1929 Best Picture (2nd Academy Awards)“Gee, this is elegant, ain’t it.”The first “talkie” to win Best Picture at the Oscars,
The Broadway Melody is known to be one of, if not the worst Best Picture winner of all time. But is it? I can’t really say because I’ve only seen 42 Best Picture winners, but it’s easily at the bottom of my ranking right now.
What makes this film rather lackluster is that this film is just boring. There’s not a single song or dance number in this musical that is memorable or interesting. The film’s writing of its female characters is stereotypical and dry, I’m not even exaggerating, all they do is fight over men for 100 minutes.
While this film is undeniably boring, and not a great film compared to other Best Picture winners, I understand the decision. Released in February 1929,
The Broadway Melody feels like an ode to what we called the “roaring twenties”. As boring as it is, I feel the charm of 1920’s New York. And if you know your history, just 9 months later, Wall Street crashed and would mark the end of the Roaring Twenties. So of the 5 films nominated, it felt the Academy was trying to choose the film to best represent the 1920’s, narrowing it down to this film and
Hollywood Revue. With the stock market crash only 6 months before the ceremony, a film about broadway and New York seems like the obvious choice.
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