Lubitsch Musicals

Filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch made a successful transition from directing silent film to making “talkies” with this quartet of comic operettas boxed in an extra-less set from the Criterion Collection's Eclipse line. The Love Parade (1929) is perhaps the finest of the four, thanks to the star-making performances of Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier as raucous royals who mix love with struggles for power. Less successful was 1930's Monte Carlo, with MacDonald as a gambling countess being wooed by a count (Jack Buchanan, best known for 1953's The Band Wagon) pretending to be a hairdresser (the film featured the debut of the classic song “Beyond the Blue Horizon”). The British Buchanan was a pale substitute for the French star Chevalier in Monte Carlo, but Chevalier returned to the Lubitsch fold in 1931 as The Smiling Lieutenant, a role that found him dividing his time between the unlikely attentions of a prim princess (Miriam Hopkins) and a free-spirited musician (Claudette Colbert, of all people!). Chevalier and MacDonald are reunited in One Hour With You, a 1932 adultery farce that took full advantage of the liberal pre-Hays Code environment. If Lubitsch's focus on aristocratic Europeans tangled up in predictably silly love stories seems a bit twee by contemporary standards, the filmmaker's direction was uncommonly sharp and subtle, during a period when most sound films were visually stagnant and stage-bound. It also helps that the star power and vocal prowess of MacDonald and Chevalier remain as vibrant and compelling as ever. Recommended. (P. Hall)