Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. The Great Ziegfeld is the ninth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Advertised as a William Powell and Myrna Loy picture, Academy voters in 1937 may have gone into The Great Ziegfeld with images of another Thin Man type romp. The Thin Man this is not, but it is very clear why Oscar voters at the time went head over heels for this problematic and mediocre biopic.
Powell plays the titular Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., a producer who managed, through a combination of genius and deception, to create some of the most popular stage productions around the turn of the 20th century. Loy is credited as a co-lead but really only appears in the final 30 minutes or so as Billie Burke, Ziegfeld’s second wife and a notable actor in her own right (in real life she played Glinda in the Wizard of Oz.) Across the film “Flo” Ziegfeld builds up a strongman (Nat Pendleton) into a worldwide sensation, woos a French singer (Luise Rainer) that he builds a stage show around and even turns Fannie Bryce (playing herself in a bizarre cameo) into a household name. As he chases the ever elusive high of a new hit show, he also revels in undermining rival producer Billings (Frank Morgan) attempts at taking the limelight. The Great Ziegfeld is an absolute slog to get through with modern eyes. Ziegfeld’s antics are dull and repetitive enough after half an hour, let alone across the over 3 hour runtime of this film. At the time, the film was actually the longest talking film ever made, and it feels like it. Each mediocre production’s rise and fall blends together with the next across a background Ziegfeld’s tedious womanizing. Powell brings his trademark charisma to the role but the character is too one dimensional to utilize him well. On top of all the faults of filmmaking and script, The Great Ziegfeld is just unnecessarily, irredeemably racist beyond even contemporary Oscar winners. One notable distasteful sequence sees Rainer’s character decry a possible trip to the American west out of fear of the “savages” that inhabit the land. The entire film is littered with disparaging depictions of and commentary about a variety of minorities. Still, for as tough a watch as The Great Ziegfeld is today, it is perhaps the easiest film thus far to understand as a Best Picture Winner. First of all, it is a biopic. We have seen time and time again over the years that the Academy loves biopics and, while Cimmaron and Mutiny on the Bounty had biographical elements this was the first genuine biopic to win Best Picture. More importantly Ziegfeld, for all his faults, represents the Hollywood ideal of risking everything for art and showmanship. It is not hard to imagine a group of film executives and creatives seeing in Flo a bit of their own folly and dogged determination to entertain the masses. The show must go on as the old adage says. The Great Ziegfeld is by most accounts was widely acclaimed as a stylish spectacle — it certainly is grandiose — at the time of release even if its star has fallen significantly over the years. Looking back at it now, the film is better seen as a preview of a type of navel gazing that can take hold of Hollywood’s biggest awards voting body. If not for the Best Picture win, this is a film whose reputation would now be as dull as the experience of watching it. 3/10
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