The Great Ziegfeld Review

This has got to be one of the most dazzling, likable, extraordinary, fun, life changing, and well made musicals of all time. It's entertainment at it's finest, with excellent songs, brilliant choreography, cool story, likable and creative characters, excellent editing, and just overall best experience of classic cinema that I know of. The movie is basically a biography of Florenz Ziegfeld, played by William Powell. It shows his days as a small entertainer, all the way to his final breaths. On screen, Ziegfeld is just as interesting as he is on paper. It develops the characters well, giving everyone a colorful personality, so you're never bored with any scene that's just characters speaking to each other. Also, the musical numbers make the stage seem much more bigger, with so many people on the stage dancing and singing at the same time. In fact, more than 120 people were used in one musical number alone, with only about 100 even visible! You can tell this movie is detailed when there are people you can't even see on the stage. Also, in another musical number, they actually have DOGS on stage with the dancers, and they even trained the dogs to move at the whim of the dancers. In fact, I did some research, and the whole movie cost 2 million dollars! For the time, that was a LOT, and what's even more shocking is that the same musical number that had 120 people in it cost $250, 000! So, as a technical film, it passes with flying colors, but it also does excellent with entertainment values as well. You love watching the colorful characters interact, and when the musical numbers start coming fast than ever... Oh boy. So, I can't just sit here blabbing about why I love this film, let's get to "The Best and Worst of The Great Ziegfeld". The best is obviously the musical number I've been talking about all night, costing $250 000 and having 250 people, yup, that one. The title is called "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody". When I was watching this for the first time, I thought "Oh, this is pretty cool, you get a singer, some dancers, singing clowns, people playing piano - OH MY GOSH IS THE STAGE RISING??? IT'S GETTING HIGHER!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" So yeah, it got me pretty excited. It has so much work put into it, and the song and dancing itself is outstanding, so it works in both the technical aspect of film and the entertainment aspect. The worst for me would probably be the female lead, Myrna Loy. No, wait, she did great, but the writing for here made her seem almost like a teenager! Sure, she has some great scenes, but she just seems extremely needy and whiny, and I didn't care much for her. But besides that, nothing is flawed. This is an outstanding picture that shall stand as a classic throughout the ages, no matter the opinions of thy critical reviews or thy haters. I would recommend this to anybody who has a decent opinion of film, so basically everyone who's not a 12 year old that hates black and white and/or silent pictures.

5/5