The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
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The Hollywood Revue of 1929 Movie Review
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a 1929 musical film directed by Charles Reisner and starring a whole bunch of famous actors and actresses of its time. It’s a fascinating product of its time.
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“You talk like a pawnbroker“
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This film basically has no story to it whatsoever and is just a collection of musical acts and performances with some intermissions and introductions. Think of ‘Fantasia’ but with much less artistry and storytelling. It is a revue as the title so clearly suggests.
Now I do realize that it is a film that you either love or hate with the majority of audiences today probably belonging in the latter category. But I’m wholly in the middle. I find it to be an okay experiment which mostly doesn’t work, but admittedly shines in a couple of glorious occasions.
1929 was a curious year for Hollywood as it’s the first year of sound films and thus came their sudden obsession with musicals as that genre could never have been made during the silent era. This experiment was conducted to impress the audiences of its time and I am sure it was successful in that because they brought almost the entire acting roster of MGM with a lot of iconic stars.
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is troublesome because it has no story or characters whatsoever, but it consists entirely of musical plotless acts. It is a two-hour long movie and thus it bored me until the end as most of the acts were uninspired and forgettable. Some, though, are admittedly quite strong.
The Romeo and Juliet act is fine and I do not believe honestly that this segment ruined John Gilbert’s career as he wasn’t that horrible in it. Jack Benny was a good host in my opinion and naturally Joan Crawford singing and dancing was one of the highlights here.
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The film is well shot and I particularly admired those Technicolor sequences which were intriguing. It is also very well scored with some memorable songs and the sound quality is pretty strong for 1929. Orange Blossom Tree is so well shot, but Singing’ in the Rain is naturally the highlight of the film as this is the film that introduced us to this song and not the later classic eponymous one. And although it entirely did not deserve its Best Picture nomination, at least it should be respected for this song which is here beautifully sung, so well constructed and particularly inspired in that scene-stealing finale.
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a curious product of its time which is entirely plotless, overlong and mostly forgettable, but with a couple of interesting segments with the highlight being the classic song Singin’ in the Rain. It is most definitely not nearly as appealing now as it was when it came out, but still the sheer amount of stars in it makes it a somewhat fascinating time capsule.
