One Hour with You

Ernst Lubitsch (with some "assist" from George Cukor) directs this charming and witty farce which gives Maurice Chevalier a chance to steal the film from his very talented co-stars, including Jeanette MacDonald and Genevieve Tobin.

His rendering of "Oh, that Mitzi!" (he breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the camera--as in "Gigi" years later), and "Three Times A Day" remain the highlights of the film. The story itself is pure fluff, a tale about a happily married couple who each have a fling but remain faithful to each other for the finale. Of course, it's all pre-code morality done with style and wit.

The sprinkling of songs also includes some rhyming dialogue, always a clever mix of words and music. Jeanette's voice sounds tinny here and there's no use made of her operatic range as the songs are simple and sweet, but she's charming and appealing as Chevalier's happily married wife. It's hard to see why she couldn't suspect that her best friend Genevieve Tobin would want to seduce her husband when the woman is such an obvious flirt. But of course, the story is strictly fluff and full of many improbable moments. The rather abrupt ending seems an awkward way to resolve the whole marital situation.

Worth viewing to watch Maurice Chevalier deliver one of his most satisfying performances, especially good when addressing the audience with his problems. The catchy title song by Richard Whiting gets some nice singing moments from several players.

In the second of their four films together and the only one in which they start out as man and wife, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald play a happily married couple who face a comic crisis in their marriage when Jeanette announces she's going to be visited by an old friend in Genevieve Tobin in One Hour With You.

What she doesn't know is that Tobin and Maurice have had a flirtatious rendezvous in one of those legendary speedy Paris taxi cabs. Tobin as Mitzi is one saucy wench whose marriage to Roland Young is coming to an end. The only question remaining is who will be caught in a compromising position first for the sake of the alimony.

The whole thing is directed with typical continental charm by Ernest Lubitsch replete with various things in the film identified as the Lubitsch touch. My favorite of those is when Genevieve gets Dr. Chevalier to make a house call, you see a shot of her feet kicking off her shoes and then wiggling in anticipation.

Oscar Straus and Leo Robin wrote most of the music, but the title song was written Richard Whiting with lyrics by Leo Robin. It's introduced during a nightclub scene by radio singer Donald Novis who occasionally did film and stage roles and then sung by nearly all the principals in the cast. Jeanette made a good selling RCA Victor recording of it.

Maurice Chevalier got to sing Oh That Mitzi which both advances the plot of the film as he tells of his dilemma between his wife Colette{MacDonald), but Oh That Mitzi and is a number perfectly suiting his style. It was part of his nightclub act forever after.

Genevieve Tobin is great as the saucy Mitzi and filmgoers probably know her best as the dowager Mrs. Chisholm who was held captive by Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. Tobin had to be one talented lady, that's quite a difference in parts between One Hour With You and The Petrified Forest.

One cannot ignore Charlie Ruggles a rather timid suitor who is so hoping to get Jeanette on the rebound from Maurice. He's got some very funny scenes with her.

One Hour With You is one of those sophisticated comedies depicting a world gone by. I'm not even sure in Europe if they still dress in tuxedo for dinner.

I first saw ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932) one magical evening in the summer of 1987. I was 19 years old; I ditched work, and drove up to UCLA on the strength of an LA Times blurb. I knew very little about Lubitsch, and had pre-conceived notions about MacDonald and Chevalier. ONE HOUR WITH YOU was one half of a perfect double bill that night with Mamoulian's fantastic LOVE ME TONIGHT (also from 1932). Both films blew me away: they have the special, magical glow of other great Paramount films from that era; the humor is racy and modern; the songs are memorable and funny; and the playing by everyone is exquisite. I've always thought of that night as being one of the best nights at the movies that I've ever had. Both films are enchanting -- I can still remember people running to talk to each other after the screenings of how much they loved them... The audience's joy was palpable throughout.

Of course, as time has past, I've caught up with the rest of Lubitsch's work -- but this film for me is the tops. (TROUBLE IN PARADISE comes a very close second.) Jeannette MacDonald for me was such a revelation. She's both knowing and naive, sexy and sweet... her final confrontation with Chevalier ("...if you're a Don Juan... than I'm a Cleopatra!") is really extraordinary: she utterly transforms herself from a mousy housewife to a believably sexy and silly siren within the span of a few seconds. (Her performance here is similar to that of Mia Farrow's performance in ALICE (1990), when Farrow first comes on to Joe Mantegna's character...) Genevieve Tobin also deserves mention as the sexually insatiable Mitzi. Her first encounter with Chevalier where she is coming on to him in the back of the tax cab ("Let's put our newspapers away and let us face that facts!") is a fantastic bit of acting. And of course Maurice Chevalier is wonderful as the doctor. I especially love his shocked, mock-horror expressions when his two women are whispering to each other, looking at him ("He can...?" "No..." "I tell you he can!")

The film is interesting also for being an early musical, before the genre had the defining imprint of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire . It's a musical-comedy hybrid, and as such -- there's no other musical out there like it: the film employs rhyming verse, MacDonald's operatic trilling, playful double-entendres, and Chavalier's directly-addressing the audience. No musical numbers per se (in the traditional sense), but a barrage of musical elements that make this film unique.

The only time this film has been released on home video was in 1997 when Universal briefly released a laserdisc box set called "The Lubitsch Touch," along with other classics, such as THE LOVE PARADE (1929), MONTE CARLO (1930), THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931), and DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933). Universal needs to get on the stick and release this on DVD! Even though this film was nominated for Best Picture of 1931/32, it's barely known today. Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) and Mamoulian's LOVE ME TONIGHT are revived more often than this. One reason for this critical oversight might hinge on the film's authorship: George Cukor began the film directing from Lubitsch's own ructions, only later to be replaced by Lubitsch himself, mid-way through the production. Cukor took Lubitsch to court and ultimately won a co-directing credit -- though it's next to impossible to tell who directed what: it's Lubitsch's picture, without a doubt.

Being such a huge fan of a film most people haven't seen or heard of has led me to one special meeting with a fellow enthusiast of ONE HOUR WITH YOU: I was working at a poster shop in San Francisco, selling some film posters to David Packard who owns the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto. His was going to be showing ONE HOUR WITH YOU in the upcoming month, and I mentioned to that it might be my favorite American film. He said (or sung to me): "Me too! Why don't we start singing right now!?" (And then he broke into a few bars of "Oh, That Mitzi!") He said that it was one of his all-time favorites, and also told me that he feels that it's his duty to show every person he knows or lives in the Bay area ONE HOUR WITH YOU before he dies!~ I wish that Universal Home Video felt the same way!

In the second of the four Chevalier - MacDonald films the leads are a married couple (Chevalier is a upper class doctor, of all things) who are happy together. In fact they are first seen preparing for their anniversary party. Both have friends who can spoil this. Chevalier's closest friend is Charlie Ruggles, who secretly loves MacDonald (but who is usually too nervous or intense to get anywhere with her - if she were interested). MacDonald is close to an old school friend, Genevieve Tobin, who is a continuous flirt (one can even consider her a nymphomaniac). She is married to Roland Young, but their marriage is on the rocks because of her affairs (his too - he wants to marry their maid). So MacDonald invites her friend into her home, and Tobin soon is being coquettish towards Chevalier. When she returns home, she asks him to see her on a professional (i.e. medical) problem, and proceeds to try to seduce him. This upsets Chevalier, who tries to remain faithful to MacDonald, but she (blind as she is to what Tobin is doing) insists he help her friend. Young is delighted. He is closing in on a divorce with Tobin. Finally, being weak, Chevalier gives in. MacDonald learns of this, and turns to Ruggles (!). And the film is set for some kind of resolution of these problems in sexual politics.

The music is best recalled for the title tune, "One Hour With You". It would pop up for years in Paramount film musicals (in DUCK SOUP, it is played in the sequence when Harpo Marx is doing a "Paul Revere" ride to rally the countryside, only to stop at his girlfriend's for "one hour with her."). It also appeared as the national love song of Klopstokia in MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, with Jack Oakie singing the words, "Woof bootle gik..." instead of the original words to it. However, the number that gets me is the one mentioned in the "Summary" line, which Chevalier sings to explain to the audience his dilemma regarding his loyalties to his wife versus the fascination of the beguiling Tobin. In all of his films in the 1930s he would sing some tune that dealt with the heroine or another woman: "Mimi" in LOVE ME TONIGHT is an example, as is "Louise". "MITZI" is another example of this.

The Lubitsch touch is shown throughout. One of the best moments is when Ruggles is talking to MacDonald about attending a party at their home, and learns it is a dinner party, not the costume party he is dressed for. He turns to his butler, and demands to know why he told Ruggles it was a costume party. "Oh sir," says the giggling butler, "I so wanted to see you in tights!" With bits like that sprinkled about, this film is a small treasure.

Ernst Lubitsch was a great director who very rarely made a dud. While One Hour With You may not be as good as The Merry Widow, Heaven Can Wait and The Shop Around the Corner it is still well worth watching and is a very good film overall. The film does drag a little towards the end and the ending is rather abrupt and awkwardly staged. But One Hour With You also has many pleasures, a case of the pros far outweighing the cons. One Hour With You is stylishly photographed with elegant period detail, and Lubitsch directs with his usual classiness. The songs are just great and generally do deserve to be much better known, the title song is the most well-known one and it is a catchy one indeed but we mustn't forget the risqué(for the time) Oh Mitzi, the witty Three Times a Day or the charming We Will Always Be Sweethearts. The dialogue is funny and sophisticated, the rhyming was really inspired and Maurice Chavalier's talking to the camera could have been annoying but was far from it. The story is very fluffy but very light-hearted, warm-hearted and sweet and nowhere near as improbable as the story for Monte Carlo(a better film than it's given credit for but the weakest Lubitsch I've seen so far). One Hour With You is beautifully acted especially from the sassy and beguiling Genevieve Tobin. Maurice Chevalier oozes wit and easy-going charm and avoids being creepy in Oh Mitzi despite the risqué/suggestive material. Jeanette MacDonald radiates on screen and sings beautifully in We Will Always Be Sweethearts(sad that she didn't sing more) and Roland Young is deliciously ironic and induces fireworks whenever he appears. All in all, a very good film if not among the best from Lubitsch. 8/10 Bethany Cox