Film historians pretty universally consider The Broadway Melody to be the most influential of the early sound musicals. Richard Barrios in his great book A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film says that every technique used in later musicals can be seen in it. It was an incredible sensation at the time: the first film that used mobile recording, recorded playback, and sound editing. It also has the distinction of being the first film that convinced the great French director-innovator René Clair that sound could be used artistically in cinema. It’s said that Clair’s classic musicals Sous les toits de Paris and Le Million show its direct influence. That’s high praise. I love Clair’s films. So it’s a historian’s delight. There are many loving and insightful fan viewers’ comments about it on IMDB. But I’ve gotta be clear, Broadway Melody is not so easy to watch unless one is in a historical state of mind.
One of the reasons for that is that it’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of a film that tries to bridge the aesthetics of silent and sound film. It’s backward looking and forward looking at the same time. A lot of films of the 1929-1931 period were like that, but it’s particularly striking in this one. The story is at first sight a fairly standard backstage musical: two girls in a sister act, The Mahoney Sisters, arrive in Manhattan from the boonies at the call of their old friend Eddie Kearns (Charles King), who is playing in a Broadway show. Eddie and Hank Mahoney (Bessie Love) have been sweet on each other for a long time. In the course of rehearsals it becomes clear that Hank’s sister, Queenie, is the only one of them destined for success, because she’s “a beauty.” Queenie is cultivated by a rich playboy, Jock Warriner (Kenneth Thompson), and she is powerfully drawn by the riches and fame that he pretends to offer her. Meanwhile, Eddie is gradually transferring his affections from the feisty and brainy Hank to the airhead beauty Queenie. There’s a whole lot of patronizing patriarchal chest thumping and brawling around Queenie’s dilemma — should she go for the riches or loyalty to her sister and Eddie? –, which is ultimately resolved when Queenie chooses Eddie, and Hank decides to sacrifice herself by returning to the boonies to allow Eddie and her sister to pursue their careers together on the Great White Way.
As a story, it is primitive melodrama leavened by some snappy musical routines. It’s part of the Hollywood musical form — maybe all the musical forms, from opera to operetta — that the emotional tensions build until they are released by the musical numbers. The audience is willing to tolerate a lot of friction (and boredom) in the knowledge that the musical “moments” (Astaire’s phrase) will dissolve the tension. The Broadway Melody starts it off with a bang, assuming that the audience is so familiar with musicals, either the Jolson films that preceded it or the diverse variety spectacles, that it can assert right from the get go that “all talking, all singing, all dancing” (as the poster had it) would save them in the end. The opening is exemplary; I really can see pretty much all of the great urbane backstage film musicals pregnant in it.
Charles King was a Broadway star, and you can feel how the director, Harry Beaumont, is working to recreate the Broadway spectacle’s opening feel in cinematic terms. That all looks forward. But Beaumont also has dramatic scenes that are rooted in the visual styles of the most elegant silents, synthesized with voices. Check out this early scene with the sisters.
And parallel to that emotional intensity, we see the beginnings of the cinematic Art Deco extravaganzas.
The rehearsal scene is full of nice comic moments at the expense of stage ensembles, and its climax should have been — coulda been — the beginning of a brilliant pre-screwball situation worthy of a Busby Berkeley story. Queenie — who is a song and dance girl — becomes a blonde bombshell figurehead in a ridiculous epic tableau vivant, and doesn’t speak a line or dance a step. She just looks “beautiful” — and her career is made.
The intrigue begins. Along with everyone else, playboy Jock Warriner is stricken with Queenie, and he begins his seduction, constantly crossing paths and swords with jealous Eddie. And here’s where I hit a wall with this film. I’m a forgiving sort. I try to make all the historical allowances for blind spots, cultural prejudices, and technical limits. But some things I can’t get past. Blackface, for example. And Broadway Melody provides a new one: there’s no way I can accept that Queenie “deserves” the happiness that Hank sacrifices for her just because she’s a gorgeous dish. I’m often uncomfortable with dumb blonde jokes in early films. But Queenie isn’t a comic object. The film treats her good looks as a value in its own right, quite proper for the Broadway entertainment star system. The conflict between Hank’s “ability” and Queenie’s “looks” is supposed to be an equal one. The audience is made to feel powerful sympathy for Hank. She’s clearly grounded in love and loyalty and charisma. But she just doesn’t have the looks. What’s more, Bessie Love’s portrayal of her is not only the sole compelling performance in the film, it belongs in a much better one.
For me, The Broadway Melody is technically fascinating (that’s the historical part) but basically brainless (the artistic part). Hank belongs to another kind of film, maybe a Stanwyck melodrama, in which she’d be paired with a less “deserving” sister. But the worst aspect for me is that a potentially very funny satirical comedy is almost consciously blocked. Instead of Queenie becoming a ridiculous figure — or at least eliciting ridiculousness in others — when she becomes a star for standing still and posing with extended arm, and not for dancing and singing, this whole turn of events is validated by the film. The sister with “abilities” has to sacrifice for the happiness of the the one with “looks.” No matter how much I try to make allowances, it’s not working.
For comparison’s sake:
Broadway Melody was remade a couple of times. The more interesting one for me is Two Girls on Broadway from 1940, with Lana Turner and Joan Blondell as the sisters, and George Murphy in the Eddie role. It tackles the “abilities”/”looks” problem differently.