Fraid I'll have to respectfully disagree with previous reviewer planktonrules on two points. One is his feeling that this film needed to be longer. To my mind a concise documentary about someone whose great career was tragically cut short feels like it fits its subject quite neatly. And as to plankton's objection that you get none of Thalberg's personal life I would make the demurral that it seemed from this doc that there was little personal life to get. Instead, I agree with what I feel is well delineated in director Robert Trachtenberg's work, that Thalberg was your classic control freak/workaholic whose main love was for movies and that that was pretty much it in the personality department, aside, that is, from a fair amount of charm that made him a favorite of the people with whom he worked, other than Louis B Mayer, of course, whose supply of charm resembled a half empty canteen in the desert.
How would Thalberg have fared if he had lived into his seventies or eighties and been productive into, say, the early 1970s? My guess is that it would have been a tough slog for him, particularly in the 1950s and 60s when his disdain for the director as opposed to the producer (and writer) would have clashed with the post WW2 ethos, in film, of Director as Boss, if not auteur. I could imagine him eventually moving to television, where the opposite is the case. And needless to say his right wing politics would not have flown in the Hippie and anti Vietnam mid to late 60s, although they would have been just dandy in the HUAC era. So, let's say his catching pneumonia at thirty six was a good career move and it's a good thing we didn't have to see him in his post glory days somewhere between a fading David O Selznick (kind of the guy's double) and a prestige TV show runner (kind of a glorified David Susskind).
Bottom line: A most thought provoking documentary and entertaining to boot, with interesting tidbits scattered throughout, like Mayer calling on President Hoover for help in warding off Fox, and Norma Shearer neglecting her kids, (always had a vague dislike for this gal and now I have a specific reason why). Give it an A minus.
