Matrixston
Wow! Such a good movie.
Jeanskynebu
the audience applauded
Thehibikiew
Not even bad in a good way
Brenda
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
TheLittleSongbird
There is a lot of talent on display in Ziegfeld Follies, including some of MGM's finest, and while it is a very uneven film there's a lot to enjoy. Those expecting a good story or comedy that makes one laugh will be disappointed, but those who love great production values, even better music and dancing and some great performances will find a lot of pleasure.Ziegfeld Follies is practically plot less(being more of a comedy and musical revue and nothing else), and does suffer from some uneven pacing. Most of the time the film zips along nicely, but some segments like Love and the La Traviata segment I wish were longer(lovely, beautifully performed scenes but too short) and a lot of the comedy sketches do go on for too long, which sags the pacing. Most of the comedy scenes don't work, with the exceptions of the amusing if slightly over-the-top Fanny Brice sketch and Pay the Two Dollars. Keenan Wynn's however is grating and embarrassingly out of place and Red Skelton's is a little overplayed and goes on for too long.However, the Technicolor is glorious and the costumes and sets dazzling in rich colour. Limehouse Blues and especially This Heart of Mine, with its beautiful framing, are particularly strong in this regard. The film is very charming and was clearly done with a lot of heart and affection, and while it's uneven a lot of it entertains. It's solidly directed, the songs are spirit-rousing and exquisitely beautiful, Love and This Heart of Mine being the standouts. The choreography has a lot of energy and very accomplished in moves and execution. Esther Williams' water ballet while not one of the film's most memorable moments is very nicely done, but the heart-stopping Pas De Deux for This Heart of Mine and the amazing energy of The Babbitt and the Bromide.Of the numbers, while Limehouse Blues was fun, Lucille Ball's number was interesting and Ball is more tolerable than usual and Love was beautiful, three stood out. One was Judy Garland's very witty The Great Lady has an Interview, which shows that Garland had some good comedy acting chops. Two was The Babbit and the Bromide, interesting for being the first time for Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly to dance together, and while it doesn't see either man at their best it's a superbly danced and exuberant routine. The third one, and my personal favourite, is the heavenly This Heart of Mine, a perfect marriage of visuals, music and dancing.In conclusion, patchy, with the lack of story, uneven pacing and flat comedy, but very enjoyable, thanks to how good it looks and sounds and how well it's performed on the most part. Not a must see, but definitely worth a look at least once. 7/10 Bethany Cox
Hot 888 Mama
Coming on the heels of the over-lauded Oscar best picture winner THE GREAT ZIEGFIELD, MGM--that Cadillac of movie studios--proved the inverse of the Hollywood adage "less is more." MGM heaped so much "more" excess into 110 minutes than even three hours could hold that almost no one in a Depression and WWII-ravaged America would pay a cent to view such an ode to flagrant squandering for the first two years after this flick was shot. Lacking the eye-popping choreography of a Busby Berkeley, this film looks like one of those really fancy but grossly wasteful Faberge Eggs which caused the starving Russian peasants to line up and shoot their Czar and all his relations. Seldom entertaining, ZIEGFIELD FOLLIES loses sight of its purported namesake heavenly host--reprised by William Powell--after the first few minutes, and starts Judy Garland down her path to over-sophisticated ruin. The kindest thing that can be said about ZIEGFIELD FOLLIES is that it probably inspired fewer real-life lynchings of minority Americans than MGM's earlier boondoggle, GONE WITH THE WIND.
mark.waltz
When you open up a movie musical revue with William Powell repeating his "The Great Ziegfeld" role of Flo ("What mother calls a boy Florenz?", to quote Kay Medford in "Funny Girl") imagining from heaven what he could do in cinema with his glorious glorification of the American girl. He brings out Fred Astaire, who ironically never appeared on Broadway in the "Follies" but was a stage star at the time none the less, and the "Bring on the Beautiful Ladies" is so gloriously filmed in Technicolor, the show is off to a sizzling start, whip cracking when all of a sudden Lucille Ball appears. Then, comic deadpan Virginia O'Brien burlesques it with her search for "those glorious men". Comic routines, operetta numbers and a few big song and dance numbers follow, many mediocre but a few classic.The highlights for me are Fred joining Gene Kelly for "The Babbit and the Bromide", Lena Horne with "Love" and "This Heart of Mine" with Lucille Bremer whom Astaire had scored artistically with, if not financially with, in the underrated "Yolanda and the Thief" (actually filmed after this). An Asian themed number with the two of them is not as successful, and Judy Garland's "The Great Lady Has an Interview" is unfortunately extremely dated and sometimes rather aggravating. Moments of it shine, but it takes a long while for the number to get rolling.The comedy routines are not for today's audiences unless they are into nostalgia, as I am. Red Skelton's "Guzzler's Gin" will bring on as much of a gag reflex for some as the gin did for him, but there are moments of it that are truly hysterical. "The Lottery Ticket" routine features Fanny Brice in her only film after "Everybody Sing" and teams her with dramatic Hume Cronyn and funny man William Frawley. "Pay the Two Dollars" is the nadir of the comic routines, even if it has the adorable Victor Moore, another veteran star of the Broadway musical.The controversial "There's Beauty Everywhere" had director Vincent Minnelli exclaiming, "You Can't Direct Bubbles!", and sure, that is definitely true, but it is gorgeous to watch, and Kathryn Grayson sings it beautifully. Ms. Grayson once told a story to an audience (where I was present) about making this number where she explained how she was crying after watching the dailies and all of a sudden heard the buzz-saw voice of Katharine Hepburn telling her that it wasn't all that bad. And that it isn't, certainly not something you would have seen in an actual "Ziegfeld Follies", but worthy of MGM's Freed unit, and a camp classic to boot.
Steffi_P
Although Florenz Ziegfeld only ever worked on the stage, his influence over Hollywood in its golden age was considerable. Not only were many of the early talkie stars Ziegfeld veterans, his extravagant musical numbers also left their mark in the work of Busby Berkeley or the "ballet" sequences of 40s and 50s musicals. His shows really epitomised grand style for its own sake. So when MGM wanted to splash out on a lavish burst of post-war indulgence, what better than a modern day re-imagining of a Ziegfeld Follies revue, just as the great man might have envisaged it himself? Like the original shows after which they are named, Ziegfeld Follies presents a sequence of acts with no linking plot, only a continuous aim to dazzle and entertain in a variety of ways. After a rather twee preamble with William Powell as a heavenly Ziegfeld, interspersed with some nice puppetry, the opening musical number closely follows the style and ethos of the Follies, with row upon row of elegant chorus girls bedecked in over-the-top period costumes. Its call of "Here's to the Girls" is a clear homage to Ziegfeld's own "Glorifying the American Girl". Directed in a somewhat presentational style by George Sidney, it takes us back to the experience of seeing an original Follies from thirty years earlier. The second number however features something Ziegfeld could never have done justice on the stage – Esther Williams doing her mermaid ballet act. From here on the style is consistently cinematic, and it becomes clear this is more than anything else a display of modern MGM talent and the scope of musical cinema.Nowhere is this more evident than in the five numbers directed by Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli, an incredibly musically sensitive filmmaker, was able probably better than anyone else to make the camera part of the choreography. He will pull backwards so that dancers appear from the foreground, sliding softly into view without moving much themselves. There are moments in the drinking song from La Traviata where branches are whipped on and off the screen to balance out the shot as the dancing couple turns, a move only making sense in the context of the movie frame that would be ineffective on a stage. In the final number, "Beauty", most of the performers do not even move at all, the lens slinking rhythmically over them. However Minnelli is also sensible enough to know when to settle down and simply let a dance play out, but even here the specific angle and composition are delicately precise. Cinematic techniques such as close-ups on jewellery in "This Heart of Mine", or the shots in "Limehouse Blues" from inside the bric-a-brac shop allow a certain intimate storytelling not normally possible in dance, and even make these two numbers rather poignant. I should point out by the way that not too much should be read into Mr Minnelli's association with the excellence of these segments, since it follows that as MGM's best musical director he would be assigned to the best and biggest numbers anyway.The handful of non-musical comedy sketches are by far the weakest elements of Ziegfeld Follies. They feature some pretty fine comedy actors, with newcomers like Keenan Wynn and Red Skelton alongside old hands like Victor Moore and Fanny Brice, representing one of the few links to the original Follies. But no matter how well played it is, each sketch runs as little more than a handful of feeble jokes stretched to breaking point, plus a lot of face-pulling. I think the main problem is that it's movie humour, the sort that only works as a comic relief subplot when woven into a larger narrative. These film writers weren't used to the sketch format. As an example of the difference, Keenan Wynn was excellent when he turned up for two minutes in The Clock (also 1945), but here he is an embarrassment. By the way, the camp Texan in Wynn's sketch is Grady Dutton. He had bit parts in dozens of pictures over the years, most of them fleeting but always memorable.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the few comedy moments that really do work are those which take place within musical numbers. "The Great Lady has an Interview" is one of the earliest examples of Judy Garland's comedic talents, while "The Babbitt and the Bromide" shows Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly at their most playful (as well as featuring some great sight-gags with that horse statue in the background). Of course part of the secret of these numbers is that they merge the comedy with the glamour and musicality. But they both also happen to be numbers which satirize the movie industry itself. Judy Garland's act is a gentle poke at dramatic actresses (especially Greer Garson) moving to more raunchy roles, and she has great fun playing up the self-absorbed luvvy stereotype. Astaire and Kelly lampoon their own screen images, slyly referencing Kelly's status as an up-and-comer, and even dancing a little waltz together (although, if you look closely, being very careful not to quite hold each other's hands properly). Ziegfeld Follies once again proves itself to be a product of and about the cinema. The title and outline may be Ziegfeld's, but the spirit belongs to MGM.