Les Miserables, the most anticipated film of the year and the most anticipated screen musical since Chicago ten years ago or maybe even Cabaret forty years ago, got me thinking about the best musicals available on Blu-ray vs. the best musicals not yet on the best home video format ever.

Let’s list these as the best available:

• Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
• Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
• South Pacific (1958)
• Gigi (1958)
• West Side Story (1961)
• The Music Man (1962)
• My Fair Lady (1964)
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• Chicago (2002)
• Dreamgirls (2007)

And these as the best not yet available:

• 42nd Street (1933)
• Top Hat (1935)
• Show Boat (1936)
• Easter Parade (1948)
• The King and I (1956)
• Mary Poppins (1956)
• Oliver! (1968)
• Cabaret (1972)
• Victor/Victoria (1982)
• Les Miserables (2012)

I did not consider The Wizard of Oz which I think of more as a fantasy with music than a pure musical. In any event, Warner Home Video has not stopped fiddling with the property, which they’ve already released on home video on numerous occasions. It was last released on Blu-ray in an expensive 70th anniversary collector’s edition just three years ago. It has now been set for an upgraded release next year. If they wait one more year they can call it the 75th anniversary edition!

That leaves the 68 year-old Meet Me in St. Louis as the oldest great musical to get a Blu-ray upgrade. Released for the holiday shopping season last year, the Hugh Martin-Ralph Blane musical, directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien has never looked or sounded better. The infectious story of a turn-of-the-20th-Century Missouri family facing a possible move to New York is still a joy to watch and listen to with such immortal songs as “The Boy Next Door:; “The Trolley Song” and the holiday favorite, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

Released just this year with much ballyhoo, the Blu-ray edition of Arthur Freed’s Singin’ in the Rain capitalized on the release of last year’s similarly themed Oscar winner, The Artist. Rain was and remains the most fun of the two, although seen recently the film does not move me as much as it once did. It, of course, looks and sounds better than ever, but nothing will ever replace the fun of having seen it in a revival house in the 1970s and coming home splashing and singing in the rain.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s greatest score beautifully rendered is what makes Joshua Logan’s film version of South Pacific immortal despite the director’s ill-advised penchant for color filters making a near mockery of Leon Shamroy’s magnificent cinematography. “There Is Nothing Like a Dame”; “Young Than Springtime”; “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair”; “Some Enchanted Evening” and the rest have never sounded better.

Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi, directed by Vincente Minnelli, falls short, but just barely, of being the screen equivalent of their greatest Broadway show, My Fair Lady. Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold are perfectly cast in the leads who are provided with such songs as “The Night They Invented Champagne”; “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore” and of course, the title song.

Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins may have clashed over the approach to the film version of West Side Story but their combined efforts gave us a beautifully realized musical with fine interpretations of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim score, dubbed or otherwise, from Natalie Wood, Richard Beyer, Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and especially Rita Moreno. Thrilling productions of “Tonight”; “Maria”, “Somewhere” set against a tough New York City background remain trenchant more than fifty years later.

Morton Da Costa’s film version of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man looks and sounds like an expanded version of the stage musical, which it is, but it’s everything we could have asked for with original star Robert Preston playing opposite screen star Shirley Jones. “76 Trombones” and “Till There Was You”, as indeed the entire score, have never sounded better and those band costumes have never looked redder!

The cream of the crop of the legendary Broadway musicals, Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady was given a scrumptious interpretation by George Cukor and other artisans at the top of their craft buoyed by a raft of delightful performances from Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper and more. “I Could Have Danced All Night”, “On the Street Where You Live” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” are brought brilliantly to life.

A world-wide phenomenon in the mid-1960s, the film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music looks ever new in its brilliant Blu-ray upgrade commemorating the early days of Maria and the Von Trapp Family Players. Julie Andrews has never been more radiant and Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Peggy Wood and all those kids and nuns still enchant under the sole direction of Robert Wise.

Most of the musicals of the last decade have been given Blu-ray upgrades, but the best of the lot are the two best musicals of the era, the long-awaited screen versions of musicals from 1975 and 1982, respectively. Rob Marshall’s film of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago was both fascinating for its constant sparkle and for the performances of actors we never knew could sing (Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere) and those we knew who could (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah). Similarly, the exuberance of Bill Condon’s film of Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen’s Dreamgirls is highlighted by the powerhouse voices of Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Holliday.

Of the films not yet released on Blu-ray, we can rejoice that both Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade and Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret will be released early next year. The release of Cabaret is especially good news considering the DVD version has always been something of an eyesore. It has been given an extensive restoration.

Pristine transfers of black-and-white films would benefit the Busby Berkeley musicals of the early 1930s, particularly 42nd Street as well as all the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals of the 1930s of which I would most especially like to see Irving Berlin’s Top Hat given the upgrade.

The grand-daddy of all modern musicals, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat, was filmed three times, most gloriously in 1936 with Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, Hattie McDaniel and Charles Winninger heading the cast. Only the 1951 remake with Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel and Ava Gardner has made it to DVD. Warner Bros. has been promising us a special DVD package of all three. Wouldn’t it be nice if they upgraded their promise to Blu-ray? I’d even settle for just the 1936 version.

Of all the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals yet remaining to be upgraded, the one I most want to see on Blu-ray is the sumptuous 1956 production of The King and I with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner.

One of Disney’s most ambitious productions and certainly the studio’s best combined live action/animation feature was Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews beguiling audiences with a Spoonful of Sugar. It cries out for a Blu-ray upgrade along with all the other films that Disney has slowly been doling out a snail’s pace.

Oliver! is the film hat most closely resembles LesMiserables. Both are based on literary classics that had been filmed numerous times before. Both are based on stage musicals that thrilled London before Broadway and both feature a mix of well-known performers and lesser known players. Lionel Bart’s Oliver! was the fifth musical in eleven years to win an Oscar for Best Picture, but the last for thirty-four years until Chicago ten years ago, the last to date.

Julie Andrews’ return to musicals in yje Henry Mancini-Leslie Bricusse musical, Victor/Victoria, was a major triumph and one that needs revitalizing on Blu-ray as soon as possible.

It goes without saying that Les Miserables will be as eagerly anticipated on Blu-ray several months after it hits theatres on Christmas Day as the film is now by the movie-going public.

New DVD releases this week include Men in Black 3 and ParaNorman.