The Mamoulian Touch

I pride myself on being as unbiased as possible when it comes to movies. For any cinephile worth their salt, the age of the film is unimportant, neither the country in which it was made, nor the genre. Many will say, “I don't like horror movies,” or, “I don't care for romantic comedies.” I'm not one of those people. I have loved films from all around the world in every genre there is. Still, if forced to admit it, at the end of the day, very rarely will I select a musical for my personal enjoyment.

This musical, however, I would watch anytime and with great pleasure. Love Me Tonight is pure magic, even slightly better than Singin' in the Rain (1952), which had been my favorite musical until I first saw this one. Each time I watch it I am reminded of why I love movies so much in the first place. The songs are catchy, the wit and sexual innuendo in the dialogue remain hilarious today, the characters are great fun, and the love story tops most stuff coming out of Hollywood now.

Set in Paris, the picture introduces us to a tailor named Maurice Courtelin (Maurice Chevalier), who has been outfitting the Viscount de Varèze (Charles Ruggles) on credit. The bill has gotten out of hand around the same time Maurice discovers the Viscount has an awful reputation among Parisian tradesmen for never settling his accounts. Maurice decides to travel to the castle of the Duke d'Artelines (C. Aubrey Smith), the Viscount's uncle, to demand payment. Along the way he has a “meet cute” on a country road with Princess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald). He attempts to charm the young widow by singing “Mimi”, but she heads off to the castle unimpressed.

Once Maurice arrives at the castle he is intercepted by the Viscount, who tells him he needs a few days to raise the money. He asks Maurice to stay at the castle, and avoids questions by quickly informing everyone that his guest is a baron. Other colorful characters on hand include a trio of aunts serving as a Greek chorus (and resembling Macbeth's three witches), the Duke's sex starved niece Valentine (Myrna Loy), and Count de Savignac (Charles Butterworth), who fails miserably in courting Jeanette.

We all know where this thing is going; Maurice falls for Jeanette, much to the chagrin of Valentine, but his false identity is uncovered. Can a princess love a common tailor? If the plot sounds like a mere trifle, well...it is. Still, while the destination is predictable, the joy of Love Me Tonight is in getting there, and in the characters, songs, and humor. A tremendous supporting cast doesn't hurt; Myrna Loy is one of the most adorable women in film history, and Charles Ruggles is one of my favorite character actors of the thirties.

The picture was directed by the Armenian-born filmmaker, Rouben Mamoulian, for Paramount in 1932. Movies from the late twenties to early thirties are a tricky subject. On the plus side, there was still no Hays Code censoring the content. Couples slept in the same bed, sex wasn't a taboo subject, there were nude scenes, the villain was not always punished for their crime, etc. That would all change in July of 1934, so these pre-Code sound films are like glorious, uninhibited little time capsules. Unfortunately, the introduction of sound set the visual art of filmmaking back about a decade, and these early adopters suffer the most.

It was a learning process, and most directors were slaves to the limitations of immobile microphones and other aspects of early sound recording. To get an exciting sequence with dynamic camera movement, directors like King Vidor (in 1929's Hallelujah!) and Lewis Milestone (in 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front) continued to film action scenes silently, dubbing sound in later. In most movies of the time, the camera was stationary, creating a simple frame for the actors to talk in. Pretty boring, especially compared to the brilliantly inventive late-period silents. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the incredible Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, so I'm not bashing austere minimalism as a stylistic choice. Ozu's camera rarely moved; his images were poetic in their simplicity, but he was never bound to that style by technical deficiencies.

Mamoulian, always rather adventurous and experimental in his stage directing career, was not content to be held prisoner by technology even at a time when most filmmakers were. For his 1929 feature, Applause, he pioneered the use of two microphones which allowed dialogue to overlap realistically. In the earliest sound films, one heard either dialogue or music, but never both together. Mamoulian's innovative use of sound contributed to the eventual creation of multi-track mixing. With City Streets (1931), Mamoulian became the first filmmaker to use voice-over in an American picture. In 1932 he made what is still the best version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and crafted a wildly unique first-person sequence to open the film, putting us right in the shoes of Frederic March's Dr. Jekyll. He directed Becky Sharp in 1935, the first feature-length motion picture to be shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor. Lastly, for what it's worth, he also made the best version of Zorro (yes, even better than the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks original) with 1940's The Mark of Zorro.

For Love Me Tonight, Mamoulian threw in everything but the kitchen sink, and made it work. It is here we witness the first use of a zoom lens and asynchronous sound, yet even more impressive is just how alive and filled with motion this film is. Practically every frame pulsates with energy and creativity. From top to bottom, the cast and crew knock the ball out of the park, and at least three of the wonderful songs by Rodgers and Hart became standards.

Taking a page from his stage production of Porgy, Mamoulian casts a spell over the audience immediately. In the opening sequence, Paris awakens. We see Maurice's little neighborhood as music is created through the everyday actions of sweeping, hammering, drying clothes, etc. Maurice rises in his apartment and begins to sing “The Song of Paree” all the way to work (clearly an inspiration for the "Little Town" sequence in the 1991 Disney film, Beauty and the Beast). It's pure joy, but as fantastic as the opening is, it's topped about five minutes later when Maurice sings “Isn't It Romantic”.

His customer deems the song “catchy” before exiting the shop, and he sings it as he passes a parked cab. The driver starts whistling the tune when he picks up a fare, his passenger catches on and is later overheard singing on a train filled with servicemen. The servicemen march through a field, singing in unison. In this splendid sequence, “Isn't It Romantic” is passed on from person to person across many miles, beginning on that little street in Paris and ending on a palace balcony in the countryside where we are introduced to Princess Jeanette. Now that's cinema.

The dialogue is a real treat too, with pre-Code euphemisms like, “I fell flat on my flute!” At one point Jeanette faints, and the Viscount rushes to Valentine. “Can you go for a doctor,” he asks. She happily replies, “Certainly! Bring him right in!”

Who can resist an exchange like this:

“You know, I had an elder brother who used to faint quite often. He was a nipomaniac.”

“A what?”

“A nipomaniac. He used to go around pinching things.”

“Oh I had a friend like that, he used to pinch business girls in elevators. They had to send him to a cooler climate.”

Or this one, between Jeanette and the Count she wants nothing to do with:

“Count, I'm going to bed.”

“I just came up to join you.”

“Join me?”

“Join you in a little chat before dinner.”

“Not tonight. I've had another fainting spell and my uncle thought bed was the best place for me.”

“I always think that.....if one isn't well.”

Surprisingly, there are those who believe Mamoulian was all flash and little substance, which seems to me an unfair assessment. He was such an enthusiastic technician that his abilities as an artist have been called into question. His critics see him as something of a grand imitator, apparently, with very little style to call his own. It's true the great Ernst Lubitsch had worked with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald on The Love Parade (1929) and One Hour With You (1932), musicals made before Love Me Tonight, and Mamoulian's picture employed the same cinematographer and art director. Many see “the Lubitsch Touch” at work here, and it has been said that Love Me Tonight is the best Lubitsch film Lubitsch never made. As for me, I think it's the best Mamoulian film Mamoulian ever made.

Film critic Andrew Sarris, as well as the Orson Welles crusader and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (director of 1971's excellent The Last Picture Show), both prefer The Love Parade, One Hour With You, and The Merry Widow (1934) over Mamoulian's film. I respectfully disagree. As fond as I am of Lubitsch, I would take Love Me Tonight over any of his musicals. Lubitsch was the superior and more consistent filmmaker, but if forced to choose, I would even select Love Me Tonight over the immortal, non-musical Lubitsch classics, Trouble in Paradise (1932), Ninotchka (1939), and The Shop Around the Corner (1940).

It's just that good.