Rose-Marie

I am in my 60's and would have missed this movie, but for my 87 year old mother....an opera buff. She recorded it for me and sent it along on a VHS tape which I avoided at all costs. Last night I plugged it in and have re watched it at least 8 times. I researched the famous book about them in real life, and could not believe her voice.....it was like something surreal to me. I loved this movie so much that I am now ordering ALL the movies made by America's Sweethearts. It is so hard for me to realize the personal life tragedies this pair faced. I recommend this movie to any artist, singer, or person with a tender heart and soul out there! You would not be sorry. You would be captivated.

Yep, this is the most saccharine of all the films made by the 'singing sweethearts'. And its perfect. Despite the low production values evident in Nelson's 1st number in the film, The Mounties, it soon settles into a nice two hour wallow where Jeanette chirps through Juliet's love song, gets scared in the woods, and falls for the cutie mountie (but of course, who wouldn't after he sang the title tune so sweetly during a boat ride). Great stuff. Those of you expecting to see James Stewart though have a long wait as most of the time is spent trying to find him! And who could resist that timeless song 'when I'm calling you'? Sweet.

I saw this as I like Nelson Eddy. And I liked Rose-Marie. The story is creaky(and perhaps a tad schmaltzy), the film is perhaps a little too long and the pace sometimes pedestrian. However, the production values still look lovely and hold up quite well, and the music is wonderful with the incidental music stirring and the songs joyous. The script has some nice touches, a vast majority of times are beautifully staged and the film as a whole is well directed.

And then we have Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Both look and sound wonderful, they exude great chemistry together and both give believable performances.

All in all, lovely. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Jeanette MacDonald is "Rose-Marie" in this 1936 film also starring Nelson Eddy, James Stewart and Allan Jones. The movie borrows its title from the Rudolf Friml operetta, but it does not use the plot or many of the songs. MacDonald plays a famous opera singer named Marie de Flor whose brother (Stewart), going by the last name of Flower, has escaped prison and killed a Mountie. She leaves at once for Quebec and winds up meeting - who else - Nelson Eddy, a Mountie who recognizes her immediately and believes at first that he is helping her get to a rendezvous with a man. Meanwhile, he's falling for her himself.

Nelson and Jeannette were one of the great screen teams, and even now, they have fans all over the world. Jeanette was beautiful, a good singer and a fine actress, and Nelson, while not being much of an actor, was an attractive man with a magnificent voice. Their big hit, in fact, their signature song, "Indian Love Call," is from this film, as is, naturally, "Rose-Marie." Because of the recording devices used back then and the way female singers were taught, Jeannette's lyric-coloratura suffers somewhat. Like all female singers of that era, she has a back placement for her high notes, though the middle part of her range is quite beautiful. Her obsession with Tosca - one of the opera scenes shown, and a role she also performed on stage in real life - is a curious one. She had no business singing it, and neither did the tenor, Allan Jones, who was a lyric tenor. It's for a dramatic soprano and a spinto tenor. The Gounod "Romeo et Juliette," which she sings with Jones in the beginning of the movie is much more appropriate for both of them. Eddy, on the other hand, had operatic roots, and his baritone has survived very well. They sounded wonderful together, and there was something about them that just worked, even if he was somewhat wooden. She was spitfire enough for both of them, and it made a nice contrast. My favorite part of the film is when, after her guide steals her money, Marie goes looking for the job as a singer in a honky tonk café and tries to do "Some of these Days," which she sings operatically while attempting to copy the hoochie-coochie movements of the café's resident singer.

Stewart was slowly ascending the scale to stardom, getting better and better roles - he has a couple of big scenes in this film. He's boyish, good-looking and very effective.

Today I suppose these films seem very campy, and they've surely been parodied over and over again. However, the music is enjoyable, Nelson and Jeanette are treasures, and one can't help but marvel, amidst the insanity of today, what a much simpler time it was. People were able to be lifted out of themselves for a little while with fantasy and beauty. These movies must have been doing something right. Seventy-plus years later, we're still enjoying them.

Forget the super-sweet aspects of this film. Forget the paper-thin storyline. To jump on this film using the standards that today's audience's exact is totally unfair. This film was released in 1936 when the US was in the midst of the Great Depression and people needed mind candy that was super-sugarcoated. But, before you ring off to surf some other site, listen the music created by two rather mediocre singers. Their voices create a sound that is incredible. They did again and again too. From their biographies written by their children who discovered their love letters long after both Eddy and MacDonald were dead, it seems that the love clinches were more earnest than mere acting. But, forget even that bit of gossip. Listen to the sound that these two made, in love with each other or not. It is something magic. And, fans, we just don't see much of that anymore.