentially all about taking over space and asserting physicalised ownership of it, in an ‘elation of expansion’ (p. 109).

Chapters 6, 7 and 8 further build upon these earlier chapters as Dyer shifts his attention to constructs of blackness, initially with the fascinating case of Lena Horne, a Hollywood star of the 1940s who self-identified as black, could pass for white, but chose not to. Chapter 7, ‘Is Car Wash a Musical?’, considers in particular the fascinating use of radio in the 1976 film. Dyer observes a distinction between (as he terms it) the black musical narrative's ‘… recurrence and circularity rather than linear progression and completion’ of the white musical narrative (p. 147), as well as highlighting an active use of music by the characters in Car Wash, as opposed to the stereotypical ‘all-blacks-got-rhythm syndrome’ (p. 149). Here creativity is an everyday thing, whereas in white musicals it is exceptional and transformative. In Blaxploitation movies, discussed in the final chapter, music (through its combination with image) is connected explicitly with the urban filmic space, the space the characters inhabit and in which they make their way. Hence, John Shaft's iconic strut through the city in tandem with the famous ‘Theme from Shaft’ affirms his ‘confident occupancy of black space’ (p. 173).

Of the eight chapters presented in the volume, four were previously published in the 1990s. The remaining four are either completely new material, based on talks, or expanded from shorter versions. This mixture of old and new material does lead to a couple of small but noticeable editorial issues. Chapter 6, which is made up mostly of new material, includes a ‘Song Checklist’ at its end, listing all the songs Dyer refers to in the chapter along with their associated film and each film's production date. It would have been useful to include such a list at the end of all the chapters, and its inclusion seems inconsistent with the format of the rest of the book. Also, Chapter 4, previously published 20 years earlier, includes a footnote in its second paragraph after the statement: ‘The impulse in most musicals is towards […] moments of heaven, of grand and glorious feeling’ (p. 89), which adds a caveat – ‘Subsequent research […] suggests that this is most “integrated” musicals before the 1960s’. This can either be viewed as a problem of reproducing old (albeit classic) scholarship, or more positively it can be viewed as offering an insight into how studies of the film musical have evolved, and indeed how Dyer's research into the genre and form has developed.

The length of Chapter 1 is perhaps the book's one weakness, with its 56 pages (out of a 174-page volume) giving it a lopsided structure. It becomes difficult to hold onto the thread of Dyer's argument and its wide-ranging discussion can feel whimsical on occasion. While all the other chapters are about American cinema, his discussions of song in Italian cinema and in Hindi cinema are confined to this very long introduction. The strength of their inclusion is that they point out the specificity of the use of song in American film by suggesting that song can function differently in other cinematic traditions. The weakness is that these relatively long sections of close textual analysis further bloat the introduction; in addition Dyer seems less comfortable discussing these films compared with the ease and outright charm of his exploration of American cinema. These reservations aside, the book overall provides a welcome addition to the body of scholarly work on song in film.