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.

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

1932

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Starring: Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Charlie Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton

“The Lubitsch Touch” is a famous saying in film.  Lubitsch, an early film director, became renowned for his notoriously deft handling of screwball comedies; his later films even used the saying in their ad campaigns.  The Lubitsch Touch refers to his superb sophistication, a debonair suavity that pervades his work.  Of the Lubitsch films I have seen, none personifies this elegance more so than Trouble in Paradise.

The story is about Gaston Monescu (an insanely sexy and suaver-than-Cary-Grant-no-really-I-mean-it Herbert Marshall), a thief and pickpocket who masquerades as upper class nobility.  He meets his match in Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a fellow con artist pretending to be a countess.  The two fall madly in love when they realize they are kindred spirits.  Their romantic bliss is threatened, however, when they decide to con the wealthy and widowed but gorgeous Mme Mariette Colet (Kay Francis).  When Mariette falls for Gaston, and Gaston finds himself falling for Mariette, the brewing love triangle and the law closing in on the thieves puts the relationship between Gaston and Lily in danger.

Typically, the phrase “Trouble in Paradise” refers to marriage woes, but there are husbands or wives in the picture.  Instead, as the opening credits make abundantly clear, “Trouble in Paradise” is really about trouble in, well, bed.  In the first shot of the film, the words “Trouble in…” appear on the screen, followed by a picture of a bed, and then an extremely long pause before the title completes itself with the word “Paradise.”  Lubitsch is not trying to fool anyone.  This film is about sex and love and how the two interfere with each other.  Lubitsch, in key scenes, intentionally returns to shots of a made bed, covered in silks and satins, looking incredibly inviting.  Characters walk into a room, then immediately notice the bed, walk over to it, as if entranced.  Lovers embrace, and then look down at the bed.  A mirror above the bed shows the reflection of kissing lovers with the pillows underneath. 

Innuendo much?

 

Along with the bed, Lubitsch is very aware of time of day in the film, with clocks and timepieces featuring prominently in many shots and scenes.  In one tantalizing sequence, Lubitsch keeps the camera focused entirely on a mother-of-pearl clock face while we hear different characters talking.  One couple says goodbye at 5pm, while another couple says hello at 6pm.  As it gets later and later in the evening, we are left wondering, what did they do for those two hours between midnight and 2 am?  Talk?  Doubtful.  This was 1932, so obviously, there are no explicit sex scenes, but my goodness, the sex is clearly laced throughout the entire film.

What makes an early Hollywood sex comedy the prime example of the Lubitsch Touch is the incomparable sophistication that Lubitsch brings to the table.  The film is painfully beautiful – silks, satins, furs, gleaming black and white floors, immaculate art deco apartments – this is a fantasy world of elegance.  Even the opening camera shot of the film – on a garbage man in Venice picking up refuse in his gondola – is elegant.  The garbage man suddenly breaks into song, singing ‘O Sole Mio’ with an operatic tenor voice.  Even the trash collectors in a Lubitsch film are sophisticated!  Given this, it makes perfect sense that Gaston, the main character, a con artist, a thief, a pickpocket, absolutely oozes debonair grace.  Herbert Marshall is beyond immaculate in this film as a silver-tongued sophisticate.  There is little question why both Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis fall for him.  Cary Grant, Sean Connery, and George Clooney have nothing on Marshall from this film, especially when he’s purring out seductive lines like, “Do you see the moon?  I want to see the moon in the champagne,” and “It could have been marvelous – divine – glorious.”

 

The relationship between Gaston and Lily is easily the most fun pairing of the film.  Their courtship over their shared livelihood in an early hotel scene is intoxicating.  “I have a confession to make to you,” Lily says.  “Baron, you are a crook!  You robbed the gentleman in 253, 5, 7, and 9.  May I have the salt?”  He responds with, “Let me say this, with love in my heart.  Countess, you are a thief!  The wallet of the gentleman in 253, 5, 7 and 9 is in your possession.  I knew it very well when you took it out of my pocket.”  They then proceed to hand back the various items they pickpocketed off each other.  Their relationship is consummated, so to speak, when Lily realizes that Gaston took off her garter without her noticing.  She throws herself around his neck, realizing that she has met her match, not only romantically but professionally as well.  Their effervescent relationship is so sexy, so perfect, so delightful, that despite the fact that they are world class con artists and thieves, I can’t help but root for them.

Contrasting Gaston and Lily’s relationship is that of Gaston and Mariette Colet, a wealthy widow not exactly careful with her money, making her an obvious target for the thieves.  Kay Francis as Mariette is so languorous, so dreamy, with a constant look in her eyes as if she just came from a romp in the hay, that despite the appeal of Gaston and Lily, it’s also obvious why Gaston falls for her.  Francis purrs seductively to Marshall when Mariette knows that she has Gaston within her clutches, never breaking eye contact, and smiling tantalizingly when she declares, “You want me.”  The sex appeal oozing out of her is off the charts, yet it is never crass or vulgar, once more reflecting the sophistication of the Lubitsch Touch.

 

Providing amusing comic supporting characters are Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles as two stymied suitors of Mariette Colet.  Gone are the days of the great supporting actors, but thank goodness we have films like this one to remind us of the awesomeness past.  Horton plays, well, his classic stammering part, but as always, he’s perfect.  Ruggles is equally amusing, and the banter between the two of them is wonderful.

Normally I meticulously avoid spoilers in my film reviews, but I must make an exception for Trouble in Paradise.  If you’ve never seen it and want to keep the surprise intact about the resolution of the love triangle, by all means, skip the rest of this paragraph.  Ready?  Done skipping?  Good, because here I go.  Despite Colet’s money, seductive voice, and the clear power she holds over Gaston, he ultimately realizes what he values in his life – and it isn’t the fleeting yet wonderful relationship he could have with Mariette.  It is his life with Lily, a life that includes love, sex, and crime, which he wants.  As he says in his apology to Mariette, “But in the morning, there would be a policeman holding a warrant.”  He must be on the run, and she can’t join him.  She stares at him in shock – not that he revealed himself to be a criminal, but that he is turning her down.  Lily, for her part, is upset that Gaston even considered Mariette, but the film ends brilliantly, echoing the pickpocket courtship that brought Lily and Gaston together in the first place.  Mariette is seductive and lovely, but it is Lily and Gaston who are truly made for each other, and it is beyond gratifying to see them end up together… on the run to a different city with the police hot on their heels.

There is a playfulness to this film that puts it in the same category of film as The Thin Man and Some Like It Hot.  If you’re a fan of those two classics and you’ve never heard of Trouble in Paradise, I more than recommend you give it a try.  It’s positively delicious.

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10

Freaks

Freaks
1932
Director: Tod Browning
Starring: Harry Earles, Olga Baclanova, Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Henry Victor

Chip from Tips from Chip recently reviewed this film, and he spoke well as to the issue of exploitation in it. That point sums up this movie rather perfectly. Tod Browning’s Freaks is a disturbing film. While not a pure horror film, the final act puts us squarely in fear and dread territory, making this film a worthy part of any Halloween marathon.

Freaks tells the story of a group of travelling circus performers. While there is the obviously the strong man, Hercules (Victor), the trapeze artist Cleopatra (Baclanova), and the bearded lady, most of the troupe is comprised of the “freaks” of the title, people with physical deformities, played by actual circus performers. The story focuses on Hans (Earles), a little person who is in love with Cleopatra. She mocks him and makes eyes at Hercules, but when she finds out Hans is wealthy, she marries him then plots with Hercules to kill Hans for his fortune. When the other “freaks” find out about this, they exact their revenge on the dastardly Cleopatra and Hercules.