Best Based on play or musical Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of based on play or musical cinema — measured across 3,761 indexed frames from 55 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Based on play or musical films over-index on candle, stone wall and wooden table — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
Les Misérables (2012)
Tom HooperDP Danny CohenIMDb 7.5TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
An adaptation of the successful stage musical based on Victor Hugo's classic novel set in 19th-century France. Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
- 2
Quills (2000)
Philip KaufmanDP Rogier StoffersIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
The infamous writer, the Marquis de Sade of eighteenth century France, is imprisoned at Charenton Insane Asylum for unmentionable activities. He manages to befriend the young Abbé de Coulmier, who runs the asylum, along with a beautiful laundress named Madeline. Things go terribly wrong when the Abbe finds out that the Marquis' books are being secretly published. Emperor Napoleon contemplates sending Dr. Royer-Collard to oversee the asylum, a man famed for his torturous punishments. It could mean the end of Charenton and possibly the Marquis.
- 3
Fiddler On The Roof (1971)
Norman JewisonDP Oswald MorrisIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews and Orthodox Christians live in the little village of Anatevka in the pre-revolutionary Russia of the Czars. Among the traditions of the Jewish community, the matchmaker arranges the match and the father approves it. The milkman Reb Tevye is a poor man that has been married for twenty-five years with Golde and they have five daughters. When the local matchmaker Yente arranges the match between his older daughter Tzeitel and the old widow butcher Lazar Wolf, Tevye agrees with the wedding. However Tzeitel is in love with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil and they ask permission to Tevye to get married that he accepts to please his daughter. Then his second daughter Hodel (Michele Marsh) and the revolutionary student Perchik decide to marry each other and Tevye is forced to accept. When Perchik is arrested by the Czar troops and sent to Siberia, Hodel decides to leave her family and homeland and travel to Siberia to be with her beloved Perchik. When his third daughter Chava decides to get married with the Christian Fyedka, Tevye does not accept and considers that Chava has died. Meanwhile the Czar troops evict the Jewish community from Anatevka.
- 4
Dracula (1931)
Tod BrowningDP Karl FreundIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.
- 5
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Joel SchumacherDP John MathiesonIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →
Begins when an opera ghost terrorizes the cast and crew of the French Opera House while tutoring a chorus girl. He finally drives the lead soprano crazy so she and her friend leave. The girl is able to sing lead one night but the soprano doesn't want her show stolen so she comes back. The ghost demands they keep giving his protégé lead roles. Meanwhile, His pupil falls in love with the Vicomte de Chagny, but the Phantom is in love with Christine, his student. The Phantom is outraged by their love and kidnaps Christine to be his eternal bride. Will Raoul, the Vicomte, be able to stop this dastardly plan?
- 6
Tim BurtonDP Dariusz WolskiIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In the Victorian London, the barber Benjamin Barker is married to the gorgeous Lucy and they have a lovely child, Johanna. The beauty of Lucy attracts the attention of the corrupt Judge Turpin, who falsely accuses the barber of a crime that he did not commit and abuses Lucy later after gaining custody of her. After fifteen years in exile, Benjamin returns to London under the new identity of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge against Turpin. He meets the widow Mrs. Lovett who is the owner of a meat pie shop who tells him that Lucy swallowed arsenic many years ago, and Turpin assigned himself tutor of Johanna. He opens a barber shop above her store, initiating a crime rampage against those who made him suffer and lose his beloved family.
- 7
The Crucible (1996)
Nicholas HytnerDP Andrew DunnIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →
A small group of teen girls in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts caught in an innocent conjuring of love potions to catch young men are forced to tell lies that Satan had invaded them and forced them to participate in the rites and are then forced to name those involved. Thrown into the mix are greedy preachers and other major landowners trying to steal others' land and one young woman infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his innocent wife. Arthur Miller wrote the events and the subsequent trials where those who demanded their innocence were executed, those who would not name names were incarcerated and tortured, and those who admitted their guilt were immediately freed as a parable of the Congressional Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1950's America.
- 8
12 Angry Men (1957)
Sidney LumetDP Boris KaufmanIMDb 9.0TMDB 8.6See in full on FrameThrower →
The defense and the prosecution have rested, and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young man is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open-and-shut case of murder soon becomes a detective story that presents a succession of clues creating doubt, and a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, AND each other. Based on the play, all of the action takes place on the stage of the jury room.
- 9
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Joel CoenDP Bruno DelbonnelIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →
As ghastly witches prophesy that Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, will soon become the King of Scotland, ambitious Lady Macbeth prompts her husband to act. So, to speed things up, conflicted Macbeth seizes the opportunity, and as blood stains his hands, the throne is his for the taking. However, murder is an unbearable burden, and before long, rabid paranoia blackens the conscience and imperils the sanity of the cursed couple. Now, only death awaits. Can a mere mortal escape fate?
- 10
The Sound of Music (1965)
Robert WiseDP Ted D. McCordIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1930's Austria, a young woman named Maria (Dame Julie Andrews) is failing miserably in her attempts to become a nun. When Navy Captain Georg Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) writes to the convent asking for a governess that can handle his seven mischievous children, Maria is given the job. The Captain's wife is dead, and he is often away, and runs the household as strictly as he does the ships he sails on. The children are unhappy and resentful of the governesses that their father keeps hiring, and have managed to run each of them off one by one. When Maria arrives, she is initially met with the same hostility, but her kindness, understanding, and sense of fun soon draws them to her and brings some much-needed joy into all their lives - including the Captain's. Eventually he and Maria find themselves falling in love, even though the Captain is already engaged to a Baroness named Elsa and Maria is still a postulant. The romance makes them both start questioning the decisions they have made. Their personal conflicts soon become overshadowed, however, by world events. Austria is about to come under the control of Germany, and the Captain may soon find himself drafted into the German Navy and forced to fight against his own country.
What based on play or musical films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a based on play or musical frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — candle is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- candle2.9×
- stone wall2.6×
- wooden table2.3×
- horse2.0×
- hat2.0×
- wooden chair1.9×
- tie1.6×
How based on play or musical films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate based on play or musical from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 16%high keyvs 12% baseline
- 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 3,761 frames from 55 films carrying the based on play or musical label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/based-on-play-or-musical
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