Best known for ‘knowing’ sex comedies & those witty ‘Lubitsch Touches’ that eluded censors with visual innuendo*, Ernst Lubitsch was equally celebrated for the use of spectacle in his early German productions. But once in Hollywood, the stunning use of mass movement in films like ROSITA/’23 and FORBIDDEN PARADISE/’24, soon gave way to the more intimate style we now recognize as echt Lubitsch. But in this M-G-M remake of the famous Lehar operetta, he must have been encouraged to lay it on. So, quite the display: balls & marches & corps of sweeping dancers filling the screen in waltz time. It’s thrilling, but does tend to overwhelm the tiny little story made up to fill in the space between the well known music cues. Briefly: Maurice Chevalier falls for the latest Maxim's Minx (Jeanette MacDonald) unaware she’s the Merry Widow he’s only seen hidden under a widow’s veil, the very woman he’s under orders to woo & win, bringing her and her fortune (half the State economy) back home from Paris. M-G-M tends to overdress everything, and the longueurs of operetta can hang fire, but a super cast (Edward Everett Horton, George Barbier & Una Merkel in support of MacDonald & Chevalier) manage to locate a beating heart under all the frou-frou thanks to Lubitsch and favorite scripter Samson Raphaelson.
LINK:*Here’s a clip where Billy Wilder defines The Lubitsch Touch to some students. He gets the film wrong, but the scene described is from THE MERRY WIDOW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jOVRKzwURY
DOUBLE-BILL: Erich von Stroheim’s MERRY WIDOW/’25, a great hit in its day, adds two acts worth of an elaborate backstory to beef up the operetta plot. (The 1952 version is just regrettable.)
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