Naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty Forty-Second Street. Wow - this really does take you there! If you want to travel back in time to an age when gangsters' molls and starry-eyed young hopefuls rubbed shoulders with sinister nightclub owners, bootleggers and gold digging showgirls, this is perfect for you.
Universal really pushed the boat out with this. We've got an amazing set, an intricate and well devised story which easily fills the nearly two hour runtime, a full musical score (a real rarity for such early talkies) and amazing cinematography (they invented the crane camera for this). It's not one of those handful of 1929 pictures you watch and think: I can't believe this was made at the dawn of the talkies - in terms of the acting style it does feel like it was made before they'd perfected the technique but it is still a million times better than most 1929 movies. This film isn't just for film buffs interested in cinema history or technique, watched today it's still properly entertaining and enjoyable.
As for the musical numbers - well, don't expect 42nd Street but the songs aren't actually too bad and presented fairly imaginatively cleverly edited into the backstage action. Whereas Warners were lumbered with their unwieldy Vitaphone recording system, Universal borrowed Fox's superior technology for this which allowed naturally sounding dialogue and clever editing to make this sound as good as it looks.
The delivery of that dialogue however varies depending on which actor's delivering it. That wonderful Sicilian, Paul Porcasi does his usual dodgy geezer act which is always entertaining. The rest of the cast however don't seem as comfortable with the microphone. It's a shame this was a Universal picture otherwise it might have had more competent actors: co-lead Merna Kennedy sounds terrified most of the time and her co-star Glenn Tryon seems to be doing a third-rate Al Jolson tribute act. But even though the acting is "of variable quality" it doesn't deter whatsoever from the enjoyment of this almost fabulous film.
If you liked THE BROADWAY MELODY you'll like this too. The acting isn't as good as and although there's some spectacular camerawork here, the direction of the cast isn't nearly as good either but what it has got is an even more evocative and embroiling atmosphere of the heady jazz age of flappers, floosies and felons.
