The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz

1939

Director: Victor Fleming

Starring: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton

The Wizard of Oz is what I call an “exception” movie.  People who don’t like musicals tend to like The Wizard of Oz, despite the fact that it’s a musical.  People who say they don’t like old movies tend to like The Wizard of Oz, despite the fact that it’s 75 years old.  It’s a film that has transcended its origins and become a part of the national film lexicon.  Everyone and their dog knows, and most likely loves, The Wizard of Oz.

The story revolves around Kansas farm girl Dorothy (Garland) who is dissatisfied with her simple life and longs for more.  When a tornado picks up Dorothy’s house with Dorothy inside it and drops her in the magical land of Oz, it seems like Dorothy’s wish has come true, but she is quick to realize that you need to be careful what you wish for.  Dorothy soon wishes that she can return home to her family and friends in Kansas, and enlists the aid of the Scarecrow (Bolger), the Tin Man (Lahr), the Cowardly Lion (Lahr), and the Wizard himself (Morgan) to battle the evil Wicked Witch of the West (Hamilton) so she can find her way back home.  After all, there’s no place like home.

Now here’s where I make a pretty darn big confession: I am not in love with The Wizard of Oz.  And more than that, I never have been.  (Did I just quote Gilbert and Sullivan? Yes I did. Bonus points to those who can tell me which operetta I just referenced.)

Let me explain a bit more: I do not think The Wizard of Oz is a bad or inferior film.  I think it’s great that so many people know and adore this film.  It just never found its way into my heart the same way it apparently has with the rest of the Western Hemisphere.  And before y’all go screaming at me about having ice in my heart for not being enamored of this film, try to give me a chance to explain.  And stop judging, because that’s not very nice.

I have a theory why this isn’t a personal favorite of mine, and it has a lot to do with my disposition as a young Siobhan.  Like pretty much everyone else, this movie was screened quite a bit when I was a child.  I remember watching it over and over and over again. 

A significant fact you must know about me: young Siobhan was a sissy. 

I hated scary books, scary cartoons, and scary movies.  I remember going to a sleepover in elementary school where one of the other girls was hell bent on us watching A Nightmare on Elm Street and I practically had a panic attack from the very THOUGHT of us watching a horror movie.  I watched Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time when I was six, and the trash compactor scene terrified me so deeply, I pointedly refused to watch Star Wars again for another eight years.

And I think the reason I don’t love The Wizard of Oz is because it scared me too much as a kid, but my family kept on watching it anyway and I couldn’t tell anyone.

So, what parts of The Wizard of Oz traumatized me?

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

1. Miss Gulch trying to take Toto away from Dorothy.  I’ve always had an affinity to animals, even as a youngster, and to watch Dorothy as her beloved pet is forcibly removed from her hands broke my heart.  I didn’t like that, no I didn’t like that one bit.

2. Dorothy being locked out of the storm shed.  As I mentioned early on, I’ve seen this film many many times, but I still got anxious every single time the tornado comes.  It’s as if I thought that hoping Dorothy would reach safety would somehow change the plot of the film.  Just one time, just ONE time, I’d love it for Dorothy to not be stuck outside in a natural disaster. 

3. The first arrival of the Wicked Witch of the West.  SHE APPEARS FROM NOWHERE IN A PUFF OF ORANGE SMOKE.  AND THEN SHE IMMEDIATELY TRIES TO KILL DOROTHY.  The Wicked Witch of the West wholeheartedly deserves her spot as one of the greatest villains of all time because she basically scared the crap out of me as a child, and she is so very frightening from the very beginning on.

4. The moving trees that throw apples at Dorothy when she meets the Tin Man.  It’s how they stand stock still and then start mercilessly beating on Dorothy and the Scarecrow.  I mean honestly, this is the stuff of my nightmares.

5. When the Wicked Witch of the West throws fire balls at the Scarecrow.  HE’S MADE OF STRAW.  SHE’S TRYING TO KILL HIM.  Do you know how horrible it is for a six year old to imagine a beloved character burning to death?  Because that’s what went through my head in that scene.

6.  The scary forest when we meet the Cowardly Lion for the first time.  The set designers did their job when they made this incredibly creepy forest, and every single time Dorothy entered this place, I wanted to look away.

7. The poppies.  The goddamned poppies.  The Wicked Witch drugs our gang to try to stop them.  What’s truly frightening in this scene is how she manages to do this from far away in her castle, nowhere near the Emerald City.  She’s incredibly powerful and insidious in her methods. 

8. “Surrender Dorothy.”  Because nothing says frightening like death threats in the sky.

9. Approaching the Wizard of Oz for the first time.  THERE ARE FIREBALLS AND A GIGANTIC DISEMBODIED HEAD WHO YELLS AT EVERYONE.  THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT MADE ME HAPPY AS A CHILD.  Y’know the Cowardly Lion in this scene?  Yeah, that was me.

  10. The forest surrounding the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle.  Again, I think I hate the set designers of this film. 

   11.  Flying monkeys.  Fuck no.  Stop giving me nightmares.  “Fly, my pretties!” What you just heard was the sound of child Siobhan running away from this movie. 

12.  The hourglass with red sand ticking away the remaining moments of Dorothy’s life when she’s trapped in the Wicked Witch’s castle.  Having that kind of time limit put on her life made me so anxiety-ridden as a child.

13. When the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow go undercover as the guards to break into the Witch’s Castle.  The music (which is heavily pulled from Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, a genuinely frightening classical music composition), the costumes, the dark lighting and dangerous set, all made this a big pile of “NOPE” to me.

14. The death of the Wicked Witch.  You’d think that by this point in the picture, I’d be overjoyed to watch the villain die.  Nope, not scaredy cat little Siobhan, oh no.  I found her death traumatizing, watching her shrivel and burn away as if she is being corroded by acid. 

Yep.  This movie basically scared the pants off of me as a kid.  And I had to watch it over and over and OVER again.  So you’ll pardon me if it’s not a personal favorite.

Now, having made that rather exhaustive list, you can perhaps understand why this film, frankly, filled me with terror as a young child and why I never quite managed to fall in love with it.  And while the things on that list don’t really scare me anymore, I had to watch this movie SO many times as a child and I didn’t have the nerve to tell my parents that it scared me so heartily that I made myself sit through this frightfulness too many times to ever develop an emotional affinity for the film.  

I told you I was a sissy when I was a kid.  Seriously, you don’t understand just how much everything scared me.

Which isn’t to say there weren’t parts of this film that I enjoyed.  The stand out setpieces are easily the Munchkinland sequence and the arrival the Emerald City.  These two scenes are still my favorite parts of The Wizard of Oz, and I DO love them, very much.  Both are happy parts of the film, which meant I wasn’t cowering behind my hands as a youngster.  Both are towering examples of brilliant uses of Technicolor to achieve a fantasy look.  The colors are rich and luxurious, and both scenes are filled with a multitude of interesting side characters.  I love the costuming and set design of both of these lands.  It’s the rotund, Seussian, illustration-feel of Munchkinland, and the sleek art deco design of the Emerald City, all sophistication and smooth lines, that I really love.  Add on top of that two fantastic songs that leave you humming the tunes for the rest of the day and yeah, for sure, these are my two favorite parts of the film.

The Wizard of Oz will always be considered a great film, and rightfully so.  It’s a visual achievement with a heartwarming message, full of indelible characters and charming songs.  But it’s not my favorite.  It’s basically the first horror film I ever saw, and because I was terrible at communicating my fear as a child, I was forced to watch it time and time and time again.  No, it doesn’t scare me anymore, but it’s really too late to reverse the damage.  I appreciate The Wizard of Oz and I can appreciate its stature in the film world, but it will never be a personal favorite.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10.  Again, I think this is a legitimately good film, full of so many iconic film moments.  But… JESUS it scared me as a kid.

ETA: I will always remember Margaret Hamilton going on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and getting dressed in the Wicked Witch costume in order to show young children that the Wicked Witch was just a character and not a real monster.  

Additional ETA: and yes, I've seen Return to Oz.  And I rather like it, even as a kid, despite the fact that it's exponentially creepier than this film.  The difference was that everyone around me acknowledged that Return to Oz was a scary film and didn't make me watch it unless I wanted to.  I couldn't vocalize my fear of Wizard, so my parents just kept... putting it on.  

Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby

1938

Director: Howard Hawks

Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant

Every filmgoer, no matter how hard they may try to be pretentiously objective and critical about the movies they watch, has a weak spot.  Maybe a certain director, maybe a certain actor or actress, maybe a certain genre.  Me?  I have plenty.  Loads, even.  And one of them, a huge one, is Cary Grant.

Cary Grant can do no wrong.  Cary Grant is reason alone for me to watch – and most likely love – a film.

Paleontologist Dr. David Huxley (Grant, the original GQMF) thinks he’s having a good day when the last missing fossil for his dinosaur skeleton is found AND he’s about to marry his boring-as-dirt fiancée Alice (Virginia Walker).  But fate has other plans and soon, while trying to solicit donations for his museum, he meets madcap heiress Susan Vance (Hepburn) who starts by stealing his golf ball, then steals his car, then rips his suit jacket, then tries to get him to take care of a pet leopard, then steals his clothes and makes him wear marabou-trimmed nighties and ill-fitting equestrian costumes. 

When it comes to screwball comedies, Bringing Up Baby might possibly take the largest piece of cake in the entire world, because I don’t think it gets much screwier than this.  All hope at sticking to a strong central and sensible plot gets thrown maniacally out the window as soon as a leopard, of all things, gets thrown into the mix about a third of the way through the film.  It was hardly tending towards sanity previously, what with ripped clothing and mad dinner parties and Cary Grant riding a side board, but a leopard?  And then a dog stealing a dinosaur bone?  And a kooky uncle back from big game hunting in Africa?  AND THEN A SECOND LEOPARD WHO IS NOT TAME LIKE THE FIRST ONE?!?!?!?  Bringing Up Baby does not do shenanigans by halves, oh no indeed.  You want screwball?  This, THIS is screwball.

Really, though, considering this was directed by Howard Hawks, this makes sense.  Hawks directed a myriad of genres of films, but even if he was making a western (Red River, Rio Bravo) or a noir (The Big Sleep) or a historical drama (Sergeant York), there is always a sense of zaniness somehow, somewhere.  Frankly, it’s something I’ve come to appreciate about his films, something I actually look forward to when I see his credit at the opening of a movie.  Hawks has a habit of embracing the crazy and being unafraid to let a situation escalate quickly and not at all realistically, and I like that.  I’ve come to the realization in the past year that I tend to prefer films that eschew reality.  I like suspension of disbelief; it’s a good friend that has served me well over the years.  You certainly need quite a bit of suspension of disbelief for Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby but if you’re willing, it’ll take you on quite the ride.

On several occasions, Bringing Up Baby’s kookiness threatens to derail completely and fall apart at the seams, but somehow it manages to maintain forward momentum, thanks both to Hawks and to its two legendary leads.  I adore Katharine Hepburn as Susan in this film because she is utterly bereft of seriousness.  Susan is all over the place, a perfectly addle-brained, madcap heiress.  She goes from zero to sixty in about two seconds and then maintains that speed for as long as the scene requires it.  Most Hepburn films I’ve seen have Hepburn playing something more serious than this, but man, is she great at playing funny as well.

And what’s more, I like Susan’s character.  I think she’d drive me crazy in real life, but that’s the thing: she doesn’t exist in real life, she’s a crazy fictional character from a movie that’s practically a Looney Toons short.  What I like about Susan the most is her take-charge attitude towards… well, her entire life.  She meets David quickly, drives him crazy, then decides that he’s in love with her, then finds out he’s actually engaged to someone else, then she immediately decides it doesn’t matter and by gum she’s going to do what she needs to do to win her perceived man.  It’s the not-so-hidden feminist in me that responds incredibly well to a film from the thirties showing a woman with a backbone.  The fact that Susan is also utterly crazy is just an added bonus. (And shoot, she goes out and catches the un-tame leopard on her own.  She’s kind of badass.)

And then there’s Cary Grant.

I honestly don’t know where to begin because it’s goddamned Cary Grant.  He’s perfection.  Utter perfection.  In everything.  Ever.  EVER.  And the fact that he spends a majority of this film with that little wayward curl falling over his forehead just makes… oh, oh no, there go my ovaries.  Blast. 

Trying to be a bit more objective, I love Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby because he isn’t afraid to play the fool.  David Huxley spends most of the movie in over his head and dumbfounded, and Grant plays befuddled incredibly well.  David walks around in a daze, and I just can’t get enough of seeing Cary Grant – usually so damn suave and sophisticated – taking pratfalls, wearing silly negligees, and exerting utterly no control over a zany situation.  The stuttering and hapless Cary Grant, contrasted with, for example, his role as uber-serious and sadistic government agent in Notorious, is a reminder that Grant wasn’t just famous for his looks.  Dude had it in him to play such a great variety of roles.  And while I think I personally prefer my Grant suave and debonair, I do rather adore him all geeked out, bespectacled, and nebbish as well. 

Basically, as I said at the beginning, Cary Grant can do no wrong.  And him continually saying "intercostal clavicle" is like a gift from heaven.

There is little in this world I find sexier than my Holy Trinity of Classic Hollywood Actors, of which Grant is most definitely a part, and I love watching him stand absolutely no chance against the force of nature that is Katharine Hepburn in this film.  This film is fun and zany and absolutely unrealistic but for me, that is its charm.  

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10. 

Le Million, because I like to celebrate American holidays with French films?

Le Million

1931

Director: Rene Clair

Starring: Rene Lefevre, Annabella, Paul Ollivier

I make it no secret that I love musicals.  They’re comfort films, they pick me up when I’m down, they make me happy.  But I don’t love all musicals indiscriminately; I tend to prefer musicals where the musical numbers are incorporated into the everyday lives of the characters over those that have to use the stage as a “reason” to have song and dance.  I think this coincides with my love of heavily stylized film; having characters spontaneously break into song and dance, while troubling to many of my fellow blogger friends, is something I love, as it reinforces that this movie is taking place in a different world.  The world of the movie musical is usually one full of sunshine and happiness.  I welcome this alternate reality.  When I first encountered Rene Clair’s superb Le Million, it was as if I had unearthed The First Musical Ever.  While Busby Berkeley (rightly) gets a great deal of credit for popularizing the movie musical with his raucous films, I give Rene Clair the credit for introducing, or at least legitimizing, the idea of incorporating music into the everyday action of his films.

The story is very simple: Michel (Lefevre), a broke artist, unexpectedly wins the lottery.  This is great news, as it will allow him to pay off his many debtors and maybe even marry pretty Beatrice (Annabella) who lives in the apartment across the hall from him.  Problem is, he left his winning ticket in his jacket pocket, the same jacket that Beatrice just lent to Grandpa Tulip (Ollivier), a Robin Hood-esque figure who runs a petty crimes syndicate dedicated to stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  Michel must track down his missing jacket and missing ticket in order to claim his winnings.

  

Le Million is a musical, but not a traditional one.  There are few, if indeed any, “musical numbers” in terms of what we think of today as big showstopping song and dance numbers.  Instead, there is an almost constant use of music and sound throughout the film which, accompanied by an irrepressible sense of whimsy, establishes the mood if not the specific logistics for so many great musicals to come.  There are many small musical touches that aren’t combined into fully realized “songs.”  For example, the scene where all of Michel’s debtors marching up the stairs in unison as they sing (well, more like chant) about how they’re about to get paid isn’t strictly speaking a song, but it’s a great example of how Clair approaches his world in Le Million.  The couple of Michel and Beatrice make up after their required fight (this is a musical, after all, of course the lovers have a fight about something or other) in an incredibly clever setting, stuck on the stage of an opera while the couple in the show sings a love ballad to each other.  Would I call this a musical number?  No, not in the traditional sense, but it’s a very winning use of a love song that isn’t sung by the hero or heroine.  And then there is the unexpected yet ridiculously charming “football game” over the missing suit jacket, where Clair pipes standard crowd noises over the film as the men turn the jacket into a football, complete with tackles and huddles.

  

The plot of Le Million is simple enough and the comedy broad enough that this could have been a silent film, but it’s the above scenes that make me glad it isn’t.  Yes, silent films had musical scores, but they were simply scores, no sound effects, and it’s really the sound effects that shine brightest here.  It’s odd to think of someone actually inventing the concept of the “sound effect,” but Rene Clair does a fantastic job in Le Million of incorporating sound smartly.  Too many early sound films were nothing but cacophonous excuses to cram as much rhythmic noise (NOT music) into the ears of the audience that they never stopped to think about sound as a storytelling technique.  This does NOT apply Le Million, as it is quiet when it needs to be, and jubilantly loud when it needs to be, and most of all, using all manners of sound – dialogue, music, and effects – to tell its tale.  Sound furthers the story and adds to the overall charm.  If this were not a primitive musical, if this were instead a silent film, it would not be Le Million, but something inferior.  

  

Le Million is irrepressibly fun.  It exists in a world where it is never cloudy, and although our characters may encounter problems, never fear, for they will find a way out.  People occasionally start walking in time with one another singing a few snatches of song with one another.  A suit jacket becomes a football.  This right here, all of these things, these would become the Great Hollywood Musical in future years as film evolved.  It is all here, in a distilled, primitive form, but there for the taking.  It is so easy to see how a film like Le Million, in just a year or two, would lead to the Fred and Ginger musicals like Top Hat or Swing Time, and then, in a few more years, to the Technicolor extravaganzas like Singin’ in the Rain.  While hardly emotionally or intellectually taxing, Le Million to me is a sure thing.  A sure thing to pick me up, a sure thing to make me smile, a sure thing to usher in a cheery mood. 

Arbitrary Rating: 8.5/10

Love Me Tonight

Love Me Tonight

1932

Director: Rouben Mamoulian

Starring: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith

I admit, I’ve been holding off on writing a review of this film for the simple reason that I was saving it for a time when I really needed a pick me up.  With the next school year just around the corner, now seems as good a time as any for a cinematic happy pill, and by god, Love Me Tonight is most definitely a happy pill in film form.  I love this movie, perhaps to an almost irrational level, but I don’t care.  Love.  I LOVE Love Me Tonight.

Maurice (Chevalier) is a tailor living in Paris.  Princess Jeanette (MacDonald) is young widowed royalty living in the confines of a palace along with an elderly duke (Smith), several aunts, a boy-crazy young countess (Loy), and a womanizing viscount (Ruggles).  It is the viscount that Maurice first meets after the viscount stiffs Maurice on the bill for his latest suit.  Determined to get his money back, Maurice follows the viscount to the palace and poses as a baron, refusing to leave the viscount’s side until he gets his fee.  Problem is, he and the Princess Jeannette fall in love while he’s waiting for his money; whatever will happen when she realizes he’s not aristocracy?!?!?!?

I don’t even know where to begin.  It’s overwhelming, really.  Shit.

  

Alright, I’ll start at the opening of the film.  For my money, the first twenty minutes of Love Me Tonight are sheer perfection and beyond clever.  1932 was still fairly early in sound technology, but Mamoulian is remarkably wise with how he utilizes sound as a tool.  There are three songs in the first twenty minutes, almost making Love Me Tonight appear to be an operetta rather than a musical (it’s not), and these three songs are so smart.  First up, we open with a sleeping Paris.  Slowly, the city begins to awake, and it does so via sound.  Various vendors open their shops, families open their doors, and make all the normal, regular sounds of the city.  Thing is, Mamoulian builds a syncopated percussive song from all these sounds.  The bootmaker bangs his hammer in time with the woman fluffing her sheets.  Ultimately, the sounds become too cacophonous, and that’s when we meet our hero.  Maurice then walks down the street, saying hello to everyone and everything in the second song, and it’s a beautiful little scene that uses the song to further illustrate Parisian life. 

The third song in the opening twenty minutes is probably the best scene from the entire film, and one that’s been written about extensively.  Yes, I’m going to write about it too.  Maurice sings the famous “Isn’t It Romantic,” the first time that song appeared in film.  Maurice sings it in his shop, and the tune gets passed from Maurice to his customer to a taxi driver, etc.  As the song gets passed from person to person, it also travels from Maurice’s shop to, eventually, Jeanette’s palace, where she hears it and then sings a verse.  I love love love this scene.  It’s a remarkable way of connecting the hero and heroine before they’ve even met, making it clear to us, the audience, that these two are meant for one another even though they’ve never met.  It’s a brilliant use of song, utterly clever, showing how the song evolves and travels from person to person and situation to situation, changing in each interpretation.  It’s a military march when the soldiers sing it, a happy tune when Maurice introduces it, and full of slightly melancholic longing when Jeanette sings it.  It’s rightly remembered as the most famous scene of the film; it’s brilliant.

The songs, in fact, are one of the biggest draws of this film for me.  I make it clear that I am a fan of musicals, but I’ve also written several times about how I greatly prefer musicals where the songs are woven within the plot and story rather than “backstage musicals” where the focus is on “putting on a show.”  Love Me Tonight is one of THE best, if not THE best early in-plot musicals.  Nearly the entire plot is somehow syncopated – butlers enter rooms walking to the beat of the soundtrack music, Maurice runs upstairs in time with the tune, characters even talk in rhyme half the time – and yet it works.  The story is an utter fantasy, as are most romantic comedies, so why not indulge all the way?  Let’s be honest, I’m not looking for reality when I watch Love Me Tonight, so I embrace its flights of fancy, including how it handles the in-plot songs. 

Chevalier is utterly sparkling as he essentially plays himself.  Although much younger here than the Chevalier that most Americans think of (re: the dirty old man who sings “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” from Gigi in 1958), he was still in his early forties when Love Me Tonight was made, hardly a young flower.  Still, there’s something about seeing a younger, more energetic, broad-chested Chevalier that, I admit, I find very appealing.  He works as my romantic hero here.  And when he sings “Mimi,” I melt.  I love pre-Code films, and Love Me Tonight is pre-Code.  The sexual innuendo woven into nearly every other line of dialogue is sparkling, and Chevalier was born for these lines.  “Mimi,” a song Maurice sings to Jeanette the first time they meet as he tries to woo her, is nothing more than him saying, “Hey, you’re cute, wanna fuck?”  Now this on its own tickles me (dirty!), but it’s made even better because Chevalier sings it straight to camera.  It’s not done in a two-shot, but with Chevalier making direct eye contact with the audience.  I smile so broadly when he sings the final verse, “You know I want to have a little son of a Mimi by and by,” but hardly gets out the words because of all the winks and eyebrows and nods he’s throwing in, making it PERFECTLY clear what he’s REALLY singing about.  Yes, Maurice IS Chevalier, but for crying out loud, it’s fun watching Chevalier here.  

  

Additionally, although I’m not a huge Jeanette MacDonald fan, I really think the chemistry between Maurice and Princess Jeanette (and christ, I love that they named the main characters after the actors, that’s too funny) works.  It’s actually mostly because of Chevalier.  MacDonald is her typical MacDonald swooning self, with one notable exception that I will mention later on, but Chevalier is unexpectedly shy and timid in certain scenes.  When he finally makes a serious move on Princess Jeanette, kissing her for the first time at the masquerade ball, she slaps him and he sadly shrugs, far too sadly for my heart to handle, and he moves to go away.  When she stops him and kisses him back, I can see him utterly light up, thinking that he lost what he wanted but now finds it’s back.  And when he brokenly, laughingly tells her that he loves her, you can read his utter disbelief all over his face when she says his love is returned.  He makes it so painfully clear that he is aware of their discrepancy in ranks, although she is not, and he also knows that this utter dream of his will not and cannot last.  It has the heartbreaking poignancy of a man desperately clutching to a wish that cannot be fulfilled.  

  

Yes, Chevalier isn’t exactly the finest actor to grace the planet, but his handling of the few scenes that require real emotion in Love Me Tonight utterly wins me over.  I feel the chemistry, I feel the love, I get that coiling in my stomach that tells me I am really, truly rooting for this couple to get together.  And later on, when the charade is up (WAIT, A COMPLICATION IN A ROMANTIC COMEDY?  SURELY YOU JEST) and Maurice finally tells Princess Jeanette he is “just” a tailor instead of a baron, Chevalier makes my heart break.  He looks towards the camera and says, utterly crestfallen, “Does that make so much difference?” as Jeanette backs away in horror.  This sad, broken man, who knows that he just lost his love, is shockingly poignant.  The movie is such an utter soufflé for its vast majority, and throwing in this tiniest moment of loss and sadness somehow grounds the rest of the film for me.  It makes their love and his loss feel real in a film filled with fantasy.  The first time I watched Love Me Tonight, I was loving it from the get go, but when it got to this particular scene, that’s when I really fell, and I fell hard.  I love the silliness and the giddiness of the musical scenes and all the snappy, sassy quips, but Chevalier’s simple performance when he outs himself to the Princess just pushes it over the edge for me.

 

And none of this has anything to do with the supporting cast.  Love Me Tonight is easily in the running for one of the best assemblies of a supporting cast ever.  C. Aubrey Smith as the duke is hysterical as he constantly gets his guests to play bridge and even sings a bit.  Charles Ruggles, billed as Charlie Ruggles, nearly steals every scene he’s in as the broke viscount, constantly trying to hit on every woman he meets.  And Myrna Loy.  I mean, I already adore Myrna Loy with the passion of a thousand flames, and seeing her vamp it up here with some of the juiciest lines in the film is joyous.  The snappy dialogue everyone gets to toss around is ridiculously fun, such as when the viscount asks Myna Loy if she could go for a doctor, to which she replies, “Why yes, send him right in!” as she adjusts her dress.  As I’ve stated above, I really rather love the two main characters, but Love Me Tonight is not just about Maurice and Jeanette.  Everyone else who peoples this odd little fantasy universe is hysterical, snappy, and sassy.  It’s a brilliant cast.

I’ve mentioned in at least one other review a particular quirk of mine.  We all have them, little things that we particularly love or hate, thematic elements that make us either predisposed to loving or hating a film.  They don’t always have to make a lot of sense or even be major plot elements, but if a film has one, it can elicit a strong reaction.  A rather big quirk of mine in romantic comedies is one relating to gender.  I am strongly predisposed to loving a rom com if, in the finale, it is the woman who chases after the man.  It’s about choice; typically, when a guy has to go after a girl, as is the case in 98% of all rom coms, I sometimes read it as the woman having no other options, so she guesses she’ll take this guy back even though he was kind of a dick.  This implies she doesn’t have any other options; she’d better take this one because who knows if anyone else will ever come along?  Or, on the other hand, why is it the guy who always has to apologize?  Why is it always the guy who’s mucking up and has to humble himself to get the girl?  Are all men such dolts?  No, they’re not; women mess up too, y’know, and women admit they made mistakes too.  Do I dislike all rom coms that follow this very traditional path?  No, of course not, but every now and then when I come across one that switches the “Prince Charming Saving The Princess” stereotype in the finale, I am almost automatically a fan.  It puts the woman in a position of power, of choosing to fight for her relationship, of having the choice about being in the relationship because she wants to be and not simply because it’s convenient.  The fact that Love Me Tonight has Jeanette fighting for her man, choosing to be with Maurice after he’s left, AND that this is 1932, is fantastic.  It gives Jeanette an incredible amount of power; she shifts from being a wilting flower to a wild animal in the finale of the film.  And I fucking love that.  She realizes she has fallen in love, and also that she has mishandled the situation pretty badly and chased Maurice away.  So she grits her teeth and fights for Maurice, stopping a frickin’ train in its tracks in order to get her beloved back.  Fuck yeah, Jeanette!  You go, girl!

  

Um, so in case the previous 2100 words (!!) haven’t yet convinced you, I really really love this movie.  It’s so happy, the musical numbers are immensely clever and naughty, it has just the right dose of pleasantly poignant emotions, it’s witty beyond all measure, AND it even manages a bit of grrl power just to add the frosting to the cake!  I’ve seen it more times than I can count and I don’t tire of it.  An absolute favorite, no doubt.

Arbitrary Rating: 10/10.  Top 25 films of all time, easy.  Might even make an argument for Top 10.  LOVE.