Looks like somebody got his ass whipped- and his name is Ernst Lubitsch. The so called "Lubitcsh touch" is supposed to describe light comedies that have a sparkling, elegant quality to them, but too often the director's film are overwrought and dull. The Lubitsch touch is abundant in Love Me Tonight, however- although the movie is directed by Rouben Mamoulian, a master stylist and an underrated director of if their ever was one. Mamoulian's Applause was the first great talkie, his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde one of the best of all horror films, and Love Me Tonight is second only to Rock and Roll High School as the greatest of musicals. It's even better than Camelot.
It has often been said that musicals are among the hardest of all films to make. They are often based on stage plays, which are harder to adapted to the screen than novels, and directors are often faced with the problem of how to film what may look impressive on stage but may be far more mundane on screen. I have often felt that in order to make a great musical, a director must understand that the camera must be a performer as well- the camera cannot merely record someone singing, it must be a subjective tool used by the director to bring us into the fantasy world of the film (and all musicals are fantasies). There was no one better to do this than formulist Mamoulian, who uses his subjective camera to the max- at times, the movie seems more like a New Wave film than early sound cinema.
But it has to be said that the director had some great material to work with. It's kind of hard to go wrong when your songs are written by Rogers and Hart, for example, and this is the film that introduced no less than three standards- "Mimi", "Lover" and especially, "Isn't It Romantic?" Although the movie was based on a play, that work was not a musical, so the songwriting could write especially for the cinematic form, which Mamoulian exploits to the fullest, sometimes with some real experimentation. For example, one song is sung entirely while the two lovers are asleep, in split screen- the director is smart enough to realize that we don't need to see a performance recorded like in theatre. The script is live and witty, and the cast is unbeatable- the charming Maurice Chevalier excellent in his lead part as a tailor who gets mistaken for a French aristocrat, and the rest of the cast, including Myrna Loy, Charlie Ruggles, and especially C. Aubrey Smith is superb. The one drawback is Jeannette McDonald as Chevalier's love interest- her singing style is too old fashioned for the material.
But that's a minor problem with what is otherwise pretty close to a perfect movie. This is the movie that Lubitsch tried to make repeatedly and failed. Despite the fact that this is a very light and charming film, there is one sad thing about it- Mamoulian could no longer make films like this once Hollywood classicism became established and his experiments and style were no longer popular. But for a few years in the early 30's, Mamoulian made movie about as good as they came.
Love Me Tonight (1932)