La bataille des dames

Bonaparte goes to Elba and loyalist Ramon Novarro goes to prison. He promptly escapes and takes refuge with Marion Harris, who loves him despite her being a royalist. He, however, has eyes only for her cousin, Dorothy Jordan, whom he woos, despite pretending to be a lackey.

MGM spared no expense for Novarro's talkie debut, with operetta songs, two-strip Technicolor ballet sequences with music by Dmitri Tiomkin, and Sidney Franklin as director. The singing voices are a bit thin, although whether that's because of MGM's sound systems or the singers, it's hard to say. Still, everyone works hard, the visuals are top-notch, and I am told Ann Dvorak is a chorine in the rather battered Technicolor sequence. For a 1929 musical, it's pretty good.