GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

HotToastyRag Since The Great Ziegfeld was such a big hit in 1936, winning the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actress, Hollywood decided to reprise their hit with Ziegfeld Follies nine years later. While the film from 1936 was a biopic of Florenz Ziegfeld, this "sequel" is quite different. Mr. Ziegfeld starts off the movie in heaven, and the entire film is an imagination of a fantasy show he'd like to put on if he were still alive and in the theater business. Yes, it sounds a little depressing, but in reality, it doesn't harp on his death very much; it's basically a two hour variety show that brings Hollywood's biggest and brightest musical stars together.William Powell played Mr. Ziegfeld in both movies, and neither one really required any acting from him; he just had to be William Powell, full of authority and a little stand-off-ish. Without that silly little thing known as a plot, the singers and dancers were able to perform their numbers one after another, creating a feature-length montage for movie-goers who, at the time, couldn't rent or own movies to re-watch them. If they wanted to see Fred Astaire, they had to wait until his next movie came into the theaters. Ziegfeld Follies was such a huge hit because it was made in a pre-YouTube era; audiences couldn't just watch a twenty minute compilation of their favorite dance numbers online whenever they felt like it. In 1945, it was a humungous treat to go to the movie house and watch Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Judy Garland, Esther Williams, Lena Horne, Lucille Ball, Victor Moore, Red Skelton, Fanny Brice, Edward Arnold, Cyd Charisse, Hume Cronyn, Lucille Bremer, James Melton, Virginia O'Brien, and Keenan Wynn all in one film! Modern audiences might find the movie a little long in the tooth, especially since not all the songs are winners. Fred Astaire headlines a chorus number "Here's to the Girls" which is pretty cute, but Judy Garland's "A Great Lady Has an Interview" will have you reaching for the fast-forward button on your remote. The entire film's a crapshoot, so if you decide to sit through the whole thing, be prepared to take the bad with the good. There is one extremely famous number to come from this film. If you're at all versed in musicals, I can guarantee you've seen this clip from Ziegfeld Follies: the one and only duet danced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. It's one of the greatest dance scenes in history, with a hilarious dialogue exchange beforehand that instantly charms your heart. "No, I'm not, Ginger," is one of my favorite household phrases! Watching the chemistry and talent of the two greatest dancers is a wonderful and necessary experience, so add the clip of "The Babbitt and the Bromide" to your YouTube favorites list. I've watched it at least twenty-five times; it's just impossible to resist back-to-back viewings, especially since both men later revealed that their favorite dance partners in their entire careers were each other!

gkeith_1 Lucille Ball excellent. Cracking that whip. Dressed in pink. Those cats. Meow.Tap extravaganza with Astaire and Kelly. Too awesome. A pairing for the ages.Booze Skelton sketch delightful, and memorable.Two dollars. I always remember that one.Charise beautiful pointe ballet dancer. Also great pair dancers were Bremer and Astaire.O'Brien always excellent in her deadpan singing -- witness The Harvey Girls.William Powell great, as always. I liked the heavenly Shakespeare, Barnum and Ziegfeld motifs, as well as the dolls in the beginning. These dolls are so darling and lifelike.This movie was released the year I was born. The War -- World War Two -- was over, and people wanted to relax and enjoy life. The actual Ziegfeld had actually passed away the previous decade, the victim of bankruptcy and IMO the First World War taking away his audience and subsequently causing more people to leave the old ways behind (live performances) and prefer silent and then sound films.In real life, it is said that Ziegfeld's wife, Billie Burke, went back to work to pay Ziegfeld's bills -- he apparently was wiped out in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. He passed away a few years later. Billie had been a stage star in New York City for Charles Frohman pre-World War One, married Ziegfeld and retired from performing (to Frohman's disapproval and disgust). She had a daughter with Ziegfeld named Patricia. You will see Billie in some 1930s and 1940s films, including the blockbuster The Wizard of Oz -- portraying Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. She looked beautiful in her tall crown and pink gauzy gown in that movie, and in other movies she was well known for portraying her ditzy, comedic, goofy society matrons.This movie portrays the deceased Ziegfeld as living in the lap of luxury, but his real life ended, I feel, in near poverty. Still, I enjoyed the heavenly furnishings, etc., near the beginning of this film.I am an historian of theatre and film. I have a B.A. Degree in History. I am also a futurist, meaning that we study the past and discuss trends leading to the future. I have studied theatrical critiquing and cinematic techniques. I enjoy studying the lives of actors and actresses, in stage, film and television, both present and past, but especially in the past.I enjoy historical films, as well as song and dance musicals. This film fits these categories.10/10

weezeralfalfa Along with the prior B&W "The Great Ziegfeld" and "Ziegfeld Girl", Hollywood's Technicolor tribute to a man who had great indirect influence on the nature of Hollywood musicals in the early sound period. Of course, the unique possibilities offered by film vs. live performances were not ignored in some productions, including the animated puppets in the opening sequence, where William Powell reprises his previous role as Ziegfeld, the narrator. Given all the ballyhooed thought and choices put into this revue production, and all the numbers cut from the final, I was hoping for a more uniform masterpiece of entertainment. The first and last musical productions feature a bevy of very ornately-dressed female dancers. The former is a carnival setting, emphasizing pink, with some of the girls sitting on live white horses on a merry-go-round, while others, including Cid Charisse, dance. B movie queen Lucille Ball directs a segment where a bevy of dancers dressed as black cats slip through the rubber bars of their apparent cage to dance in unison, while Lucille cracks a whip, as a lion tamer might. Later, Virginia O'Brian does a forgettable song while riding a fake white horse.The final production is quite different: not nearly as showy, but imparting a Dali-like surreal atmosphere. It stars Kathryn Grayson singing "There's Beauty Everywhere", in an ethereal setting: apparently a mountain plateau, with various skies, ranging from night with stars , to a cloudy orangish, to blue with white clouds, with wind, rock crystals, and gnarled logs. At times, the dancers, including Cid Charisse, frolic between mounds of soapsuds, presumably representing clouds, with a night sky background. Toward the end, they stand or lay about motionless on an otherwise featureless paved windy plain, as if elegantly dressed statue fertility symbols in Grecian style. The infamous soap bubble segment caused problems with toxic gas and was a mess to deal with. This was the chopped down remnant of a more elaborate original production.The several strictly comical routines are the most controversial parts of the plot less revue. Keenan Wynn's largely solo routine involves telephone operators who keep connecting him with wrong parties at a public telephone, in contrast to several other callers. Perhaps a satire on the element of luck in getting through life. Perhaps a comment on the hazards of having to rely on distant others to get things done in the modern world. We, who rely heavily on robotic artificial voices on telephones, can even more sympathize with this point. .. Victor Moore and Eddie Arnold satirize the utility of lawyers and the justice system in general. Red Skelton's drunk ad man act is an embarrassment. .. Fanny Brice recreates a skit she did for the follies. She, with husband, fight over an Irish sweepstakes ticket that they know, but landlord William Frawley doesn't know, has the winning number. Fanny, with her rolling eyes and other mannerisms, impressed me as the female equivalent of Eddie Cantor: unfortunately missing from this revue. Barbara Streisand would later play her in her hit "Funny Girl".Of the other musical numbers, Fred Astaire clearly dominates, being featured in 3, 2 costarring his prime dancing partner of the time: the striking young red head, Lucille Bremer(Producer Arthur Freed's recent mistress), and one with Gene Kelly: still a relatively new face in Hollywood: the subject of the opening humor. The two men do a vaudeville routine which Astaire had done on stage long ago with his sister. The story involves two hoofers who meet every 10 or 20 years, and dance and clown around a bit. Not terribly memorable otherwise. It's more a Kelly than an Astaire-type of production, probably in deference to Astaire's 2 other productions: "This Heart of Mine", and the bizarre garish surreal "Limehouse Blues": two of Astaire's most unique productions. This is not to slight Lucille, who performs flawlessly as his main dance partner. This is actually her shining moment in film, after the recent box office failure of her one starring role, again with Astaire, in "Yolander and the Thief". Her dancing and acting would again be briefly featured in the revue/biop "'Til the Clouds Roll By", after which her film career evaporated, after such high hopes by the MGM brass.Of the other musical numbers, Judy Garland's talk-dominated spoof of Greer Garson has some merit, but takes too long to get to the interesting part. The opera number is elegant, but ultimately unmemorable. Poor opera singer James Melton had his other 3 performances cut. In contrast to some others, I found Lena Horne's number quite flat. Esther William's water ballet, while not strictly a musical, is scenic, but nothing special if you've seen one of her films. I would have liked to see Astaire's cut song and dance number "If Swing Goes, I Go Too", which he composed. The audio outtake is included on my DVD. ..If you have the DVD, check out the included cartoons, especially "The Hick Chick".

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.