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2.5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 2.5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Great Day remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are looking for a smooth, polished movie night, **stay far away** from this one.
But if you are a film nerd who likes digging through the trash of history to find weird gems, you might actually have fun. 🎞️
Normal people will probably hate it because it’s loud, messy, and the plot feels like it was written on a napkin during lunch.
The first thing that hits you is the sound quality.
It has that **crunchy, hissy** 1930s audio where every time someone moves a chair, it sounds like a car crash.
I honestly kind of love it, though.
It feels like you are eavesdropping on a bunch of ghosts who don't know they are being recorded.
The movie is set in the South, and the accents are... well, they are an adventure. 🤠
Everyone is trying so hard to sound "Southern" that half the time I couldn't even tell what they were saying.
Joan Crawford is the main reason anyone would watch this today.
She looks so uncomfortable in some scenes, like she’s worried the microphone hidden in the flower vase is going to fall on her head.
There is this one shot where she is supposed to look romantic, but she just looks like she’s trying to remember if she left the stove on at home.
It’s a far cry from the sleek performances in something like His House in Order.
Then there is Johnny Mack Brown.
He was a big football star, and you can really tell because he acts with his shoulders more than his face.
He’s very handsome, but he has the emotional range of a very sturdy tree. 🌲
The musical numbers are where the movie gets really strange.
The song "Great Day" starts up and suddenly there are dozens of people singing and dancing, but the camera doesn't seem to know where to look.
It’s like the director just pointed the lens at the middle of the room and hoped for the best.
The pacing reminds me of The Lightning Raider, just weirdly jumpy and frantic for no reason.
I noticed a guy in the background of the party scene who just stands there staring directly into the camera for about five seconds.
Nobody told him to stop.
It’s those little mistakes that make these old early-sound movies so much better than the perfect stuff we get now.
The movie gets noticeably better when people stop trying to act and just start singing.
Even if the songs aren't all hits, the energy is high.
It’s way more chaotic than something like Black Waters, which felt like everyone was whispering so they wouldn't break the equipment.
In *Great Day*, they are definitely not whispering.
There is a scene with a horse that looks more confused than the actors.
I think the horse knew the movie was going to be scrapped and remade a year later.
Speaking of which, it’s wild to think that MGM looked at this and said, "Nope, do it all over again."
You can see why, though.
The tone is all over the place—one minute it’s a heavy drama about a failing plantation, and the next minute everyone is doing a synchronized dance in the dirt.
It’s like two different movies had a head-on collision.
Still, I’d rather watch this mess than a boring, perfect movie that has no soul.
It has that raw, "we are figuring this out as we go" vibe that disappeared once Hollywood got too smart for its own good.
If you find a copy, watch it for the weirdness. 🍺
Don't expect a masterpiece, just expect a very loud, very grainy time capsule.
It's not quite as wild as Smashing Barriers, but it tries its best to be loud.
The ending feels like it just... stops.
Like the film ran out or they just decided they had enough footage of people crying.
It’s imperfect and kind of annoying, but I’m glad I saw it.
IMDb 6.9
1926
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