The Broadway Melody of 1929 is one in a series of Broadway Melody films. This film (the 1929 one) won an Academy Award for Best Film, which mainly goes to show how far movie-making has got since then. This film is, many claim, the first "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" film in Hollywood, although many talkies had been created before that, but apparently that didn't matter too much for the marketing agents of this film.
The storyline of The Broadway Melody of 1929 follows a well-known pattern within the musical genre, namely that of the two poor girls who come to the Big Apple to try and make it to the big scene on Broadway, and team up with the struggling performer/songwriter, who gets them a small role in a musical. Unsurprisingly, the lead actress somehow manages to fall off a large pedestal in a rehearsal and injure herself, and one of the girls is chosen to take her place at the last moment. This of course leads to a rift in the relationship between the girls, which will have to be taken care of in an orderly Hollywood manner throughout the film. To top it off, the struggling songwriter falls in love with the new star, which is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that is engaged to the other half of the sister act. Oops. Being a musical, it all works out in the end, via a number of arguably well-plot-connected musical acts.
Which leads us to the singing and dancing. Having seen a Busby Berkeley-choreographed film, this one does look quite amateurish at times, with dancers sometimes a bit out of sync with each other, and the routines perhaps a little chaotic at times. Having said that, they can still be quite enjoyable.
The Broadway Melody is classically defined as a revue, with a series of scenes which are not necessarily interconnected. I, however did not see it as a revue, but rather as a flawed backstage musical. Although some scenes do come out of the blue, such as a semi-surreal, almost comical dance scene called "The Wedding of the Painted Doll", and a scene at the beginning which takes place in a Tin Pan Alley studio (Tin Pan Alley is a name applied to places and studios where songwriters and performers came together to make songs and musicals which they then tried to sell to Broadway theaters), they can be found to serve a purpose within the main plot of the movie.
The actors perform well for most of the time, except perhaps for moments when they seem to have a sort of a "silent hangover", that is, do horrifyingly extended and exaggerated impressions and gestures, as done in the silent movies a few years earlier. Mind you, the concept of talking in movies was only 2 years old at this time, so it's no surprise that the filmmakers and actors hadn't fully got the hang of it yet.
All in all, this is an enjoyable, if not very deep, little film to see, with interesting scenes and characters you even start to care about a little, despite their horrendous over-acting at times. 3 out of 5 for me, thanks.
The storyline of The Broadway Melody of 1929 follows a well-known pattern within the musical genre, namely that of the two poor girls who come to the Big Apple to try and make it to the big scene on Broadway, and team up with the struggling performer/songwriter, who gets them a small role in a musical. Unsurprisingly, the lead actress somehow manages to fall off a large pedestal in a rehearsal and injure herself, and one of the girls is chosen to take her place at the last moment. This of course leads to a rift in the relationship between the girls, which will have to be taken care of in an orderly Hollywood manner throughout the film. To top it off, the struggling songwriter falls in love with the new star, which is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that is engaged to the other half of the sister act. Oops. Being a musical, it all works out in the end, via a number of arguably well-plot-connected musical acts.
Which leads us to the singing and dancing. Having seen a Busby Berkeley-choreographed film, this one does look quite amateurish at times, with dancers sometimes a bit out of sync with each other, and the routines perhaps a little chaotic at times. Having said that, they can still be quite enjoyable.
The Broadway Melody is classically defined as a revue, with a series of scenes which are not necessarily interconnected. I, however did not see it as a revue, but rather as a flawed backstage musical. Although some scenes do come out of the blue, such as a semi-surreal, almost comical dance scene called "The Wedding of the Painted Doll", and a scene at the beginning which takes place in a Tin Pan Alley studio (Tin Pan Alley is a name applied to places and studios where songwriters and performers came together to make songs and musicals which they then tried to sell to Broadway theaters), they can be found to serve a purpose within the main plot of the movie.
The actors perform well for most of the time, except perhaps for moments when they seem to have a sort of a "silent hangover", that is, do horrifyingly extended and exaggerated impressions and gestures, as done in the silent movies a few years earlier. Mind you, the concept of talking in movies was only 2 years old at this time, so it's no surprise that the filmmakers and actors hadn't fully got the hang of it yet.
All in all, this is an enjoyable, if not very deep, little film to see, with interesting scenes and characters you even start to care about a little, despite their horrendous over-acting at times. 3 out of 5 for me, thanks.