The Great Ziegfeld
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Movie Reviews of The Great Ziegfeld
Movie Review: Circus of the Stars
Summary: 4 Stars
THE GREAT ZIEGFELD, often misspelled as Ziegfield, a lavish biopic from the consistently underrated MGM director Robert Z. Leonard (did the "Z" stand for "Ziegfeld"? I don't think so). The true facts of Flo Ziegfeld's marriage to soubrette Billie Burke may never be known, but Eve Golden's 2000 biography of Anna Held gave a good, wide-screen picture of his charm and business savvy. In Leonard's film, William Powell is magnificently sensual and aristocratic, while Luise Rainer breaks your heart as the petite, submissive, flirtatious Anna. Her famous phone scene won her the Oscar; when she uses the telephone to congratulate Flo on his marriage to Billie Burke, her regret and sorrow and loss play directly into the camera, which seems to eat them up like so much chocolate. Rainer's acting is hammy, though not as much as contemporary actresses like Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange, both of whom would have swallowed the phone for an Oscar.
People in the 1930s must have laughed at the idea of Myrna Loy playing Billie Burke, seeing as though they had the real Billie Burke right there to compare to her and as everyone knows, they are absolutely nothing alike. Though the offstage Billie Burke must have been more of a femme fatale than we think of "Glinda" as being, she denied, for example, having sex with Flo while he was still married to Anna. That would have spoiled her somewhat sexless, daffy image, sort of the Carol Channing of her day. The movie invents a fictional showgirl and has Virginia Bruce play her with a rapacity and blowsy sex lure not seen again until the recent Elizabeth Berkley classic SHOWGIRLS with Gina Gershon. Berkley and Gershon seem like virgins compared to Virginia Bruce playing "Audrey."
In other casting, having Fannie Brice playing herself must have been a no-brainer, but the truth is that the great stars of Ziegfeld made very few movies and were skittish about playing for the movie cameras. Or else they weren't good looking enough (like Ethel Merman)! Or else they were black and so doomed to underemployment in the racist structures of classic Hollywood cinema--think of Bert Williams for example, a star on Broadway, a nobody in Hollywood. Or else they had signed up to other studios and weren't available for MGM--Eddie Cantor made plenty of money for Sam Goldwyn, W.C. Fields for Paramount. Will Rogers, for example, had a long term contract with Fox and before his tragic 1935 had entertained a proposal by which he would have left Fox for MGM, nixing it saying, I've got a good thing going here as Fox's biggest star, but at MGM I'd just be another Fannie Brice.
Thus we get Ray Bolger in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD. And Harriet ("Who?") Hoctor. Still it's spectacular and no picture that introduces the divine Dennis Morgan can, in my opinion, receive anything fewer than four stars.
Movie Review: A Best Picture decision that hasn't held up over time
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is worthwhile viewing for any fan of classic cinema or William Powell, but over 70 years later it's hard to see why this film won Best Picture of 1936 and a film like "Dodsworth" lost. Today it does seem overly long on musical numbers that could have been cut and short on storyline. There are probably several reasons that the picture could have been better and wasn't, the primary reason being that at the time the film was made Ziegfeld had only been dead four years and was thus still fondly and recently remembered. Also, according to the little featurette that comes with the DVD, Ziegfeld's widow Billie Burke was heavily involved in the making of the film and wouldn't allow anything in it to besmirch his memory. Finally, the production code had just begun to be sternly enforced in 1934, making a true accounting of Ziegfeld's personal life pretty much impossible. As a result Ziegfeld is portrayed as just the unluckiest of fellows who is always being wrongly perceived as a ladies' man just because his business involves large numbers of chorines. In fact, Ziegfeld cheated on both wives incessantly, and Ziegfeld never even formally married Anna Held to begin with - instead they had a common law marriage according to the statutes of New York. However, none of these other factors can account for the complete lack of chemistry between Powell (Ziegfeld) and Loy (Billie Burke) in the film. Considering how the two had already been in several movies together by the time this film was made, and that they never failed to sparkle on screen together in the other movies, there must have been either a complete lack of direction or over-direction to wind up with the rather wooden performance that results whenever the two are in scenes together.
This movie would probably warrant only about three stars if it wasn't for William Powell's performance. Marvelous as always, he was at least allowed to portray Ziegfeld as the cagey trickster and gambler with tremendous class that he was, and he absolutely makes the film. I can't think of any other actor of that time period who could have done as good a job. As far as video quality, I was surprised at the scratchiness of the video portion of the transfer. There are numerous artifacts in the video that can be quite distracting at times, and at other points the video looks nearly perfect. There are only two extras features. One is a featurette lasting under ten minutes on the film and Ziegfeld's life with Luise Ranier, Ziegfeld's daughter, and others. The other feature is an unedited movietone newsreel of the grand opening of the film with short greetings from Harpo Marx, Ed Sullivan, and other celebrities.
Movie Review: Go with the Flo
Summary: 4 Stars
MGM's magnificent musical biopic THE GREAT ZIEGFELD won three Oscars, including Best Picture and Actress (Ranier). Seymour Felix also garnered a statuette for his staging of "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody."
With a running time of well-over three hours (including an intermission), this movie was a unique entertainment event for Americans who had recently passed through the Great Depression's darkest days.
Ziegfeld regular Ray Bolger's dance cameo marks his first appearance in a sound film. Fanny Brice also performs, but missing are the real Will Rogers (who died in a plane crash a year earlier) and Eddie Cantor. They're portrayed by mimics, plus W.C. Fields has no representation here at all. These are however minor quibbles.
The story episodically covers Florenz Ziegfeld's life from 1893, when he was a World's Fair carnival barker, until just after his financial ruin in the October '29 stock market crash, an event that forced the closing of Ziegfeld's popular musical, WHOOPIE! A troubled marriage to Anna Held (Ranier) is chronicled. In the last third of the story, Flo (Powell) marries Billie Burke (Loy), a union that proves a blessing for the aging showman when those lean years do come.
Before we reach sadder days however, we're treated to lavish and historically accurate costumes, huge production numbers, beautiful girls and especially many talented performers who recreate a sparkling facet of early 20th Century Show Biz. For fans of epic MGM musicals, this granddaddy of them all is a must see, as it is for anyone interested in all-out cinematic extravagance on a scale that perhaps only the Great Ziegfeld himself could have imagined or brought to realization.
TRIVIA: You probably won't find them, but the future Mrs. Richard Nixon (nee Pat Ryan) and Mrs. Harpo Marx (Susan Fleming) appear here as Ziegfeld Girls. Also, Vivian Vance (of I LOVE LUCY fame) is an audience member in one scene. Songwriter Jerome Kern cameos as himself.
Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.
(7.0) The Great Ziegfeld (1936) - William Powell/Luise Ranier/Myrna Loy/Frank Morgan/Fannie Brice/Ray Bolger/Virginia Bruce/Reginald Owen/Nat Pendleton/Herman Bing (uncredited: Buddy Clark/Mickey Daniels/William Demarest/Sarah Edwards/Susan Fleming/Virginia Grey/Jerome Kern/Dennis Morgan/Pat Nixon/Charles Trowbridge/Vivian Vance)
Movie Review: BLINDINGLY OPULENT AND SPELLBINDINGLY ENTERTAINING!
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Great Ziegfeld" is a biographic film on Broadway impressario, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., the man who "glorified the American girl". Determined to squeeze every last ounce of opulence from its coffers, MGM spared no expense in retelling what is essentially a melodrama with musical numbers tossed in for good effect. Flo (William Powell)is a cheap carnival barker when he crosses paths with Anna Held (Luise Rainer). Their chemistry is instant and through her talent as an artist, fame comes to them both. However, all bliss is fleeting and their marriage ends when Flo takes up with a chorus girl. But he ditches her for sassy Billie Burke (Myrna Loy) and then proceeds to create a series of lavish spectacles that only MGM could afford to do justice to. The most spectacular of these remains "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody"; a gargantuan revolving platform covered in dancers and art deco magificence.
Aside: Flo's second wife, Billie was a contract player at MGM during this time. Her best known role is as 'Glinda' the witch of the north in "The Wizard of Oz".
TRANSFER: Surprisingly smooth and very well balanced black levels and a good gray scale are the real selling features of this 3 hr. plus spectacle. Unfortunately an excess of age related dirt and scratches greet the viewer throughout the first hour of running time. However, things get cleaned up half way through for a really stunning transfer. Shadows and contrast levels are exemplary. The audio is clean, well balanced and quite simply, one of the best you are likely to encounter for a film of this vintage.
EXTRAS: A couple of featurettes that round out the history of the film - all too briefly.
BOTTOM LINE: Next to "Yankee Doodle Dandy" - another show folk bio with guts, "The Great Ziegfeld" is most readily recognized as one of the best! Add it to your film library!
Movie Review: they don't make 'em like they used to
Summary: 4 Stars
THE GREAT ZIEGFELD was another big one for MGM, a biopic extravaganza in which the life of Florenz Ziegfeld was used as a sounding board for a variety of ever more spectacular musical numbers. Along the way, there are brief respites for some guest stars (Ray Bolger and Fanny Brice - her line, "For Ziegfeld, I gotta be an urchin... even in burlesque, I was middle-class", is priceless), and mind-numbing musical numbers (how were those supposed to be done live on stage?), tied to a story of Ziegfeld's life and loves. This was not only a box office smash, it was also a big award magnet, winning the Academy Award as Best Picture as well as the award for Best Actress for Luise Rainer's portrayal of Anna Held. Now: this is an example of the height of frivolity, because Anna Held was a great sex symbol in her day (the turn-of-the-century equivalent of Brigitte Bardot in the 1950s) and the waif-like Luise Rainer is anything but... But does it matter? Rainer gets to do a celebrated smiling-through-tears telephone act (impressive enough for her to win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, which paved the way for the inevitable Oscar), and Myrna Loy shows up as Billie Burke (Mrs. Ziegfeld Number Two), though this caused the real Billie Burke no end of distress (she couldn't see why she shouldn't play herself). "A pretty girl/Is like a melody/That haunts you night and day..." And in its way, this movie, lumbering and overblown and fabricated as it is, remains a memorable example of MGM engineering. Not that there's anything wrong with that.