Film Review
Warner Brothers' spirited attempt to cash in on the success of their
first two Gold Diggers films -
Gold
Diggers of 1929 and
Gold Diggers of 1933 - is
somewhat undermined by a ludicrously contrived plot which provides the
flimsiest of frameworks for its lavish song and dance numbers.
However, so impressive are these numbers that the failings of the
mangled vaudevillian storyline are easily forgiven and the spectator
has no option but to be just swept along by the fun and ebullience of
what the film has to offer - a pleasant distraction from the pains and
worries of everyday life. To a contemporary audience that had yet
to see the back of the Great Depression,
Gold Diggers of 1935 was a very
welcome tonic.
Dick Powell, arguably the smoothest juvenile of his day, recaptures
some of the magic of his previous
Gold
Diggers outing, ably assisted by the lovely Gloria Stuart,
although both are too easily out-staged by Alice Brady who puts in a
gloriously over-the-top turn as the tight-fisted widow Mrs
Prentiss. Without the lively contributions of Brady and other
like-minded lunatics, such as Adolphe Menjou and Hugh Herbert, much of
the comedy would have fallen decidedly flat. The scripted jokes
are not that funny but they are played out with such screwball-style
enthusiasm that you would have to be a soulless block of granite not to
succumb to the urge to laugh out loud at some of the more extravagant
gags, such as the surreal, and ever so slightly sinister, sword dance
rehearsal.
Gold Diggers of 1935 was the
first film to be directed solo by Busby Berkeley, the legendary
Hollywood dance choreographer who was renowned for his highly artistic
and technically challenging dance routines. It was Berkeley who
masterminded the mind-blowing finale to the previous
Gold Diggers film and here he
surpasses himself with what is widely regarded as the greatest musical
number committed to celluloid, an expressionistic Depression-themed
dream sung to Lullaby of Broadway, the song that won the film its only
Oscar. This sequence is unlike anything you will find in any
other Hollywood movie and perfectly evokes the era in which the film
was made, with the Art Deco glamour of the showbiz world mingling with
the grim economic realities of the mid 1930s. The film offers one
other notable spectacle - a stunning yet totally bonkers ballet
performed by hundreds of pianos - but the haunting Lullaby of Broadway
sequence is the one that makes the greatest impression and elevates a
mediocre music hall farce to the status of an enduring classic.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
The staff at the Wentworth Plaza, a high class hotel at Lake
Waxapahachie, are used to handsome tips from their well-heeled
clients. The only guest who isn't liberal with her gratuities is
Mrs Prentiss, a wealthy widow who watches over every cent of her
multi-million dollar fortune like a psychopathic lioness guarding her
cubs. When her daughter Ann insists on a last fling before
marrying the boring tycoon T. Mosley Thorpe, Mrs Prentiss engages hotel
desk clerk Dick Curtis as her personal escort, hoping that this will
keep her expenditure to a minimum. Unfortunately, the scheme
backfires when Dick and Ann fall in love and decide to get
married. Meanwhile, Mrs Prentiss's wayward son has fallen for
Dick's former fiancée. The widow's woes are exacerbated
when she hires Nicolai Nicoleff, an extravagant and dishonest Russian
theatre director, to take charge of the annual charity show which,
grudgingly, she bankrolls each year. Heedless of his sponsor's
penny-pinching proclamations, Nicoleff goes ahead and puts together the
most lavish spectacle imaginable. And as if this wasn't enough,
Mrs Prentiss has just learned she has incurred a one third cut in her
dividend! Still, her problems are as nothing compared with the
travails of T. Mosley Thorpe, a world authority on snuff boxes who ends
up being blackmailed by his gold-digging stenographer...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.