Based on the popular novel and Broadway musical, this first of three Hollywood adaptations of "Show Boat" is a mess, which I find wholly more fascinating than its old-fashioned melodrama and meandering epic storytelling, which, besides, is treated far better in the 1936 film version. Even for the transition period in Hollywood between silent cinema and talkies, this one is quite the hodgepodge. It's a "goat gland"--which is to say it's an originally silent-film production that had talkie sequences added, as well as musical numbers in this case. Moreover, as a silent, it was to more-closely follow Edna Ferber's book rather than the musical--except it removed any of the potentially-controversial racial stuff. With the talkie vogue, however, synchronized-sound scenes were adjoined, but they also were adapted from the prose and not from the stage, so a prologue comprised of a series of musical numbers unrelated to the main narrative of the film was tacked on--featuring the Kern and Hammerstein score performed by the stars of the hit Ziegfeld show. Then, for years thereafter, the film was considered lost and has since been reconstructed by Turner Classic Movies. Reportedly, even more footage has been recovered since and exists elsewhere, but it doesn't seem that anyone has put together, or at least made widely available, a more complete version than the one that appears on the TCM TV channel occasionally. Thus, what we have now is, an albeit admirable, mess of incompleteness that is the reconstruction of what already was a cobbled-together goat gland of a silent/talkie/musical, mostly based on the book and partly on the play, and that had already confused the original story by removing the biraciality of the Julie character.
Ironically, the removal of the racial themes here is reminiscent of the Jim Crow segregation that the original story criticized, whereby Julie was removed from the show-boat stage because of her African-American heritage, thereby deintegrating it. Meanwhile, Universal apparently had no qualms regarding the reprisal of the minstrel show part from the Ziegfeld production for its partially-missing prologue. The avoidance of race further undermines the importance of cultural exchange (or what some may now label "appropriation") in the subsequent musical career of the Magnolia character.
Some of the play-within-the-play, self-referential construction remains here despite the relative absence of race. Instead of ethnic difference, however, much of the difference here between the inner performances and the outer play that is the film is the presence or absence of spoken word. There's also some attention given to the theatrical audiences, which contrasts their antics with those backstage by the show people. The later employment of talkie sequences for Magnolia's off-stage marriage to her gambling co-star may've even suggested that their romance had become an act. Because this film was so early in the talkie era, however, it's hard to tell whether the actors playing actors intended their characters' characters to be horrendously performed, as in the truly atrocious play-within-the-film. Most Hollywood early talkie scenes, especially in the goat glands, are hard to watch, after all; take a perfectly-lovely late silent such as "Lonesome" (1928), for instance, which grinds to a static and shrieking halt once the leads speak. Much the same happens in "Show Boat," except it wasn't an exceptional silent film to begin with--even though the grand production values are obvious with lots of extras and impressive settings involving the riverboat and the Mississippi, and there are some multiple-exposure and tracking shots, as well as framings involving a mirror.
The most interesting part of this "Show Boat" is the use of silence and sound. The reconstruction adds another aspect to this with an original synchronized-sound sequence that is now entirely mute with nary even the missing soundtrack or replacement subtitles. Visuals absent sound and word, which is the opposite of the reconstructed film's incomplete overture. (Perhaps, the incompleteness of the film may even be a partial blessing, as these later scenes seem to be some of the most histrionic of the picture.) Furthermore, "Show Boat" is one of the earliest Hollywood productions to include Foley work--as recorded by the namesake sound-effects artist himself, no less, Jack Foley. These sound effects seem to include chirping and clapping during the creaky dialogue of the stage scene, as well as a cane knocking later on. It's an influential addition to an otherwise enormous production, doubtless, but it's yet another part of a film that was already muddled in its adaptation, made more disordered through its production and still more so since through its deterioration and reconstruction.
Ironically, the removal of the racial themes here is reminiscent of the Jim Crow segregation that the original story criticized, whereby Julie was removed from the show-boat stage because of her African-American heritage, thereby deintegrating it. Meanwhile, Universal apparently had no qualms regarding the reprisal of the minstrel show part from the Ziegfeld production for its partially-missing prologue. The avoidance of race further undermines the importance of cultural exchange (or what some may now label "appropriation") in the subsequent musical career of the Magnolia character.
Some of the play-within-the-play, self-referential construction remains here despite the relative absence of race. Instead of ethnic difference, however, much of the difference here between the inner performances and the outer play that is the film is the presence or absence of spoken word. There's also some attention given to the theatrical audiences, which contrasts their antics with those backstage by the show people. The later employment of talkie sequences for Magnolia's off-stage marriage to her gambling co-star may've even suggested that their romance had become an act. Because this film was so early in the talkie era, however, it's hard to tell whether the actors playing actors intended their characters' characters to be horrendously performed, as in the truly atrocious play-within-the-film. Most Hollywood early talkie scenes, especially in the goat glands, are hard to watch, after all; take a perfectly-lovely late silent such as "Lonesome" (1928), for instance, which grinds to a static and shrieking halt once the leads speak. Much the same happens in "Show Boat," except it wasn't an exceptional silent film to begin with--even though the grand production values are obvious with lots of extras and impressive settings involving the riverboat and the Mississippi, and there are some multiple-exposure and tracking shots, as well as framings involving a mirror.
The most interesting part of this "Show Boat" is the use of silence and sound. The reconstruction adds another aspect to this with an original synchronized-sound sequence that is now entirely mute with nary even the missing soundtrack or replacement subtitles. Visuals absent sound and word, which is the opposite of the reconstructed film's incomplete overture. (Perhaps, the incompleteness of the film may even be a partial blessing, as these later scenes seem to be some of the most histrionic of the picture.) Furthermore, "Show Boat" is one of the earliest Hollywood productions to include Foley work--as recorded by the namesake sound-effects artist himself, no less, Jack Foley. These sound effects seem to include chirping and clapping during the creaky dialogue of the stage scene, as well as a cane knocking later on. It's an influential addition to an otherwise enormous production, doubtless, but it's yet another part of a film that was already muddled in its adaptation, made more disordered through its production and still more so since through its deterioration and reconstruction.