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| A massive set piece from The Ziegfeld Follies. |
Release Date: March 22, 1936. Running Time: 176 minutes. Screenplay: William Anthony McGuire. Producer: Hunt Stromberg. Director: Robert Z. Leonard.
THE PLOT:
Florence "Flo" Ziegfeld (William Powell) has always dreamed of show business, but has struggled with money: Namely, whenever he has it, he can't help but spend it. After finding some success promoting strongman Eugen Sandow (Nat Pendleton), he sees his chance. He uses the money he's made to travel to Europe, where he secures a contract with Polish-born singer Anna Held (Luise Rainer), whom he later marries.
Not content to simply promote his wife's show, he goes on to create the Ziegfeld Follies, elaborate revues featuring hundreds of gorgeous dancers. But Ziegfeld's own nature interferes with his success. His love of extravagance leads him to spend money as quickly as he makes it, and his love of beauty manifests in infidelity, threatening to leave him right back where he started: with nothing.
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| Ziegfeld woos singer Anna Held (Luise Rainer) - personally as well as professionally. |
CHARACTERS:
Florenz Ziegfeld: William Powell had an outstanding year in 1936. He was nominated for an Oscar for My Man Godfrey, but he as easily could have been nominated (or indeed, won) for this movie. With a lesser performance, Ziegfeld could easily have come across as a shallow and profligate cad. Powell's charismatic performance keeps him likable even when his behavior is at its worst, and his lively patter and expressions help carry the overlong movie through some very slow stretches.
Billie Burke: Powell is reteamed with his Thin Man co-star, Myrna Loy, as Ziegfeld's last wife. Loy's part is much smaller here, with her first appearance coming after the two hour mark, but she and Powell retain their screen chemistry. The two of them just fit, as naturally as Tracy and Hepburn or Bogart and Bacall, and it's easy to see why they shared the screen more than a dozen times. Loy's Burke provides a supportive counter to Powell's Ziegfeld. While he jumps from one extravagance to the next, she quietly saves and invests - which ends up rescuing him when he suffers a few misfires.
Anna Held: Luise Rainer won the Academy Award for Best Actress as Ziegfeld's first wife. I strongly disagree with that award. Anna is clearly not a lead character; I doubt her screen time exceeds thirty minutes, nor is she a particularly dominant presence. Given that this was the year that introduced the Supporting Actor/Actress awards, that would surely have been a more appropriate slot for her. Beyond that... Rainer is probably the weakest of the film's major performers, overemoting to a degree that becomes exhausting to watch. She would win a second Oscar the following year, for The Good Earth, and that far more restrained performance remains excellent; this one, however, does not.
Jack Billings: Frank Morgan is Ziegfeld's professional rival. The film opens with Billings' show, Little Egypt, easily outperforming Ziegfeld's strongman show at the 1893 World Fair. Ziegfeld is able to steal Billings' girl at the fair... and then later his butler... and eventually, Billings' star act. He even steals the man's pretty receptionist for the Follies, leaving Billings to switch to dowdy secretaries from that point on. For all of that, he is clearly fond of Ziegfeld even when working against him. When Ziegfeld needs money for the Follies, Billings first enjoys a laugh at his old rival's financial straits, but then immediately wires him the money. The interactions between these two characters are the most consistently enjoyable parts of the movie, and writer William Anthony McGuire wisely makes their odd friendship the centerpiece of the film's last major dramatic scene.
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| The production number are extremely well-staged, but there are too many of them. |
A PICTURE TOO BIG FOR ITS OWN GOOD:
The Great Ziegfeld was rapturously received in 1936, audiences and critics alike responding to the mammoth production. In a flourish worthy of the real Ziegfeld, the movie was sold for its scale. Advertisements trumpeted the 3 hour running time, at that time the longest talking film ever released. Contemporary trailers even advertised that tickets would be at a premium because of its length - creating the impression of a not-to-be-missed spectacle.
The recreations of moments from Ziegfeld's shows are often dazzling. A production number set to Irving Berlin's A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody is incredible, with a veritable army of dancers performing on a spinning staircase leading up to the extravagantly-coiffed star. As the camera pulls back, we see that the stairs and dancers all form the image of a giant cake, with a curtain-formed topper descending as the image snaps into focus. I can't recall ever having seen anything like it in a live-action movie.
But there's simply too much. That set piece is easily the highlight of the movie's recreated performances... but it's followed quickly by several other numbers, often with only one or two scenes of character or dialogue separating them. The middle hour often feels more like a Ziegfeld Follies sampler than a proper movie, and the drama begins to stall under the weight of the Broadway set pieces.
The dramatic scenes also feel like a backward step after the previous two Best Picture winners. It Happened One Night and Mutiny on the Bounty kept their stories moving, cutting into scenes with action already underway and cutting out at dramatic high points. The Great Ziegfeld feels less of a piece with them than with Grand Hotel or Cavalcade, with scenes playing out from character entrances through to character exits. The results feel stagey and even stilted. Some tighter editing would have done wonders for the pacing.
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| Ziegfeld woos actress Billie Burke (Myrna Loy), who will become his final wife. |
A LACK OF INSIGHT:
Overlength is this movie's biggest sin. However, it also fails to give us any real insight into Ziegfeld's career. The first hour teases that it might show how Ziegfeld became a success. We see him become inspired to sell strongman Sandow as a sex object to women after a woman becomes entranced with his ability to flex his muscles in time to music. Later, he muses to a young girl: "I'm going to take all the beautiful girls like you, and I'm going top ut them together and make pictures with them." - basically, the idea that would become the Follies.
But... that's the last we see of anything hinting at a creative process. He talks about wanting to do a show, and then we cut to performances of the show. He hears four men in a barber shop grousing about his lackluster recent offering, and angrily declares that he will create four simultaneous Broadway hits; then, after a talk with his wife, we cut to those four shows debuting. There is never a sense of where he gets ideas, or how he develops them. Ziegfeld's creativity was at least as major part of him as his womanizing, but we get no sense of it in this film, and I can't help but see that as a major failing.
OVERALL:
Time has taken its toll on The Great Ziegfeld's reputation, and it's now generally regarded as one of the weakest Best Picture winners. I wouldn't go that far. It's clearly better-crafted than The Broadway Melody, more engaging than Cavalcade, and more complete and better-acted than Cimarron.
Still, the script is disappointingly content to wade in very shallow waters; and while many of the set pieces are splendid, there are simply too many of them. The result is a movie that never finds much focus or momentum, and that is paralyzed by sheer overlength.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
Outstanding Production - 1935: Mutiny on the Bounty
Outstanding Production - 1937: The Life of Emile Zola
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