A real curio of a film, it soars in spots and staggers in others.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 9, 2024

The 1936 Best Picture Oscar winner is surely an extravaganza of stage splendor, and William Powell charms as the impresario who knew the highest of highs and lowest of lows.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 25, 2023

A nearly 3-hour film with big set pieces and over a thousand people employed, The Great Ziegfeld is far too long for a musical romp.

| Jun 27, 2023

First place amongst those of its kind. [Full review in Spanish]

| Sep 1, 2022

Fanny Brice is herself, though she isn't on screen enough to vitalize this lavish, tedious musical biography; it goes on for a whopping three hours, but through some insane editing decision she's cut off in the middle of singing "My Man."

| Jul 28, 2022

A work that dazzles, and is decidedly a smash hit wherever it goes. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 1, 2022

Too glib for real life, it is persuasive for all that -- possibly just because of that.

| Feb 18, 2022

For the greater part, The Great Ziegfeld is sentiment; for the remainder, spectacle. It is an unbeatable combination and MGM has seen fit to give it a more substantial claim in good casting.

| Dec 3, 2021

Few films have been more lavish than this one... but since it can be doubted that Ziegfeld was either the Shakespeare or the Leonardo he is represented to have been, it can also be doubted that the money was well spent.

| Dec 3, 2021

I think that three hours and five minutes is too long for any picture. The Great Ziegfeld suffers, too, from the fact that its most exciting sequence comes plumb in the middle.

| Dec 3, 2021

There is no picture to equal it for lavishness, beauty, and all-around entertainment; and not once during the three hours that it runs does it become boresome.

| Dec 2, 2021

The representation of this greatness is done with such consistent loud-pedalling that the picture lacks climax as much as it needs relief.

| Dec 2, 2021

In comparison, no previous music dance spectacle, no matter how elaborately produced, approaches it from a standpoint of sheer brilliance and beauty.

| Dec 2, 2021

It is brilliant and spectacular to a superlative degree with scenes that are nothing less than astonishing in their magnificence.

| Dec 2, 2021

It is a great picturization of the career of an unforgettable figure in the American theater.

| Dec 2, 2021

For sheer lavishness, attention to detail, honesty of purpose, The Great Ziegfeld is to be commended. Where the picture falls down -- hard! -- is in its fulsomeness.

| Dec 2, 2021

Of course, it's swell to look at -- or swollen -- like a glorified goldfish; but then, if you examine it, its tail falls right off. One might perhaps keep it in a glass case -- which is more than you could do with this dead whale here.

| Dec 2, 2021

Luise Rainer, the Viennese actress, is a risen star as Ziegfeld's first wife, Anna Held. Gay as a butterfly, temperamental as an April day, she is the outstanding actress in the film.

| Dec 2, 2021

Though it is a flattering tribute to the taste of the late showman, The Great Ziegfeld is also an apt one, for it has the same combination of gaudiness and elegance, of show and finish, which you associate with a good "Follies."

| Dec 2, 2021

It is more than merely a lavishly mounted girl-song-dance spectacle. Stripped of all its embellishing grandeur, it is dramatic romance with a heart interest that will thrill the emotions of all who see it.

| Dec 1, 2021