There were a lot of musicals made in the early talkie era of Hollywood, and "Puttin' on the Ritz" is one of the more inept ones. It's a creaky backstage musical where the singing and dancing exists because the characters are theatrical performers, but the musical-within-the-musical is a revue--a variety of melodies unrelated to the outer narrative. Most of the numbers are bland or mawkish. The eponymous "Puttin' on the Ritz" may be the best, but you can see it performed much better in "Young Frankenstein" (1974). There's also an "Alice in Wonderland" tune (reused for the opening of the 1931 adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book), which is jazzy and was probably more appealing in its original two-strip Technicolor (as with the rest of the picture, it exists today only in black and white), but is placed within this narrative as if arranged by Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Among other things, the Alice books are remarkable for their lack of a moral--at least, they don't contain the usual blatant and trite lecture. This is the last big number in a film, however, that is all about blatant and trite lecturing.
Not only is this early talkie blind musically, the filmmaking and acting tend to be tolerable at best and atrocious at worst. "Puttin' on the Ritz" begins with some nice tracking shots, but this seems to be an instance of a popular stratagem whereby a film begins with interesting cinematography or editing to disguise the fact that the rest of the picture is primitively composed. The acting is dreadful, too, including by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett. Poor direction, framing and editing surely did them no favors, either. The line readings are bad, and they often don't even seem to know how to stand or move their bodies naturally. James Gleason is a bit better only because he does his usual schtick. Oh, and the moral is that fame and fortune leads to Richman's character, Harry Raymond, becoming arrogant, as well as a joke to high-society types and a jerk to his former friends. The resolution is ridiculously punitive, although it's a good analogy for the entire production overall being blind.
Not only is this early talkie blind musically, the filmmaking and acting tend to be tolerable at best and atrocious at worst. "Puttin' on the Ritz" begins with some nice tracking shots, but this seems to be an instance of a popular stratagem whereby a film begins with interesting cinematography or editing to disguise the fact that the rest of the picture is primitively composed. The acting is dreadful, too, including by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett. Poor direction, framing and editing surely did them no favors, either. The line readings are bad, and they often don't even seem to know how to stand or move their bodies naturally. James Gleason is a bit better only because he does his usual schtick. Oh, and the moral is that fame and fortune leads to Richman's character, Harry Raymond, becoming arrogant, as well as a joke to high-society types and a jerk to his former friends. The resolution is ridiculously punitive, although it's a good analogy for the entire production overall being blind.