Reception
The 1936 version of Show Boat is considered by many film critics to be one of the classic film musicals of all time, and one of the best stage-to-film adaptations ever made. Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times called it "one of the finest musical films we have seen".
Ten numbers from the stage score are actually sung, with four others heard only as background music, and a tiny, almost unrecognizable fragment of the song "I Might Fall Back on You" is heard instrumentally at the beginning of the New Year's Eve sequence. Except for three new dialogue scenes, the final ten minutes of the film, and the three additional songs written for the movie by Kern and Hammerstein, the 1936 Show Boat follows the stage musical extremely closely, unlike the 1929 film and the 1951 version released by MGM. It is so faithful that even several instrumental pieces not by Kern which are regularly included as part of the show's score are retained in the film. The film also retains much of the comedy in the show.
In 1996, this version of Show Boat was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Read more about this topic: Show Boat (1936 Film)
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