The Broadway Melody (1929)

History is flawed. It has its beauty, its sophistication, its educational parts, its humor, but then it has its mistakes, its dark periods, and it has the parts that are taken out of context. All of this is true of the world we live in no matter what time period it may be. So true is the world of the cinema. Of all of motion picture history never had the business had to go through such growing pains than in the period of 1929-1930 when the advent of sound changed everything they thought they knew about the movies. Looking back from today at films of this time period trying to succeed with new sound recording methods we must try to understand that they were attempting to take new strides and every step was an innovation for the business.

The Broadway Melody was MGM's big flashy step into the world of sound. It was not their first sound picture, but it was to be the large, extravagant movie that would splash up on the big screens, becoming a staple for the large movie studio. The film had sound from beginning to end, filled with many musical numbers, and would feature large numbers recreating a lavishly large Broadway variety show. It had all the makings of a spectacle that would make millions buy tickets to see it.

The story is of a vaudeville sister act moving to New York to make it on Broadway while love and greed threatened to tear them apart. Harriett, nicknamed Hank (Bessie Love), and her younger sister Queenie (Anita Page) receive help from Hank's boyfriend and songwriter Eddie Kearns (Charles King). Eddie eye for Hank wonders to the younger and more beautiful Queenie and in defense of not having her sister's heart be broken by Eddie, Queenie quickly starts dating a playboy, leaving Eddie and Hank together and both upset over the man Queenie is dating. Eventually Hank catches on that Eddie has fallen in love with Queenie and does the noble and heartbreaking thing, telling Eddie she never loved him so he should go rescue Queenie. Eddie would go and Queenie realizes her mistake of being with this rich man that just uses her. The two would marry leaving the loving, selfless Hank to go back on the road with a replacement girl doing what she loves to do, performing on stage.

Looking at this picture through modern eyes it performs very poorly. The acting is poor at best. The emotions given by the actors are very overdone as it performed by a very cheap stage company. The editing left me asking if the cutter never double checked his work as there were long pauses that were painfully mistimed. The film, though a full sound picture, had title cards to tell you the passage of time and location, which were very unnecessary. The film was full of cliques that left me scratching my head saying "This was good?"

With all that said, now let us put in perspective. The film was a spectacle of its time. A person in 1929 went to see the picture to listen to it. Sound in movies was very new and this film was a "talkie," but it was also what can be considered the first Hollywood musical. The title cards, though out of place, show that movies where still in this evolutionary point between the silent era and the sound era, still trying to feel its way from one era to the next. The cinematography was lacking, but that was because of the sound recording process where the cameras were encased in boxes to keep the camera noise down for the microphones. The musical numbers must have been a grand thing to watch for the first time as the picture was full of music, even though some songs were very random and the movie seemed to simply be a vehicle for large stage numbers. One number was even produced with an early form of two-reel color to make it even more lavish, a big treat for any movie goer. The color copies would however be lost in time as no surviving color prints exist. The enduring part of the film was the turn around by Hank to sacrifice her happiness for the joy of her loved ones. Though the acting left me wanting, the film did have a heart to it.

The film was a huge hit at its time. The Broadway Melody was the highest grossing movie of 1929, which was helped by a silent cut of the film made for houses still without sound, and at the second Academy Awards ceremony won the award for best picture. With its success the film would spawn three sequels (Broadway Melody of 1936, 1939, and 1940), simply rehashings of the same premise, but no real connections to the original. Time would not be fan of the picture however, as the film is seen as overly melodramatic, poorly acted, and filled with every clique in the book. We must understand that this movie was made for a different time for a different audience. The picture was the "it" thing for 1929. To think about its production is quite amazing considering how it had to be filmed with a difficult sound recording process, a part in color, and large stage numbers. Color and large musicals would become an important part of MGM productions in the coming decade as Hollywood would reach its "Golden Age." Sure the film isn't great to watch on any given day, but in the proper context the film is marvelous and in its time left millions of moviegoers very happy.