The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

The first decade of the Academy Awards (1928-1937) is notorious for having not-so-hot Best Picture winners and nominees on the whole. As a result, it has accounted for a large portion that I haven't seen yet. I just reduced that number in spite of mixed reviews from both contemporary and later critics.

Said to be mostly faithful to reality except for the ending, the film depicts stage producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (William Powell) from his days as a struggling carnival barker in 1893 to his death in 1932. You might see him as cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump, what with his cycling between considerable wealth and brokeness, his dishonesty, his questionable business practices, and his womanizing. The last of these traits wins him two wives, Anna Held (Luise Rainer) and then Billie Burke (Myrna Loy, given second billing misleadingly but understandably in light of Powell). He also has a fair-weather-friendly rivalry with Jack Billings (Frank Morgan) through the years.

I went in knowing nothing about Ziegfeld except that he organized his eponymous "Follies," characterized by song, dance, and plenty of pretty women. I took more interest after learning of his connections with many familiar names, including Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, Fanny Brice, and Ray Bolger, the last two of whom play themselves herein.

As for the Ziegfeld Follies, well, they're nothing if not big and expensive for the time. I've seen Broadway musicals that don't go as far. Some of the sequences use long shots, which I usually like, but with so many performers, it meant that the filmmakers had to give up on everything going perfectly.

The songs? I recognized a few of the 18, and there may be some educational value in hearing others. Can't say I got much enjoyment out of them, tho.

Rainer, whose Held borders on manic-depressive in reaction to Ziegfeld, may be the best individual part of the film. She did become the first Oscar-winning actress in a musical. By contrast, even fans found Loy rather lacking, at least with regard to an authentic portrayal of Burke.

The main complaint about TGZ is its 176-minute length, a record among talkies at the time. You kinda have to expect that from a story that covers 39 years with no obvious big leaps forward. But how much of it did we really need? You saw how short my synopsis was, and I could easily have made it shorter. I had split my viewing across two days.

Nevertheless, I never found myself all that bored. When the movie ended, I still checked out extras. The worst I can say is that it might be too average to justify the runtime.

Worthy of its box office success? Oh, probably. Its Best Picture status? From what I've seen, there wasn't much to choose from in 1936. If you plan to see just one of the year's nominees, I recommend San Francisco or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Dodsworth and Libeled Lady didn't do it for me, and The Story of Louis Pasteur is hard to find), but I don't begrudge TGZ.