MGM’s promotion of Ziegfeld Girl fixated on scale—“10 Hit Songs,” “20 Big Stars,” “200 Glorified Girls”—yet its most explosive moments compress all attention on Judy Garland, who turns in an irresistible performance as one of three ingénues (Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner play the others) hoping to hit it big with the iconic Ziegfeld Follies. While Lamarr and Turner get tangled up in melodramatic subplots of romantic conflict and alcoholism, Garland, dressed in a lavish array of glittering gowns designed by prolific costume specialist Adrian, sings half of the film’s ten numbers and rarely strays far from Berkeley and director Robert Z. Leonard’s swooping camera. Beholden to star power and glitzy sets that drip money, Ziegfeld Girl is relatively short on Berkeley’s usual pictorial innovations and provocations. Instead, it finds the director working in an almost incantatory mode, with the procession of glamorous women slowly descending enormous spiral staircases taking on the quality of hypnosis.