New Moon

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore meet on board the New Moon, crossing the Caspian Sea, bound for Adolph Menjou's newest assignment and marriage to Miss Moore. Of course the two great singers fall in love singing duets. Menjou gets wind and looks to get Tibbett resassigned some place he can't pose a threat.

MGM made some peculiar changes when they filmed the hit operetta (it had played over 500 performances on Broadway). They changed its setting from New Orleans to the Russian Empire for one thing. Well, exotic Russia was a popular setting for drama and comedy in the period. Cameraman Oliver Marsh struggles to keep his camera moving, leaving most of the struggle for cinematic excellence to Margaret Booth's editing. Also, Mr. Tibbett is a funny-looking fellow, with an obvious hairpiece and a double chin. He's not at all anyone's idea of what a romantic leading man should be.

Still when the leads start to sing, I forgot these issues. While the stye of music that Sigmund Romberg wrote for this show is strident, it includes the martial "Stout-Hearted Men" and the splendid "Lover Come Back To Me."

Yes, it's an early musical based on an operetta and inherently ridiculous, silly, and overblown. Those are its best qualities too. As Oscar Wilde said, nothing succeeds like excess.

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore don't go together, except when they sing. The combined force of their voices on "Wanting You" and "Lover Come Back to Me" is a sonic wonder to behold. Moore's acting is not bad, but she has a haughty standoffish quality toward the camera. Tibbett is more relaxed and retains the buoyant swashbuckling brio--and shattering baritone--that made him unique as an opera singer/film star. The supporting cast is a worldly set of sly dogs: Adolphe Menjou, Roland Young, and Gus Shy.

Director Jack Conway and cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh sneak in bits of camera movement more sophisticated than expected, but the editor seems to fall asleep on occasion. The picture throws in some vigorous battle scenes at the end; they're marred by undercranking.

New Moon is a pre-code film, with some eyebrow raising lines and innuendos in its first third. Most jaw-dropping is Tibbett's savage performance of "What Is Your Price Madam"--at an engagement party!

MGM scrapped the ridiculous plot of the 1928 Romberg-Hammerstein stage operetta and replaced it with an even more ridiculous one, with Russian lieutenant Lawrence Tibbett romancing Princess Grace Moore despite her engagement to nobleman Adolphe Menjou. It's the sort of movie where characters say things like, "The one attractive woman on this ship and she would be a princess!" And Moore isn't especially attractive; she's dowdy, looks oddly at the camera, and is got up in some genuinely bizarre MGM fashions. Her character is shrewish, too, so when Menjou dispatches Tibbett to some remote outpost to battle some menacing, vaguely Turkish insurgents, you really feel he's better off without her. An eternally suave and amusing Roland Young defuses some of the operetta silliness; but it's hard not to get the giggles when Tibbett, trying to rouse the troops, barks endless song cues -- "All right, can I have 20 brave men with me? Fifteen? How about 10?" -- before launching into "Stout-Hearted Men." The climactic battle is clumsily shot and unconvincingly run in fast motion, like a Mack Sennett comedy, and it's never really in doubt whether Tibbett will return to Moore in one piece (singing full-voice, of course, whatever his wounds). The ludicrous conventions that killed operetta are omnipresent. But the score's good, and the two opera-trained stars do give enthusiastically of themselves when called on to sing. That's what counts.

I do like operetta a lot, and I love Lawrence Tibbett not just for his unique voice in that it is powerful whatever register he sings in but also for his vivid and charismatic presence. Of the films he did, New Moon is my personal favourite with Metropolitan not close behind. I agree about the story, it is creaky, hokey and very ridiculous like the story of the operetta except in this case more so, and I also think the movie is too short. However, I do like the production values, especially the costumes, excepting the poorly shot climatic battle. The music is absolutely great, both songs and score, and there is some amusing dialogue and snappy pacing. Roland Young is delightfully droll, and Adolphe Menjou is a fine presence. Then we have Grace Moore, charming yet shrewish, she is my personal favourite of the leading ladies in the films of Lawrence Tibbett. As for Tibbett, aside from the delightful music and sweet romance, with his charisma and wonderful singing, he steals the picture. Overall, I like New Moon a lot, I tend to forget the creaky story, when the music, Moore and Tibbett are so good. 8/10 Bethany Cox

This obviously dated film has much to recommend it, viz. that the two title roles were performed by world reknown artists, no mean achievement on the part of MGM. Grace Moore is simply magnificent and would shine most brightly among today's finest sopranos. Lawrence Tibbett, while not at his best, nevertheless reveals a high baritone which most tenors would covet. The acting is quite good for the period as well. In addition to the fabulous singing artistry the film can be said to reflect the cultural and social mores of the period and as such is a "must see" for those in love with pre 1940s films.