Simply put, The Great Ziegfeld is a spectacle. It is everything that The Broadway Melody tried to be but couldn’t. It is ostentatious and over the top. As I was watching it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Wolf of Wall Street. On the surface, neither film has anything to do with the other, however thematically and stylistically, they’re the same film. Both films are about men who lived life to the fullest and beyond. Both men were ultimately brought down and ruined by their inability to apply the brakes even a little bit. Neither man was afraid to manipulate others in order to get what he wanted.

The Great Ziegfeld is about Florenz Ziegfeld, the creator of the Ziegfeld Follies. The film follows him from his start as a struggling vaudeville producer all the way through the heights of his successes and lows of his failures with the Follies. He was a complex man with many flaws, and the film makers made it a point to show that. William Powell did an outstanding job of portraying Ziegfeld and making him a likable character, despite those many flaws. It was a performance not unlike Leonardo DiCaprio’s in The Wolf of Wall Street where he too had to take an unsympathetic character and somehow make the audience relate to him.

I think the way that Powell and director Robert Z. Leonard were able to accomplish that was by making Ziegfeld the underdog. Right from the beginning we see that Ziegfeld is struggling and his chief rival Jack Billings, played with the usual flamboyance of Frank Morgan, who you might remember was Professor Marvel and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Billings has standing room only crowds and Ziegfeld is having such a hard time drawing customers that he’s scheduled to get kicked out of the fair. That is, until he has an idea of how to change his act in a way that will appeal to the sexual desires of potential  female customers. Suddenly he’s the one with standing room only crowds and he takes his act on tour.

Unfortunately as we see  throughout the film, Ziegfeld never made a fortune that he wasn’t somehow able to lose. We see him some time later on an ocean liner to Europe where he again bumps in to Billings, who tells him that he’s on way to Europe to scout a new talent. Broke and unable to get back to America, Ziegfeld has the audacity to borrow $500 from Billings and then use it to steal away the act, a French singer named Anna Held. He brings her act to America, where it is panned initially, but Ziegfeld shows his guile again, and turns it into a sensation. He builds on that success by creating the Follies. Always one step ahead of the competition and the bill collectors, Ziegfeld built an entertainment empire on Broadway that only his own arrogance and financial ineptitude could bring down.

That is where the brilliance lies in this film. Not only is Ziegfeld the hero of the film, but he is also his own worst enemy. He can never enjoy his success because he’s always putting himself in positions to lose it. Whether it’s having an affair with a new dancer after he’s married Anna, or investing in stock right before the crash of 1929, he never was able to get out of his own way. That was another way that the film makers made Ziegfeld sympathetic.

If you are a screenwriter trying to create a character that is greatly flawed but needs to be likable, this is a film you should study. Yes, it is dated and there is nothing modern about it, but the character development is timeless and very instructive. As mentioned above, the film makers took a manipulative, incompetent failure and made him likable by constantly putting him in the underdog role. Even when his show is a smashing success, it’s so expensive to produce that he still has to be crafty about how the bills get paid, or don’t get paid. He wants to be the greatest showman on Broadway and the way to do that is to create spectacles that are ostentatious and over the top. He creates eye candy and opportunities for women to become famous dancers. He gets the best out of his performers on stage, but can’t bring out the best in himself back stage. He is a walking conflict, and that’s what makes him successful as a character because the audience is always hoping that he’ll go the right way and afraid that he’ll go the wrong way. That’s how drama is created and that’s what makes The Great Ziegfeld a great film.

There’s something else that needs to be mentioned about this film and how it was made. First of all, this is one of the early MGM musicals and it would help to define the style of film that MGM would make over the next two decades. Big, grand musicals with flawed characters who want nothing more than to be great. The dance numbers in this film were particularly grand and unique. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert of the Musical as a genre. I’ve seen my share of Musicals, but it isn’t my favorite genre by any stretch. I can say, however, that the musical numbers in this picture were entertaining and fascinating to watch. There was one number towards the end that involved very well trained dogs in a number that has to be seen to be believed. There are other numbers with huge set pieces and one number that was shot in one take. The talent and scope and planning that went in to these dances is nothing short of remarkable and need to be appreciated whether your a fan of the genre or not.

One other thing that I noticed is that there were a lot of low camera angles during the musical numbers. Most of time musical numbers are shot straight on or from above so that you can see the intricacies of the movement. In this film the low angle made you feel like you were watching from the orchestra section of the theater, as though you were sitting in the audience. I thought that was a nice touch and a subtle way to make you feel like you were actually at the Ziegfeld Follies.

There is one other point that I need to make that people have commented on, and is not unique to The Great Ziegfeld, but was a common tool in early sound cinema. That was using newspaper headlines for exposition. It Happened One Night used that motif quite a bit, and it is spread throughout The Great Ziegfeld. In fact, if you look at films throughout  the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, you will see this motif in many, many films. In many ways, the newspaper headline revealing information replaced the title cards of the silent film era. Yes, it is a cheat. Yes, it seems like a cop out today. I must say, however, that it doesn’t bother me at all. I find that it was a clever way to get information to the audience that was technically still showing and not telling. Cinema today still uses similar motifs. Perhaps they’re used in cleverer ways, but I feel the newspaper headline was an effective way to reveal exposition because it was quick, clean, and rarely took the audience out of the story.

Did the Academy get it right?

It’s hard to disagree with the Academy on this one. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and A Tale of Two Cities are remembered as classics, and honestly The Great Ziegfeld is probably one of the least memorable Best Picture winners. However it is a fine film, and it set the stage (no pun intended) for the great MGM Musicals that would follow in the decades to come and turn MGM into the greatest dream factory of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Great Ziegfeld really does have it all. The dance and musical numbers are well stages and highly entertaining. The storyline is compelling and dramatic. The characters are deep, conflicted and experience real growth throughout the film. Indeed, this film was crafted and crafted well. On that basis, it was worthy of winning Outstanding Production in 1936.