Hailed as being, "The Last Word In Entertainment!" The Great Ziegfeld is a breathtakingly impressive Old Hollywood epic. Filled with dialogue-chewing sequences for the lead actors it tells the life story of theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. (William Powell), including showpieces based on his actual stage productions.

Opening in 1893, Ziegfeld is the circus hawker of a strongmen although he's equally filled with a sense of purpose propped up by limitless ambition. Always caught between squandering his earnings and making a killing, he's also in hot pursuit of the next big thing yet always just behind the success of his main rival, Jack Billings (Frank Morgan). When the two end up in Paris to sign French star Anna Held (Luise Rainer) to a contract, Ziegfeld uses his superior with and charm to end up her patron and suitor.

From there Ziegfeld's journey becomes a kaleidoscope of personal foibles displayed against his successes as a musical theater producer and promoter, always two steps ahead of his earnings but firmly in touch with the cutting edge of mass entertainment. Years pass, shows unfurl and Ziegfeld's relationship with Held blossoms into a temporarily happy marriage. With added professional demands, though, his yearning for the next great female star lures him away from Anna's devotion and into the arms of other women, though none as enticing until he finally meets the up-and-coming actress, Billie Burke (Myrna Loy).

Their marriage proves long lasting despite the perils of mid-career lapse when Ziegfeld's critics write him off as deadweight in light of limited future prospects. Boasting from the pain of his peer's scorn he boasts about producing four simultaneous hits in the same season and then manages to live out his extravagant plans. Unfortunately his career high point is then decimated by the coincidence of financial ruin in the Great Depression.

Falling sick and feeling unmanned by Billie having to earn the family's keep, his old rival Billings once again approaches Ziegfeld to share the burden of their separate successes and failures. The two veterans dream up new adventures but in the end our hero dies in his lounge chair contemplating the now dark lights of a theater that bears his name.

Explaining the film's narrative ark means the Ziegfeldian story is but the oft-repeated tale of burning ambition, hard work, far reaching vision and the good tidings of fortunate timing. As such this biopic works because its central figures remain sympathetic, or at the very least suggestive of what we'd expect of extraordinary people situated within their real life circumstances.

Luckily The Great Ziegfeld benefits from Powell's terrifically commanding central performance and the winningly funny, emotionally satisfying work of Rainer as Anna Held. Together their scenes are filled with good timing and the sharp delivery of William Anthony McGuire's script. Shot especially in long takes around Anna's rehearsals or Florenz's meetings, their relationship demonstrates the trouble of show business romance when entertainers find their greatest satisfaction in their art and not in other people, though not for want of trying.

By comparison Loy's performance, while adequate to the task of what's required of her, is merely window dressing for the aging Ziegfeld who rapidly approaches the end of his career some 40 years after its beginning. Their uncomplicated devotion to one another is the obverse of Held and Ziegfeld's love affair but its static nature is also what makes it boring. Still, Billie and Florenz's affection does give rise to his greatest triumph in four simultaneous Broadway hits as the capstone of a long and legendary career.

Throughout these dramatic passages the acting, writing and Robert Leonard's film direction remains assets to the film but it is the number of music and dance sequences in The Great Ziegfeld that propel it forward and give it a sense of grandeur. Relying on the supporting role of Seymour Felix as the film's dance director these set pieces are utterly amazing and require not just the suspension of disbelief but also of easy explanation.

Dressed in costumes by Adrian and arranged on sets designed by Cedric Gibbons's staff including Eddie Imazu, Merrill Pye and Edwin B. Willis, the showpieces are truly wondrous. Not just because they involve literally hundreds of people and not just because they feature pleasant songs like "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." No, The Great Ziegfeld's showpieces are triumphs because they involve the artifice of the musical theater stage as frame for their execution and, as such, they become hyperbolized versions of what existed in the historical Ziegfeld's time. The result is a vision of how musical entertainment can be both larger-than-life and utterly fantastic.

For example, there is considerable in joking about Ziegfeld's demand for higher and higher steps in all of his shows. The purpose of which is only suggested until finally shown in a set that rises off the stage floor in one of the film's most spectacular musical and dance sequences.

Arranged around a revolving turret of steps leading for several floors up to a pinnacle crown that's shaped like a wedding cake, dozens of dancers and singers are arranged in vertical progression while performing different musical motifs for a live audience. Their individual movements are completed with unique costumes and dance steps, all the while revolving on the cake-like steps and while being carefully revealed or concealed by the lift and drop of various curtains. The overall effect is amazement at the synchronicity of disparate performers working in concert to deliver an entertaining wallop every bit as impressive as anything ever shown on film in 1936, let alone most years before or after.

There are also smaller moments peppered throughout The Great Ziegfeld that further demonstrates the full realization of MGM's integrated musical while also showcasing various entertainers on-screen. Most famously Fanny Brice and Ray Bolger show up playing themselves as part of "Ziegfeld's Follies." Likewise there are actors performing the parts of Eugene Sandow, Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor, each of whom were well known to movie-goers in 1936 as well as to those among us with a particular interest in older forms of theatrical entertainment.

Producer Hunt Stromberg's film also very directly set the tone for future musicals in Hollywood. By balancing the dramatic concerns of a biographically derived story and the spectacle-laden requirements of big time showpieces, his film is the consummate producer's masterpiece. The cult of the director, later on championed in France and translated for America through the writings of Andrew Sarris and the filmographies of various directors like Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, was nowhere to be seen in the Old Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and '40s. Instead there was a cult of the producer who carefully assembled a staff consistent with his vision of what a finished film would resemble to ensure consistency and quality.

Looked at the through perspective of a single intelligence organizing the film, The Great Ziegfeld is wholly devoted to Stromberg's production values. In light of his other credits like Red Dust, Treasure Island, The Thin Man and The Women, it's clear that his Academy Award winning movie is but one example of an over-arching sensibility roundly concerned with the merger of art and entertainment. It's also clear how his sensibilities, along with other producers like Irving Thalberg and David O. Selznick, created the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer house style.

According to the Louis B. Mayer-led Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rulebook of 1936 ten different films were allowed to compete for Outstanding Production honors. Alongside winner The Great Ziegfeld the other nine nominees were the unremembered Anthony Adverse, Dodsworth, Libeled Lady, San Francisco and Three Smart Girls, the highly pedigreed but little seen Romeo and Juliet and A Tale of Two Cities and the acclaimed Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and The Story of Louis Pasteur. Like virtually every other year in the history of the Academy Awards there were at least two other overlooked titles and their absence from competition seems historically gross, especially when considering the nomination of the nearly forgotten Anthony Adverse, Libeled Lady and Three Smart Girls.

Modern Times was a Chaplin vehicle and, like many other Chaplin vehicles, Academy voters ignored it for a variety of reasons. There is a valid claim for xenophobia since Chaplin was born in Britain, along with fear of scandal since he was well known for his pederast's taste in girl-women, a resistance to so-called silent movies despite the film's active soundtrack or even indifference to his work despite popularity with the movie-going public. Regardless, it was shortsighted of Academy voters to disregard Modern Times when posterity has rendered it an American classic but all the more so in light of its enshrinement in the National Film Registry in 1989.

Similarly Swing Time endured an Oscar disavowal aside from its Best Song win for "The Way You Look Tonight" and its nomination for Best Dance Direction. That future audiences have looked to this musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to learn about the art of movie dancing is telling as to why it was ignored for non-music Academy Award nominations. As an RKO release it lacked an epic scale and ran but an ordinary 103 minutes long. Such a fineness of focus may very well have discounted the picture despite its obvious quality that endures into the present as a gem from screen history.

Opposite these two smaller pictures The Great Ziegfeld is a wonderfully rich, entertaining and rewarding movie though I dare say it has enchanted much smaller audiences than either Modern Times or Swing Time. Partially this is because it runs three hours long and partially it's because the biopic crammed full of Ziegfeldian vignettes and music and dance numbers tends towards the overlong.

In light of slightly smaller aspirations and more modest budgets Modern Times and Swing Time may very well deliver more affecting pleasures. Not that I would have history revised to include a less scaled out version of The Great Ziegfeld the primary purpose of which would be to slight the sheer grandiosity of its canvas. That is, such an effort would be to lessen the effect of its musical sequences in order to play up the human interest implicit in the film's biopic structure.

One thing we know about MGM at its zenith in the 1930s and '40s, and by extension the rest of the Old Hollywood studios, is it was capable of delivering fantasy in ways that were previously unimaginable without our current moment's reliance on visual effects technologies. A film like The Great Ziegfeld epitomizes the attempt to circumvent limitations and mount productions that literally defy the imagination. As such The Great Ziegfeld is the attainment of a certain artistic and technical standard that is no longer possible or even striven for in the present due to fiscal and pragmatic demands that would make it far too difficult a task to undertake.

In retrospect there are those who would argue over the relative merits of the Outstanding Production winner of 1936. Many of their points would likely hold up to scrutiny and would be useful in approaching The Great Ziegfeld for the sake of the new historicists intent on placing it within now changed socio-cultural circumstances from its year of release.

Though this would be an interesting exercise, and a helpful one for encouraging potential fans averse to black and white movies or anything produced before 1970, The Great Ziegfeld should be remembered as a lush and wonderful movie despite whatever else might be said about it. This fact, along with its value as an early high point in the sound era's idea of an integrated musical, should never be forgotten. Instead it should be celebrated and reviewed more often than it is as a high point in the acting careers of Powell, Rainer or Loy, the back stage careers of producer Hunt Stromberg, cinematographer-director Karl Freund or production designer Cedric Gibbons, or else as a bright light in the institutional memory of MGM as the studio of note.