The Great Ziegfeld

Rating

Director

Robert Z. Leonard

Screenplay

William Anthony McGuire

Length

176 min.

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

MPAA Rating

Approved (PCA #2000)

Review

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

Ziegfeld (William Powell) began his career as a carnival barker, 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 in his Broadway productions nearly capsizes his efforts when audiences stop caring.

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 paramours dominates the non-production-number sequences of the film.

Ziegfeld spends much of his life seeking and losing fortunes. His expensive dance productions abuse his financiers’ pocket books and in the end lead to his undoing after a spate of failures. Long before his collapse, 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 Ziegfeld despite his dubious manner. His most stirring scenes feature his attempts to resurrect his career and find financing that will help deliver him from the poor house where he would soon die. Despite their rivalry, his one true friend through everything is Billings who takes pity on the once giant of a man and attempts to save him from his sorrow shortly before his death.

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

The Great Ziegfeld is like one of Flo’s protracted and expensive productions of the Follies. The sets and costumes are beautiful and the choreography/cinematography is spectacular but if the producers had excised all of the filler, you would be left with a pale husk of a story that seems little more than an excuse for the production numbers. It’s this parallelism that almost makes the film captivating. 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 the stage spectacles he brought to life.

Review Written

October 6, 2006