If you talk to me about bad movies long enough, I will eventually arrive at The Great Ziegfeld. I’m not sure what singular ingredient gets my blood up, I can only say that I have seen this movie twice in my lifetime and both times it succeeds at giving me a headache.
Others have regaled this movie for its sumptuous photography and it’s scale – this is a big movie! But, for me, this movie is a mess, big or small. It bats back and forth between all musical numbers great and small, none of which are the least bit interesting (the low point being a profane black-faced performance of “If you know Suzy”- YUCK!) Most of the time, we get musical production numbers that are only impressive in their scale, the most famous being a massive presentation in which hundreds of brides and grooms pose around a gigantic wedding cake. Honestly, I don’t know what it’s about. What does it have to do with anything?
Wrapped around those musical bits is the rise and personal struggle of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell) who makes himself into a master showman while treating the women in his life like old shoes. It’s always nice to see Powell – the most relaxed and charming leading man that ever graced Hollywood – but his performance here is strangely muted. He’s suppose to play a heel, a man who charms, marries and then drops his wives when he finds a better PYT to fit the bill. But, if you really want the best of Powell try The Thin Man or My Man Godfrey. Why waste time with this man who is essentially a rat?
One of the women in Ziegfeld’s wake is singer/actress Anna Held, played by Luise Rainer – “The Viennese Teardrop”. She would win the year’s Best Actress prize, a victory that was based on a scene in which she talks to her former common law husband (Ziegfeld) on the phone and withers emotionally as she wishes him congratulations on his new marriage. It is a good scene but she’s gone from the screen for most of the movie and the impact that her performance once had has long since blown away.
There isn’t much I can say about The Great Ziegfeld. It’s a lumbering dinosaur, an oversized movie with an underwhelming impact. Its got everything. Its got music. It is beautifully shot. Its got stars: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank “Wizard of Oz” Morgan, Reginald Owen, Ray Bolger and at least one fantastic (though brief) performance by Fanny Brice. But aside from that, the movie – at three hours! – runs past me without making a single impact and surfaces the idea in my brain that this is the most wrong-headed selection for the Academy’s Best Picture.
overthinkingoscar.wordpress.com 
Ziegfeld was known for producing lavish musical numbers. It would only make sense that the movie contain lavish musical numbers, and since this was produced by MGM, it would only make sense that the numbers be even more lavish and grand. The musical numbers do not tie into his personal life, and his originals didn’t, either. They were spectacles for public observation. My only complaint of this movie is that it isn’t accurate to his real life. Otherwise it is very entertaining. Taken for its own value, and not what it should represent, I’d say that it is excellent.
LikeLike
It’s a mess! The movie is a lumbering three hours long, the musical numbers make no sense and the story is all over the place. I find it a chore to sit through.
LikeLike