Reception
The Broadway Melody was a substantial success. It was the top grossing picture of 1929, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Historically, it is often considered the first complete example of the Hollywood musical. However, the film has since come to be seen as weak, cliché-ridden, and overly melodramatic. Even in 1929, the creaky stereotypes of backstage show biz were something less than fresh. Most believe that the primary reason for its success in the Academy Awards was due to the films with which it competed being equally unimpressive. Filmsite.org describes the 1929 Oscars as follows: "The films nominated for this year's awards were some of the weakest films in the history of American cinema, reflecting the chaos of the transition from silents to sound films."
Read more about this topic: The Broadway Melody
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)