The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

• Review: ** ½ (out of ****)
• Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan, Fannie Brice, Virginia Bruce, Reginald Owen, Ray Bolger, Ernest Cossart, Joseph Cawthorn, Nat Pendleton, Harriet Hoctor
• Director: Robert Z. Leonard
• Screenplay: William Anthony McGuire
• Length: 176 min.
• MPAA Rating: Approved (PCA #2000)

As the ninth film to win Best Picture from the Academy ofMotion Picture Arts and sciences, TheGreat Ziegfeld lives up to its subject’s sense of grandeur. The life ofBroadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. is luxuriously brought to the screen bydirector Robert Z. Leonard.

Ziegfeld (William Powell) began his career as a carnivalbarker, trying to persuade passersby to step inside and view his strong man.When he finally breaks into the big time, his penchant for monetary excess inhis Broadway productions nearly capsizes his efforts when audiences stopcaring.

Competing with fellow showman Jack Billings (Frank Morgan)for business and for women, Ziegfeld manages to win the battle and takes Billings’ girl Anna Held(Luise Rainer) for his wife. Their see-saw battle for prominence and paramoursdominates the non-production-number sequences of the film.

Ziegfeld spends much of his life seeking and losingfortunes. His expensive dance productions abuse his financiers’ pocket booksand in the end lead to his undoing after a spate of failures. Long before hiscollapse, Anna leaves “Flo” and he soon moves on to marry actress Billie Burke(Myrna Loy).

Powell’s talent is his ability to make you like Ziegfelddespite his dubious manner. His most stirring scenes feature his attempts toresurrect his career and find financing that will help deliver him from thepoor house where he would soon die. Despite their rivalry, his one true friendthrough everything is Billingswho takes pity on the once giant of a man and attempts to save him from hissorrow shortly before his death.

The film also won Oscars for dance director Seymour Felixwhose work in the film is splendid and lead actress Luise Rainer. She was thefirst actress to win back-to-back Academy Awards for acting and it isn’t hardto see why. In her few scenes rising from French chanteuse to Broadway star, she grows more confident. When sheangrily leaves Flo after suspecting he has been unfaithful, her strength andcharisma shine through.

The Great Ziegfeld is like one of Flo’s protracted and expensive productions of the Follies. Thesets and costumes are beautiful and the choreography/cinematography isspectacular but if the producers had excised all of the filler, you would beleft with a pale husk of a story that seems little more than an excuse for theproduction numbers. It’s this parallelism that almost makes the filmcaptivating. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was nothing more than a showman like P.T.Barnum whose legacy was what he did on the stage rather than what he did offstage. His personal foibles and excesses are little more than footnotes to thestage spectacles he brought to life.

-Wesley Lovell (May 28, 2006)