(107 mins.) Released 1929-11-19
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Stars: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lupino Lane, Lillian Roth
comedy, musical, romance
originally posted 23 Sep 2017 01:54
First full sound film by Lubitsch, first film for MacDonald (age 25, beautiful, charming, regally flirtatious, sings like a bird). Chevalier is very handsome at this age (41); he looks younger. Third billed Lupino Lane, playing manservant to MC, is real-life second cousin to Ida Lupino. Further down the bill is Eugene Pallette, who is not yet rotund. (He was Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921).) Also of interest: Lillian Roth, playing a maid to the queen, and paired with Lupino. She's also in Animal Crackers (1930, next), and very watchable. Soon after, personal tragedy drove her to drink, and she eventually wrote a book about her travails, which was made into the movie I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), earning an Oscar nom for Susan Hayward as Roth.
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I've never really understood what the "Lubitsch touch" is, only a vague idea, and maybe an example or two from commentary tracks/interviews. Well, I just paused the movie because he made a long-anticipated first kiss between MC and JM seem to last a long time by cutting (after 4 seconds) to a different camera angle and greater distance, but in the same position. In total, the duration was only 12 seconds, but the cut made it seem as though he had condensed time.
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[Google results: ""The Lubitsch Touch" is a brief description that embraces a long list of virtues: sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance. -- Richard Christiansen" And an interview with Billy Wilder, who famously had a sign in his office "How would Lubitsch have done it?" is interviewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jOVRKzwURY
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[Oddly, the most solid example I have is from a Stanley Donen film, where he tracks the seduction of a married woman (Deborah Kerr) by a rich American (Robert Mitchum) by showing no people, only the used dishes left at increasingly private locations, until we see an interior door of a hotel suite closing, with us outside. That film: The Grass is Greener (1960). Oh, and the husband that DK was cheating on? Cary Grant. Jean Simmons adds flavor as the much-divorced friend to the married couple. And it helps that the couple own, live in, and open for tourists an old English castle.]
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Given that this is a film about a queen (of a small country) needing a prince consort, it's appropriate that the sets and costumes look gorgeous. Since the stock market crashed only 3 weeks ago, the opulence is NOT an attempt to cheer Depression audiences. They didn't produce films THAT fast.
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Unfortunately, the plot twists into an ugly sexist pretzel. But what we lose in pleasure can be fodder for discussion, so I can still recommend it.
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Paramount, dir. Lubitsch; 7
