Love Me Tonight (1932)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C Extras: B Film: B
Kino
continues to roll out the films of Rouben Mamoulian with Love Me Tonight, a 1932 Musical that is more fully so than the mix
of Musical and Melodrama that is Applause
(reviewed elsewhere on this site). Here,
the film sound is slowly loaded with the noise of inanimate objects bringing
the city alive, in the mode of a Folk Musical, but suddenly Maurice Chevalier
shows up and song after song by the great Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart can be
heard throughout.
There are
ten songs (nine, since “Give Me Just A
Moment” was cut at the last minute,) including the title tune, but “Isn’t It Romantic?” is the one that
that is still known as the 21st
Century kicks in. Chevalier is a tailor
who sings as much as he sows and hems, then hems and haws when the moment suits
him. When upper class royalty is looking
for a groom for one of its debutantes (Jeanette MacDonald), Musical cinema’s
favorite Frenchman is mistaken for blue blood.
Wait until they find out what they are in for!
Though
more fluid and flowing than Applause,
the film is a unique work in the Musical genre, but it also meets repetition
and a little of Chevalier can go a long way.
However, the cast also includes George “Gabby” Hayes, Charles Ruggles,
Charles Butterworth, C. Aubrey Smith, and Myrna Loy. Hollywood really got it act together in
1932 and Love Me Tonight is one of
the most interesting examples of that, as the Studio System built up Musicals
and Gangster films to push sound to new heights.
The full
frame 1.33 X 1 image is not bad for its age, with a few scratches and debris
here and there, but not bad.
Cinematographer Victor Milner does a remarkable job for the time and it
is still very watchable. Video Black and
the Gray Scale are just fine. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono is clean and clear for its age, but does exhibit some
compression.
Extras
include another write-up inside the DVD case by Miles Kruger, who also does an
interesting and informative audio commentary track. There is also a clip of Chevalier singing “Louise” in a stand-alone clip,
MacDonald singing the title song in a a cool
“Paramount on Parade” newsreel piece with full orchestra that begins and ends
with a giant magazine cover featuring her opening and closing on the bed set
where she sings the song, still text galleries for censorship records,
pictures, screenplay excerpts of deleted scenes, posters and other promotional
materials. You even get the original
theatrical trailer.
The music
works far better than any of the comedy, which is always almost funny, but
never clicks, though it might have been funnier 70 years ago. The film is about 90 minutes long, so it
never gets too boring, especially in the way it moves from thing to thing. That is not to say it is scattered, because
Mamoulian manages to juggle all of this very well. It may be fair to say that the way the
conclusion referentially treats Ernest Lubitsch’s 1930 MacDonald vehicle Monte Carlo reminded me of the antagonism between Frank Capra
and Preston Sturges. This is a must for
Musical fans, and required viewing at least one for serious film fans.
- Nicholas Sheffo
