The long sigh I let out when I realized that I had to rewatch The Great Ziegfeld...
gif by me
I wrote that intro before I watched it, let me take a second to reabsorb my feelings and see if that still rings true...
Yep.
Listen, I love me a good movie about Hollywood and show business. I love an epic. I love a musical. The Artist? One of my favourites. The Sound of Music? I'm a card-carrying member of the Captain von Trapp Fan Club.* But The Great Ziegfeld is such an over-bloated film, falling trap to the worst excesses of those Old Hollywood biopics: too stuffed with scenes that don't matter other than to show off the budget; playing fast and loose with the facts; and ultimately falling victim to the worst of its impulses without much else to say. Do I come away from this knowing any more about Florenz Ziegfeld than I did before? Not especially.
But I'm not here to do a post-mortem on The Great Ziegfeld (though if I ever did a 'Rewatching the Best Pictures' series, I've got plenty of ammo and plenty of gripes), I'm here to talk about Luise Rainer, who plays Florenz Ziegfeld's first wife, Anna Held.
Contemporaneous reviews will tell you that Luise clinched the Oscar with that telephone scene; the one where Anna Held calls Flo to congratulate him on his new marriage to Billie Burke (Flo is played by William Powell and Billie is played by Myrna Loy, though they're not as fun and dynamic in this one as they are in literally any other movie they made together) and realizes that she's truly lost him.
Watching it with the benefit of hindsight, you've gotta believe it because Luise is so briefly in this—excluding any musical numbers—that it would be hard to cobble together a clip package of memorable moments without that telephone scene.
Here's the scene in full, credit to Nitrate Diva on YouTube:
And here's a write-up from Nitrate Diva, following Luise's passing in 2014 (she lived to the ripe old age of 104! May we all be so lucky.), diving into the history of Luise's career, specifically as it relates to this film. They dubbed her 'The Viennese Teardrop' for this scene alone, for crying out loud!
Actresses have won for less, but when you consider who Luise was competing against in 1936: Irene Dunne (Theodora Goes Wild), Gladys George (Valiant Is the Word for Carrie), Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey), and Norma Shearer (Romeo and Juliet), I'm sorry, but you have to wonder why this telephone scene was enough to garner the Oscar. Against Carole Lombard? Against Irene Dunne? (Apologies to Gladys George and Norma Shearer, but I haven't seen those performances.)
I will give Luise credit though, because she did make me actually laugh out loud at one point: when she finds out that Flo is sending her gallons of milk and not paying the bill just so that it'll get written up in the press and give her publicity, she tells him "I do not have to be a cow to be a success!" Honestly, words to live by.
Luise is often regarded as the first victim of the 'Oscar Curse', having won back-to-back (my God, if I could skip The Good Earth, I would) and never recovering from the pressure that put on her career. How do you live up to those wins when you don't want to play by Hollywood's rules and you don't think you're talented enough? By 1938, she left Hollywood, convinced that she had nothing else to give.
DID I LIKE THE GREAT ZIEGFELD? This movie has just always annoyed me, for reasons beyond Luise Rainer, and beyond rationality, honestly. It just feels like such a chore to sit through; imagine watching this in those 1936 rickety theatre seats and IT JUST KEEPS GOING BECAUSE IT'S 2 HOURS AND 56 MINUTES LONG.
Anyway, see you soon for Luise's next Oscar win, for another movie I'm dreading having to sit through (for the yellowface, for the fact that it shouldn't have been made with its white cast, for so many reasons): The Good Earth. __
Did you like The Great Ziegfeld? What are your thoughts on Luise Rainer's first Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here.
*Not a real thing, but I'd be first in line if it was!
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