Love Me Tonight

This is an enchanting film, one of the best musicals of the decade. Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald are incredibly appealing in a rich-girl-poor-boy musical romance. It's one of those rare films where the girl runs away from the palace to follow her true love and you *don't* think "wait a minute, you'll never survive out there", no, you want them to be together. The score is enchanting (the big hits being "Isn't it Romantic" and "Lover"), Chevalier is devastatingly attractive, and MacDonald is vulnerably appealing and completely without the annoying primness that marred her later films.

It's also a remarkably well made film for 1932, when most films were just getting used to sound and suffered from a horrible stiffness on the part of the actors and the camera. You'd think this movie was made ten years later, it's lively and sparkling, and directed with a smoothness and originality that's still amazing.

I have watched this movie in part several times, but caught it tonight on TCM or from my DVR of a recent showing. It is a special one, and was interested in checking out these magnificent sets created for it. They were wonderful.

Liked Chevalier in this particularly. I agree with the reviewer who finds Jeannette McDonald's singing a bit of a trial. I don't care for most opera type singing. Get ready for some corn here: Was reminded of something Andy Griffith said about opera singing (from a comic recording), "Some people say opera is just hollerin', and it is; but it's high class hollerin'." It comes across that way to me. That quote may offend the cinematic detail oriented enthusiasts of this film - sorry.

However, I have enjoyed a few old operettas, thinking of "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" from 1930 featuring Claudia Dell and Walter Pidgeon. Ms. Dell was easier on the ears than Ms. McDonald. Pidgeon's singing was pleasing, and I found the piece entertaining.

In watching C. Aubrey Smith in this, I thought for the umpteenth time whether he was born an old man. He is always ancient in every movie I have ever seen with him. Actually, his Hollywood films were done in his elderly years. Finally looked him up and found he was born in 1863. Wow. He did London stage, Broadway and came to Hollywood much later. He died in California at age 85.

This is a good film and has interest for its genre. It is probably my favorite Chevalier. It was odd seeing Charles Ruggles in this. They were talking about Myrna Loy during the intro to the movie, saying this film may have begun her being used in something other than the Oriental evil women or vamp types. Only a few people were making the decisions on casting back then in the studio system, and thankfully, they finally broke her out of that old mold and began to find out how engaging she was as a wife and later as a comedienne.

Good film.

For what it is worth, here is a bit of "Americana". I found a letter from my father to my mother written on September 11, 1932 ,(nine years before they were married, by the way). In it he mentioned having gone to see this film. His review is as follows...

"I went to see Maurice Chevalier tonight in his latest, 'Love Me Tonight'. Say, I have more technique than that guy, any night. He is losing all he had, can I give him pointers?".

I had to correct some spellings errors in the quote, otherwise IMDb wouldn't accept it. Pity. That way it loses a bit of the flavor and intention of a "Quote"

I take it that my Dad liked the movie.

There are so many elements regarding LOVE ME TONIGHT that crossed to create one of the great musicals of American film. It probably was the best score for a Hollywood film done by Rodgers and Hart, including "Isn't It Romantic", "Mimi", and "Lover", as well as "The Sonofagun is Nothing But a Tailor" (only their scores for HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM and THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT are as interesting, but the former only produced one standard, and the latter produced none). From their first arrival in motion pictures Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart experimented with singing that replaced dialog. Here it finally got it's opportunity to show what it could do. That's due to them having a master director (who would turn out to be more of a stage and musical director than a film one - though his films remain more than interesting), Rouben Mamoulian. Always willing to experiment in his film (in DR. JECKYLL AND MR. HYDE, having the camera take the point of view of Fredric March for part of the film; using color to show suggestions of the threat of military violence in BECKY SHARP) Mamoulian was willing to go along with his musical pair in the extended songs like "How are you?" and "Isn't It Romantic". The latter beginning in Chevalier's tailor shop eventually involves people passing the melody from the street to a musician in a taxicab to a marching brigade of troops to gypsies to Jeanette at her palace. The cast was perfect, with Chevalier and MacDonald joined by their former ONE HOUR WITH YOU co-star Charlie Ruggles, as well as Myrna Loy, Charles Butterworth (who has some funny lines for a change), and C. Aubrey Smith. It is rare for everything in a musical to fit together so well.

Chevalier is a tailor who made the mistake of making a complete wardrobe for Ruggles a supposedly wealthy aristocrat. Ruggles owes him a lot (as well as all the other people who made parts of the clothing for Ruggles - at Chevalier's recommendation). So they send him after Ruggles, who has gone to his rich uncle's home in the country. This is C. Aubrey Smith, a reactionary old Duke. He is also the protector of Princess Jeanette, now a widow (don't feel bad for her, as Dr. Joseph Cawthorn finds out). Also staying with the Duke is Count Charles Butterworth, a scholarly aristocrat (and just as hesitant and bumbling in his delivery of dialog here as in other films, but here his comments are funny). Finally there is Smith's niece, Myrna Loy, who never saw a pair of men's pants that she did not care to open.

Chevalier's appearance is an embarrassment to Ruggles, who may be disinherited by Smith over his debts. So he keeps Chevalier from admitting that he is a tailor, and finally suggests that Chevalier is a king traveling incognito. As Chevalier and MacDonald slowly fall in love, the suspicion that he is a monarch makes him possibly a perfect match for the widowed Princess. Chevalier also enlivens the dull château with his songs (including an "Apache" number, as well as "Mimi" which everyone ends up singing - including C. Aubrey Smith!). But what would happen if the truth comes out? That is what leads to the conclusion of the film.

Many of the early surviving films of the 1930s are cut from what they originally were like. And the film that was cut is usually lost forever. In the case of LOVE ME TONIGHT, the loss is truly sad because of the quality of the film that survives. But at least we do have that surviving footage to marvel at and enjoy.

No, really -- I defy anyone to name a movie musical more exuberant, more creative, more romantic, melodic, hilarious, or escapist; not even "Singin' in the Rain" equals it. From opening shot (a rhythmic ballet-mechanique of Paris coming to life at dawn) to fade-out (a happy-ending finale that also parodies Eisenstein), it's bursting with ingenious ideas.

The pre-Code screenplay, rife with double entendres and social satire, is a princess-and-commoner love story written to the strengths of its two stars: Chevalier, never more charming, and MacDonald, never a subtler comedienne. With one foot in fantasy and the other in reality, it manages to sustain an otherworldly feeling even while grounded in the modern-day Paris of klaxons, tradesmen, and class consciousness. The supporting cast is phenomenal, with Myrna Loy as a man-hungry countess, C. Aubrey Smith doing his old-codger thing, Charles Butterworth priceless as a mild-mannered nobleman ("I fell flat on my flute!"), and Blanche Frederici, Ethel Griffies, and Elizabeth Patterson as a benign version of the Macbeth witches' trio.

All are wonderful, but the real muscle belongs to the director and the songwriters. Mamoulian's camera has a rhythm of its own and many tricks up its lens: note the fox-hunt sequence suddenly going into slow-motion; the Expressionist shadowplay in Chevalier's "Poor Apache" specialty; the sudden cuts in the "Sonofagun is Nothing But a Tailor" production number. As for the Rodgers and Hart score, it's simply the best they ever wrote for a film -- maybe the best anybody wrote for a film. The songs are unforgettable in themselves -- "Isn't It Romantic?", "Mimi," "Lover," etc. -- but, and here is where genius enters, they're superbly integrated and magnificently thought out. Note the famous "Isn't It Romantic" sequences, the camera roaming effortlessly through countless verses from tailor shop to taxi to field to gypsy camp to castle, finally linking the two leads subliminally, though their characters have never met. "A musical," Mamoulian once said, "must float." This sequence may float higher than any other in any musical.

Best of all, you can sense the unbridled enthusiasm the authors must have had for this project: Rodgers and Hart seem positively giddy with the possibilities of cinema, eager to defy time, place, and reason as was never possible for them onstage. What a pity that this magnificent movie isn't available on video, so that future generations can't easily rediscover its brilliance.