Recensioni di Metacritic

The film that revived public interest in musicals after many early talkie bombs sabotaged the genre, 42nd Street was the first real glimpse of the surreal artistry of choreographer Busby Berkeley.

A movie that could only have been produced by the 1930s studio system. Absolutely spectacular.

42nd Street is the quintessential '30s backstage song and dance movie-and one of the most influential and much-copied movie musicals ever. [09 Mar 2007, p.C6]

The liveliest and one of the most tuneful screen musical comedies that has come out of Hollywood.

Everything about the production rings true. It's as authentic to the initiate as the novitiate.

This may be the definitive Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical simply because the entire movie revels in the sort of things that Berkeley’s elaborate dance numbers revel in: innuendo, flirtations and flesh.

Reviving the musical's fortunes in one fell swoop, Bacon and Busby Berkeley's backstage saga set the benchmark for the putting-on-a-show subgenre not by means of plot (a thin and hackneyed affair about a young understudy finding stardom when she covers for the temperamental diva) but through sassy songs and dialogue and dazzling mise-en-scène.

The backstage story is pleasantly tawdry and corny.

This 1933 film is the best known of the Warner Brothers Depression-era musicals, though it doesn't compare in dash and extravagance to later entries in the cycle.