62. Love Me Tonight (1932)

Directed By Rouben Mamoulian


Synopsis

Tailor is owed some money by a Viscount, and decide to collect at the Chateau. Getting there he falls in love With the Princess Jeanette. The Viscount keeps the Tailor at he Chateau presenting him as a Baron. He is finally found out, but still gets the girl.


Review

No review makes justice to the fun that watching this film is. I actually feel a bit bad for loving a romantic comedy musical so much... but I did. The word me and my girlfriend came up with to describe the film was "delightful". And yes, it is one of those films which you watch with a happy grin in your face the whole way through, achieving loud laughter in a number of situations.

But if I may state my case it isn't a simple Musical RomCom. Firstly, it has music by Rogers and Hart, like Isn't It Romantic. Secondly, it has Maurice Chevalier who although not a great singer has a great screen presence. Thirdly, it is a very frisky film indeed, the Code wasn't enforced strictly yet, and the amount of sexual innuendo is amazing, and fourthly it is directed like the great work of art that it ends up being.

Mamoulian is a pretty amazing director. He makes the film fly by through his astounding lightness of touch, while still using amazing camera and editing work. From the beggining where the different sounds of Paris start coming together into a rhythmic song to the last chase sequence which would make Eisenstein blush at what his techniques of editing were being used for, and with such flare, passing through the slow-motion hunting scene, when the hunters return home slowly not to wake up the sleeping stag... It is just an amazing, funny, well shot, light film and not much can be faulted with it... nothing in fact. It's perfect. There! So buy it now from Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

I need to put two songs here.

Isn't it romantic, where the song travels from Maurice to Jeanette, through a costumer, a taxi driver, his costumer, the army and a Gypsy camp before arriving at his future love... great:



Nothing but a tailor... amazing:



Wikipedia:

The movie was adapted by Samuel Hoffenstein, George Marion Jr. and Waldemar Young from the play by Paul Armont and Léopold Marchand. It was directed by Rouben Mamoulian. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It features the classic Rodgers and Hart songs "Isn't it Romantic?", "Mimi", and "Lover" (the last of these is not sung romantically as it often is in nightclubs, but comically, as Jeanette MacDonald tries to control an unruly horse that she is riding). The staging of "Isn't It Romantic?" was revolutionary for its time, combining both singing and film editing, as the song is passed from one singer (or group of singers) to another, all of whom are at different locales.