Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

JohnHowardReid Copyright 19 April 1936 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. A Robert Z. Leonard production. New York opening at the Astor, 8 April 1936. Australian release: 7 October 1936. 20 reels. 180 minutes.COMMENT: Come late! — that's my advice. In fact, come an hour late. The story surrounding the musical numbers is the most dreary sludge ever churned out by a Hollywood hack, while the dialogue is easily the most tedious, banal, repetitious chatter we have ever been forced to sit through in a major studio production. When the musical numbers do come on — a whole hour in — and we see no less than six all at once — our spirits start to lift. True, the music is poorly arranged, and the first number, "If You Knew Susie", disappointingly pedestrian in both singing and staging; but then the eye-popping spectacular "Melody" is unveiled — quite dwarfing the next four items, though they are pleasing enough in themselves. The rest of the movie is naturally an anti-climax, though a darn sight more entertaining than that first dreary hour!As usual, Luise Rainer is a positive pain in the duodenum, but the rest of the players do an excellent job — especially considering they are likewise handicapped by the banal dialogue. They don't revel in it like Miss Rainer whose mouth slobbers into clichés with an abandonment that borders on indecent. Perhaps her knowledge of English is poor and she doesn't realize what utter garbage she is chewing into with such relish, but the director should have stopped her, or at least put her wise. But then she wouldn't have won that Academy Award, would she? Interesting that a performance so highly prized in its day is now regarded by almost everyone as utterly worthless and ridiculous. It's the sort of eye-rolling, voice-choked histrionics that give "old" movies their wholly undeserved bad name.Another problem which dates the film for modern audiences is that photographer Oliver Marsh chose to lens it in very soft focus, — a fashion that was already going out of style when The Great Ziegfeld was originally released.Fortunately, Leonard's direction has some effective moments, while the set designers and costumer have really excelled themselves.As already mentioned, the high point of the movie is the "Pretty Girl" number in which Gerstad pulls off one of the greatest camera tricks in all cinema history. The mind just boggles, your eyes stare out of your head in utter disbelief. When Dennis Morgan finishes the song and the camera cranes back and you realize the camera hasn't been standing still all the time but climbing up and up this fantastic pyramidal column, it's totally overwhelming. One of the most dazzling moments in movies! Sad that the rest of the picture isn't a tenth as colossal.

kijii I first saw this 3-hour movie on the big screen in the late 70s, and was happy to see it on a large screen. It won three impressive Oscars in 1936: Best Picture, Best Actress (Luise Rainer), and Best Dance Direction. It was also nominated for three more Oscars: Best Director (Robert Z Leonard), Best Writing (Original Story), Best Art Direction, and Best Film Editing. Luise Rainer won her first of two consecutive Oscars here and was the first performer ever to do this: her second Oscar was for The Good Earth (1937).Here, MGM paired William Powell with Myrna Loy in part of the 13 movies they made together in the 30s and 40s: Manhattan Melodrama (1934); The Thin Man (1934); Evelyn Prenice (1934); The Great Ziegfeld (1936); Libeled Lady (1936); After the Thin Man (1936); Double Wedding (1937); Another Thin Man (1939); I Love You Again (1940); Love Crazy (1941); Shadow of the Thin Man (1941); The Thin Man Goes Home (1945); and Song of the Thin Man (1947). Although The Great Ziegfeld is only a fairly routine biopic of Flo Ziegfeld from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 until his death in 1932, the movie is spectacular for his sets, decoration and starring cast, including appearances by some of his own stars: Fanny Brice, Harriet Hoctor, and Ray Bolger. One wonders why Eddie Cantor (played by Buddy Doyle) did not appear as himself in this movie. Will Rodgers (played by A.A. Trimble) had died in that small plane crash in 1935 before this movie was made. To our great fortune, this movie was made fairly soon after Ziegfeld's death when there were people who could still remember the Ziegfeld Follies with their lavish stairs, songs, and above all, his beautiful girls!! This movie is in black and white, but one can get an idea of what it might have been like in color from watching Funny Girl (1968).The movie opens with Flo Ziegfeld (William Powell) and his friend/rival Jack Billings (Frank Morgan) competing with each for attention to their respective attractions at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Ziegie's big attraction is Sandow the Strongman (Nat Pendleton) while Billings was a belly dancer, Little Egypt. Later, while in Europe, Ziegfeld bests Billings out of signing the French singer Anna Held (Luise Rainer) to a contract and then marries her. Later, after starting the Follies and having trouble with one of its stars, Audrey Dane (Virginia Bruce), Anna oversees the troublesome Audry kissing Flo while drunk and mistakes her drunken kiss for a real kiss. Anna then files for divorce. Flo's second wife is Billie Burke (played by Myrna Loy) to whom he is married for the rest of his life. Zeigfeld goes on to produce and promote several shows and reviews on Broadway, often with other people's money. Near the end of the movie, while overhearing four men in a barbershop saying that "Zeigfeld is all washed up," he promises to make four Broadway successes within a year and have them all playing at the same time. After making good on his bet, he hires private investigators to find the four original men and gives them all box ticket seats to all of his four plays. The four musical successes all played on Broadway at the same time—The Three Musketeers, Showboat, Rio Rita, and Whopee!

mark.waltz The Broadway legends total a great many, and fans argue over who was responsible for the transition of the old fashioned entertainments of the 19th century into what is now known as musical comedy. Certainly the many song writers of this time (George M Cohan, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin) had some impact on the creation of the modern world of American musical theatre, but it really was one man who transform the New York theater into what remains to this day.Florenze was already a show man when he had the idea of taking his low class burlesque shows on to the mainstream on Broadway where operetta and serious dramas were the main source of entertainment. His Follies between 1907 and 1931 gave way too many elaborate imitators, but he did it first and according to legend, did it best.Ironically, it was one of the dream makers of Hollywood who saw the potential in Ziegfeld's story being taking to the screen. MGM Studios, under the run of Louis B. Mayer with his artistic partner Irving Thalberg, had the dream that MGM had more stars in the were in heaven, a theme that Ziegfeld may have felt. Ziegfeld himself had Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, W.C. Fields and an all but now forgotten singer and dancer named Marilyn Miller as his leading lady. In the midst of all that, he found a funny looking Jewish girl named Fanny Brice and took her out of burlesque turning her into one of the most popular stars ever to cross the Broadway stage. Yes, that is the same Fanny Brice who was later portrayed by Barbra Streisand, so The Great Ziegfeld in a sense is a prequel to the classic stage and movie musical Funny Girl.But this is the Ziegfeld story, and to play him, MGM cast one of their top leading men, William Powell. It was too years after the success of The Thin Man so his leading lady, Myrna Loy, cast as Ziegfeld's second wife, Billie Burke. However, it is the actress playing his first wife, NFL, who got the attention and an Academy Award. That is Louise Rainer who had a brief run as a leading lady at MGM, winning to Academy Awards before leaving out of discontent. Rainer gives an excellent performance, although I debate her qualifications as leading actress for this film. Rainer is excellent in several things, particularly the one where after having discovering her husband's infidelity and later divorcing him, calls him to congratulate him about his second marriage.The bulk of the story focuses on his constant financial issues and this rivalry with fellow producer Frank Morgan who eventually becomes his closest supporter and keeps bailing him out. Then there are the musical numbers which would never fit on a Broadway stage. Still, these numbers are so elaborate and fantastic that I found myself tearing up in spite of having seen this a bunch of times. Of course, A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody is the most famous, but it's also difficult not to remember You Got to Pull Strings and You've Never Looked So Beautiful Before. In addition to Brice, Ray Bolger plays himself. An ironic moment has him telling Powell that he didn't have his heart in doing just props, an interesting look into the future when he turned down the opportunity to be the Tim Man and searched for a brain instead.The facts have been altered a little bit with Virginia Bruce's drunken chorus girl given a different name as well as the one based upon Marilyn Milker. Snippets of a few shows make it in bit you can't have everything. While this won the Oscar for Best Picture, I still think that Universal's Show Boat is better and practically flawless. Still, this is quite a triumph in its own way, and director Robert Z. Leonard would almost top it with a semi- sequel, Ziegfeld Girl that only mentions the great producer. Years later, Paul Henreid would play Ziegfeld in MGM's musical biography of Sigmund Romberg and Walter Pidgeon would argue with Streisand after she slipped a pillow into her costume in Funny Girl. Powell played Ziegfeld one more time, however, in 1945's elaborate version of what MGM thought the Follies would look like on screen.

The_Film_Cricket A few years ago I made it my business to see every film that ever won the Oscar for Best Picture for no other reason than to disagree with their choices out of experience, not general principle. I believe in being fair. I also believe that time is valuable, and spending three hours with an irritation like The Great Ziegfeld is asking too much. I'm not kidding, I've had dry heaves that gave me more pleasure.The Great Ziegfeld is one part biography and one part musical spectacle that attempts to cover the entire career of showman Florenz Zeigfeld, Jr.'s career from sideshow barker up through the formation of The Ziegfeld Follies and his eventual death in 1932 at the age of 65. In between there are crumbs of biographical information about his two marriages, and the formation of what would become The Ziegfeld Follies which, for all their success, had to be infinitely more entertaining then they appear in this movie.As a biography, The Great Ziegfeld is mostly sponge-cleaned. Any negative references to the famed showman are neither inferred nor admitted, chiefly at the hand of Zeigfeld's widow Billie Burke who watched over this production like hawk to see that her husband's name would remain in the annals of sainthood. Ziegfeld is seen in this movie as a man who was a genius as marketing, at showmanship and in his relationships. Nevermind that he was married twice and left his first wife to be with his second.The movie starts off okay with Zeigfeld (William Powell) working as a carnival barker at the 1893 World's Exposition in Chicago selling tickets to Eugen Sandow the Strongman (played by former Olympic Wrestler Nat Pendleton). His main competition is Jack Billings (Frank Morgan), the barker across the way who is selling a belly dancer named "Little Egypt." Zeigfeld has a brainstorm. He uses his marketing know-how and allows the young lady patrons to actually come up and feel Sandow's muscles, which I suppose gives us the first interactive experience. This bit of business acumen turns the crowds away from Little Egypt and right over the Sandow.Year later, Ziegfeld goofs Billings again. They are in Europe trying to get the famed singer Anna Held (Oscar winner Luise Rainer) to sign a contract with them. Zeigfeld earns her trust and not only gets her to sign, but also marries her. Time goes on and Zeigfeld becomes a success, forming his own show The Ziegfeld Follies. Anna sees Flo through the salad days but as time goes on she resents his infidelity and divorces him. He marries Billie Burke but Held still holds love in her heart for her former husband. That leads to the most talked about and acclaimed scene in the film as Anna gets a phone call from Flo and congratulates him on his new marriage while she goes to pieces. It has been argued that this was the scene that got Rainer her first Oscar.If any of this sounds the last bit interesting then you probably don't ask for much. The uneven narrative is broken up by recreations of many of the musical numbers that Flo created for his follies. The dance numbers are interminable, not to mention monotonous and boring. Many numbers feature performers moving about the stage in large, garish costumes. There is no geometry to these numbers, no orientation as they would be later under the direction of Busby Berkley. We see performers head on as we would on the stage, not in three-dimensions as we should in a movie. The most famous number is a large lumbering dinosaur of a production that features a giant staircase that looks like a wedding cake. Surrounding the axis are men in tuxes while women in large fluffy gowns sit on the stairs as the camera moves past them. Yes, it is dreamlike, but it is endless, pointless, meaningless and finally frustrating. If that weren't bad enough, right in the middle of the movie is a performance of "If You Know Suzy" by a singer in blackface, YUCK! Some moments of brightness appear, such as an appearance by the unforgettable Fanny Brice with that wide mouth and that over-extended New York accent lined with a heavy dose of Judaica, she had a marvelous screen presence. She livens, for a moment, what is essentially dead material. Then she's gone as quickly as show came. Too bad. To my mind, this is the single worst film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture. It's big, it's garish, but is is struggle to sit through.