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April 22, 2008
Oscar Challenge: The Great Ziegfeld
It was three hours long, totally over the top and I loved it. I kept wishing someone would have edited the crap out of it, but that would have been a lousy way to pay homage to Ziegfeld.
Usually those crazy over-produced song and dance numbers with rotating staircases, dancers clad in glitter and feathers, and (I am not making this up) live ponies leave me bored to tears, but somehow this all worked. Maybe it was because William Powell is so much fun to watch. Obviously he's going to be fabulous with Myrna Loy (she was fab, but why didn't Billie Burke play herself?), but I was delighted by the chemistry he had with Frank Morgan (you know, the Great and Powerful Oz), who played Jack Billings, rival/enabler.
Speaking of Frank Morgan and Billie Burke (and Ray Bolger, who did play himself), we're about to hit about ten awesome movies in a row. After we get through The Life of Emile Zola and the massacred script fiasco of You Can't Take It With You, we're going to get a whole bunch of my favorite movies ever. We're going to try to watch as many nominated films as we can going forward, which isn't going to be too tough. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare an Oscar Challenge Mini-Challenge, which is to watch all the Best Picture nominees for 1939.
Aaaaanyway, this was way, way, way better than I expected. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.
Comments
And what a treat to see Fanny Brice, who also played herself. This was a fascinating and entertaining warts-and-all portrait of a great showman with a lot more substance than the typical backstage theatrical film. I think I have to place it right behind It Happened One Night in my list of favorites so far.
Posted by: Nathan at April 24, 2008 1:42 PM