THE LOVE PARADE (1929)

Coming off ETERNAL LOVE/’29, his largely unhappy final silent, Ernst Lubitsch didn’t merely make a smooth transition to the Talkies, but a revolutionary one with this sparkling musical.  Something that must have seemed impossible at the time.  A sort of reverse on THE MERRY WIDOW (filmed by Lubitsch in 1934*), this time, a randy Ruritanian officer is sent home from Paris in punishment for too many dalliances.  Working with so-so composers (no Franz Lehár equivalent on the Paramount lot!), Lubitsch can’t lean on the music, but he barely needs to, especially in the astonishingly fine & free opening two reels; the Paris-set prologue with Maurice Chevalier breaking the fourth wall to translate action (everyone speaking French) as he’s gotten himself in trouble by having one too many garters!  His mistress furious, her husband furious, the valet useless, a gun loaded with blanks, and a dog adding a Lubitsch Touch to save face.  Moviemaking audacity unprecedented at the time.  And while the rest of the film shows 1929 Early Talkie longueurs (as well as ‘live’ on set singing), it’s not far behind this miraculous opening.  Back in Sylvania, Queen Jeanette MacDonald can’t find a gentleman groom willing to emasculate himself in marriage and play consort for life.  But Chevalier has unexpectedly fallen in love and thinks he can work things out; he’ll play bad boy till the Queen comes down to his level.  Shot with perfectly judged alternations of scale (huge court settings vs. intimate personal spaces), and supported by councilors and a servant couple to mirror the romance (the amazing physical moves of stage star Lupino Lane still a wonder), the film far outpaces anything out at the time and, nearly a century later, still gives off its distinctive charm.  Technical improvements, and the first true Music Video sequence, would come in next year’s MONTE CARLO/’30 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/monte-carlo-1930.html) , though only this film offers a chorus of dogs barking in harmony.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Lubitsch wouldn’t get another budget to support this level of sheer spectacle until THE MERRY WIDOW over @ M-G-M, a final pairing for Chevalier & MacDonald.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-merry-widow-1934.html