Welcome to another edition of the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
Set your Wayback Machine for almost a century ago to 1929, when the Hollywood musical was born, more or less. Sound films were all the latest rage, particularly sound films that featured singing and dancing. One of the most significant films of this type was entitled The Broadway Melody, which went on to be the first sound film (and only the second film overall) to win Best Picture.
Directed by Harry Beaumont and starring Anita Page, Bessie Love and Charles King, The Broadway Melody is a showbiz melodrama about two sisters, the man who loves them both, and the love quadrangle that ensues when a rich playboy tries to seduce one of the sisters. Harriet "Hank" and Queenie Mahoney are aspiring song and dance girls hoping to make it on the Great White Way, where their childhood friend Eddie Kearns works as a songwriter. Eddie and Hank have been engaged to be married for some time, but upon seeing Queenie for the first time as an adult he immediately begins to fall for her. Wealthy womanizer Jacques Warriner has his eye on Queenie as well, and what follows is a series of shouting matches between Queenie and Hank and Queenie and Eddie, both trying to talk her out of getting involved with Jacques, who has promised her a lush Manhattan lifestyle. Eddie also professes his love for Queenie, who somehow never reveals this to her sister; Hank figures it out on her own.
So this film was historic for its time, an early talkie with a handful of songs (some of which are repeated a lot) and modest dance numbers. In the days of early sound films that was enough to be considered a spectacle, even if the characters and story didn't deliver. And frankly they really don't in this film. It's quite an indictment of the messy transition from the pinnacle of silent cinema to the dawn of talkies, to look a the dropoff in quality between the first two Best Picture winners. Wings in 1927 was a thrilling, epic war film with jaw-dropping, fluid cinematography and breathtaking stunts, while The Broadway Melody is an uninspired romantic comedy-drama with static camerawork (the byproduct of the technological limitations inherent in early sound films), very repetitious scripting, and a flat climax. Considering what this film had going for it - singing, dancing and a trite love story - it's honestly shocking the first Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts wasn't also nominated for Best Picture. Released only a few months later, The Cocoanuts has more memorable songs, much more interesting dance numbers (Busby Berkeley-esque before Busby was even a thing), an equally trite love story, and absolutely hilarious comedy set pieces thanks to Groucho and company.
The performances here are fine for their time; Bessie Love received a well-earned Best Actress nomination as Hank (the scene where she sends Eddie out to go after Queenie and then breaks down crying is actually quite poignant). But the central plot isn't very compelling; we aren't ever shown why Queenie should stay away from Jacques, she and we are just hammered home with "Stay away from that guy!" And Eddie, the male romantic lead, comes off as a two-timing coward, attempting to score Queenie while still engaged to her sister. Why are we rooting for these kids to get together exactly? And who is Eddie of all people to tell Queenie that Jacques is bad for her? At the outset of the film I expected it to be more about Hank and Queenie's quest to become Broadway stars, but that's all put on the back burner in favor of the love story, and thus so are the musical elements.
The Broadway Melody is a film one wouldn't be much interested in today, except for historical purposes. The story of hungry young actors trying to make it on the big stage was handled much more capably only four years later in 42nd Street, which featured as its centerpiece a visually stunning Berkeley sequence. Oddly there would be three subsequent films released under the Broadway Melody branding, with separate and unrelated plots and characters. Broadway Melody of 1936 was also a Best Picture nominee, so I'll let you all know what I think of that one sometime soon.
For now though, The Broadway Melody (of 1929) doesn't have a whole lot going for it.
I give the film ** out of ****.
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