The Great Ziegfeld: the film

This week I saw, The Great Ziegfeld , a biographic film about the  Broadway impresario, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., the man who glorified and started the "follies".

 The height of the depression, 1936, was an odd moment for MGM to spare no expense in splashing out this musical extravaganza but it is just what the public needed and wanted at the time.  And opulent it is with its all-out musical numbers, casts of hundreds, stars galore and ravishing sets.   It is a real joy to watch in fact.

 However, at three hours in length, its best to watch this film on the dvd in 2 or 3 nights, or you might get...  well...exhausted.    It is a picture that could never have been done today, a look at what Hollywood was and can never be again.

The cast is a roll-out of the best of the day, with bit parts of real entertainers like Ray Bolger; Will Rogers, Fanny Brice and more.  William Powell is exceptional in the lead, as is Myrna Loy as Billie Burke (Flo's second wife) and Frank Morgan is wonderful as Ziegfeld's friend and competitor.

The performance, however, that garnered the Oscar that year (and the next), was that of German actress Luise Rainer as Anna Held( Flo's first wife).  Rainer fully fleshes out a character with emotional believability even in her extreme theatricality. She completely inhabits the role of a nervous, fragile, insecure French singer/club performer.

  Since I studied and taught drama for 10 years, I am always impressed when an actress can "role over" into a part completely.   Either she WAS this kind of person, or she is a great actress.   I can't think of another of her day who could have done this part as well.

There has been a lot of argument over Rainer receiving the "best actress" award over Carole Lombard and Greta Garbo for 1936. I have not seen Camille by Garbo but what I have seen of her is that I find her unsympathetic as a character, devoid of real depth that we have come to expect in an actor today.  Of course, you must try not to inflict today's standards on old film but that said, Rainer has buckets of emotional depth and believability without crossing the line into mugging or over-acting.

As for "My Man Godfrey" 1936 with Carole Lombard,  Carole does not really do drama.  She is who she is:  a great quirky comedic actress who does pretty much the same character over and over.

 To seamlessly encompass a new different personality each time and leave some of yourself out of the way is an ability not found in many actors.  Meryl Streep comes to mind as such a one.  The difficulty for the actor is what proportion of oneself has to be in the new character for it to ring true and not have gone too far so that you are too much "you".

As Rainer quit acting after receiving a second Oscar in a row, for "the Good Earth", we do not really know how much breadth she really had.  And I cannot find "The Good Earth" out there so I may never know, but she is quite an enchanting old lady at 100 years old now.

However, you CAN find "the Great Ziegfeld" and if you do manage to find it... you are in for an old fashioned treat.