by Allan Fish
(USA 1932 89m) DVD1
Isn’t it romantic?
p/d Rouben Mamoulian w Samuel Hoffenstein, Waldemar Young, George Marion Jnr play “Tailor in the Château” by Leopold Marchand and Paul Armont ph Victor Milner ed William Shea m/ly Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart art Hans Dreier cos Travis Banton, Edith Head
Maurice Chevalier (Maurice Courtelin), Jeanette MacDonald (Princess Jeanette), Charles Ruggles (Vicompt Gilbert de Vareze), Charles Butterworth (Count de Savignac), Myrna Loy (Princess Vantine), C.Aubrey Smith (Duke), Joseph Cawthorn (Dr Armand de Fontinac), Robert Greig, Ethel Griffies, Blanche Frederici, Elizabeth Patterson,
When people come to discuss the great musicals of the thirties, the conversation generally will have two mainstays in the fight; the working girl depression Busby Berkeley musicals at Warners and the art deco romantic comedy musicals of Astaire and Rogers at RKO. No-one can deny their merits or argue that any such list as mine would be incomplete without due homage to both corners, but in my opinion the series of light sophisticated musicals produced by the personification of studio sophistication that was Pre Hays Code Paramount are better still.
1932 was the year in which Paramount produced de Mille’s best talkie The Sign of the Cross, the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers, Lubitsch’s masterpiece Trouble in Paradise, Von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express and Mamoulian’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. But it was that director’s next film, a musical based on the songs of Rodgers and Hart, that was to prove arguably the greatest. Love Me Tonight is out of Trouble in Paradise by One Hour With You, to quote racing parlance, with Lubitsch having worked on the first two and MacDonald, Chevalier and Ruggles on the last two (Ruggles on all three in fact). But Lubitsch’s operettas, brilliant though One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant were, are strictly Hollywood born and bred. Mamoulian’s master stroke was to marry Lubitsch’s style and Paramount’s wonderful decors with the incredible camera movement and poetry of René Clair’s films, particularly Le Million and Sous les Toits de Paris, into a simple story of a Parisian tailor going to a château to get payment from a bad debtor aristo only to fall in love with a princess.
One thing the best films of all three major musical styles of the thirties share is that they are comedies; Gold Diggers of 1933, Top Hat and Love Me Tonight are not just great musicals, they are romances and comedies as well. Though Chevalier and MacDonald are magnificent together (as they were in several other classic operettas from 1929-1934 before she settled down to boring Nelson Eddy, she actually looks stunning in her sexy undergarments), it’s the comic timing of the supports that gives it an extra edge. Ruggles was a mainstay in the Paramount classics of the period, and is as indispensable here as he was to Lubitsch before; Butterworth is hilarious as the hapless flute-obsessed suitor; and Smith shows a real feel for comedy as the old Duke who famously sings out “the son of a gun is nothing but a tailor.” But the piece de resistance has to be the young Myrna Loy as a nymphomaniac countess who, after MacDonald faints and Ruggles asks if she could go for a doctor, replies “why sure, bring him in…”; then when asked by MacDonald if she ever thinks of anything but men replies “oh yes, schoolboys” and looks despairingly at the collection of footmen, all old enough to challenge Moore Marriott and Wilfred Brambell to the crown of cinematic decrepitude.
I don’t need to mention the brilliance of the visuals and decors, as they go without saying with technicians like Milner, Dreier and Banton, and the same is true of Rodgers and Hart’s wonderful score. Let it suffice to say that, like so many other Paramount classics of the period, its not being available on video has lost it a place in the pantheon it so richly deserves. One would love to see the original 104m version, but with that likely lost forever, everyone should rush out now to buy Kino’s new restoration of the surviving print. It isn’t only romantic, it’s magical.
Well, I completely agree with this excellent treatment of one of the greatest musical films ever made in the history of the cinema.
I can well understand the comparison here with Lubitsch, and I concur that it’s one of the best musical films. The song “Isn’t It Romantic?” is part of the popular culture, but the whole film is infused with infectious charm. A great write-up.
One of the musicals that almost defies criticism.
I agree with the comparison with Lubitsch, as this musical is highly ‘polished’ and ‘sophisticated.’ But it’s also a complete and utter delight, and deserves this kind of recognition and expert writing!
Thanks again, guys.
Thanks, guys, I agree entirely.
I remember reading somewhere (but Allan Fish finally gets to that fact in his last sentence) that the version we have of this delightful film is far from complete. I am sorry to here this, as some of the segments we do have are timeless.