The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont, 1929)

I'm probably overrating this second Best Picture Oscar winner. But there's no use getting arrogant about the indifferent direction and the creaky story, not when the film features two dynamite performances from Anita Page and, especially, Bessie Love as the striving sister act Queenie and Hank Mahoney. Any hopes that silent cinema would remain the norm were dashed in the climactic dressing room scene when Hank breaks up the act. Sobbing as she slaps cold cream on her face, Love made such an indelible impression that it moved René Clair to opine "Bessie Love talking manages to surpass the silent Bessie Love whom we loved so well in the past." All that and several classic musical numbers including the titanic title song, a spontaneous outburst of "You Were Meant for Me," and an eerie "Truthful Deacon Brown" sung in falsetto by a guitar quartet. And it ends not with the formation of a heterosexual couple but with Hank's future left uncircumscribed out on the road where it's better to star in Oshkosh than to starve on Broadway. What's not to love?

Grade: A-minus