Best Actor 1934: Frank Morgan in The Affairs of Cellini

Frank Morgan received his first Oscar nomination for portraying the Duke of Florence in The Affairs of Cellini.

The Affairs of Cellini is one odd movie that I do not know exactly to make of. It is a comedy of sorts but it is one weird comedy.

Frank Morgan is one of the two actors that does not play it straight, the other is Frederic March who plays Cellini. Morgan does his Wizard of Oz routine in this film as the man who seems always a little nervous, and tries very poorly to be competent. This routine works better for his far briefer role as the Wizard of Oz. Here his routine which is all that he does for the entire film starts to get on my nerves. It is funny for a little bit of the time, and some of the things he says with his nervousness is funny such as saying to execute people, but overall he quickly becomes tiresome. I could see if it was part of his performance but it is the whole thing. He does not diversify his performance at all. Now it is a comedy and he is trying to be funny but it just does not work well enough for the whole time.

He technically is not wrong for the part, the duke is suppose to be incompetent, and nervous, but I think he is trying to be really funny but he just is not all that funny. Now I would say more about his performance but there is nothing more to say. He only does the same thing over and over again. He is not bad at this, but his routine is overused. It is fine for one scene, in fact it can be very good for one scene like in the Wizard of Oz, but here they overuse him. If he was only in say the first scene I probably would have liked him better because his routine works for short bursts, but here it is too much.