The Great Ziegfeld

Boy, is this movie long......but worth it for the most part. William Powell is, as usual, his urbane, sophisticated self in a romanticized portrayal of Florenz Ziegfeld. Myrna Loy,leaving behind her wisecracking Nora Charles persona, does a fair job as Billie Burke. Burke, whose movie career was based on dithering, silly women, was once a beauty who graced the Follies. Loy doesn't come across as either but she has never given a bad performance so she is believable. But Louise Rainer as Anna Held is the one to watch here. A beautiful doll-like creature, she enchants you with her performance. The famous telephone scene may be overrated somewhat but it worked for me....and obviously for the Academy...it garnered her an Oscar. The music is so wonderful and the "Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" with Dennis Morgan is eye candy. One glaring fault is that there is a very short sequence with the great Fanny Brice in which she is singing "My Man" ( probably one of the greatest torch songs of all times) and it is just cut-off in mid warble as the story goes on to another scene. An unforgivable sin!! There could have been a little less talk and a little more singing/dancing in the movie but since it is a biography and not primarily a musical, all, except for the Brice faux pas, is forgiven!

Long but well worth hanging in there for. Luise Rainer gives an outstanding well-deserved Oscar winning performance as Anna Held. The first half of the movie which covers the period of Ziegfeld's marriage to Held is the better half of the movie. Great re-enactment of stage Follies productions. 9 out of 10.

Knowing several people, on and outside of IMDb, who consider The Great Ziegfeld one of the weakest Best Picture winners, that didn't stop me from seeing it anyway. To me though, while it's not flawless and not the best film of the year it was still incredibly well-made and entertaining stuff and from personal view it is nowhere near one of the worst Best Picture winners.

The Great Ziegfeld agreed is overlong with a draggy and at times uneventful first half and half an hour could easily have been trimmed. And more could have done with the relationship between Ziegfeld and Billie Burke which appeared late in the film and didn't feel developed enough, almost like an afterthought.

However, The Great Ziegfeld is very lavishly mounted, with photography that's both beautiful and clever, sumptuous costume design and some of the most handsomely gorgeous sets of any 30s musical. Other pleasures are the marvellous and very well-staged(without being too overblown) songs with A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody being an absolute show-stopper, a script peppered with humour and heart and the mostly poignant story. Standout scenes were Fanny Brice's charming My Man, Ray Bolger's witty dancing to My Follies Girl, Luise Rainer's heart-breaking telephone(justifiably famous) and especially A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody with its clever photography and perhaps one of the best uses of a staircase in a film. The direction is adept and the performances are great, with William Powell suave personified and especially Luise Rainer who is the epitome of charm and grace, capable of a good range of emotions as seen in the telephone scene. Fanny Brice, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger are all memorable, while Myrna Loy is underused she's hardly wasted either.

Overall, a well-made, entertaining and very good film and well worth the look. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Like its subject, this movie is interesting and generally entertaining, but often overblown. It's well worth seeing, although it could also have been whittled down by a good portion of its running time without losing anything important. It does present a believable and entertaining look at Ziegfeld's shows and personality, along with some good scenes and some good performances that keep it going.

William Powell was a pretty good choice to play Ziegfeld, since he has the knack of making a character eccentric and distinctive without having it come across as too forced or unnatural. And Myrna Loy is always a charming co-star, for Powell or anyone else. Yet it is Luise Rainer who delivers by far the most memorable performance - she makes her character temperamental but endearing, unpredictable but completely sympathetic. The best parts of the movie come when she is a big part of the action, and when her character slips into the background in the second half, the movie loses something. The rest of the large cast does get some good moments, and it's fun to see a couple of performers playing themselves, although some of them don't get nearly enough to do. The many production numbers contain some very good ones, but there are others that aren't worth the amount of time they were given, and that could have been cut down considerably without losing anything.

You can see why this impressed a lot of viewers in its time, and it's still pretty good entertainment. It could have been better, though, with a little more restraint. But then, its excesses are rather in keeping with its subject, and at any rate they don't keep it from being worth seeing.

Like some huge, lumbering, Paleozoic beast with a heart, nothing like this film has existed in a long time. And I doubt that there will be anything like it again. "The Great Ziegfeld" is a grandiose, three hour, B&W cinematic opus that chronicles the true story (more or less) of the professional life of legendary producer/showman "Flo" Ziegfeld, played convincingly by William Powell. It is an interesting, lovable film because it is so historically ... quaint.

Structurally, the narrative takes a chronological approach. However, except for the film's starting year of 1893 and the ending soon after the 1929 stock market crash, no dates are given, a shortsighted flaw in the screenplay. But during this roughly forty-year period we see Ziggy's ambition unfurl into a successful career of producing some of the most extravagant musical shows in history. And throughout, the theme remains the same: to "glorify the American girl", that is to say to glorify the early twentieth century stereotyped image of the American girl.

Despite his success as a showman, Ziggy was constantly plagued with financial problems, and embroiled in relations with women, the two most important being: the humorously indecisive Anna Held, and the lovely Billie Burke.

More interesting to me than the biography is the lavish, grandiose production numbers. In the most grandiose of all, Dennis Morgan sings "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody", as the camera ascends a slowly revolving spiral staircase adorned with "Ziegfeld girls" in outlandish costumes. The set, resembling a wedding cake, is about as tall as it is wide, with the stage curtain rising to what seems like stratospheric heights.

The film's strengths are its humorous script, the dazzling sets, the glamorous costumes, the music, a cameo appearance by Fanny Brice, and a great tap dance routine by Ray Bolger. My main complaint is the film's length. Also, I find it curious that this big budget beast with its theme of wealth and beauty came out right in the middle of the Great Depression. MGM must have been on a colossal ego trip.

Overall, "The Great Ziegfeld" is fun, and definitely worth watching, especially as a time capsule to an entertainment era that is gone forever.