Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Saturday, April 13, 2019

THE MERRY WIDOW (1934)

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.)

No comments: