Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Quick Reaction: The Broadway Melody

This is the second Best Picture winner at the Oscars and it shows. It's a little rough around the edges. This is an early "talkie" and an early musical, and you can sense the filmmakers haven't really mastered what they were doing yet. I'm curious to see how much changes just a couple years later when Grand Hotel wins Best Picture. This was a little more scandalous than I expected. That makes sense though. The Hays Code hadn't taken full effect yet, so studios were still pushing those boundaries. Ultimately, what's more interesting about this movie is that if you asked me to describe what movie was ruling the box office as the great stock market crash happened, I would've described something identical to The Broadway Melody. This matches my claim that the Oscars are less about finding the best movie of the year and more about finding the movie that best reflects what's important to the industry at the time. It's harder to fit that on a billboard, but it's more accurate.


Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

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