Year: 1929-30
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lupino Lane, Lillian Roth, Eugene Pallette, EH Calvert, Edgar Norton, Lionel Belmore
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Chevalier), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Recording
This is the first out-and-out musical I've watched since starting this blog. It won't be the last, of course, but this might be the first classic "musical" nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history. Technically, The Broadway Melody was first, and I haven't seen it yet, but I think the musical numbers in that one were actual musical performances even within the film, whereas here characters just break into song whenever they're left alone with their thoughts, or having a conversation. To me, that's what a musical is; not just a movie that contains musical numbers. The Big Pond had just one such number, but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture.
Speaking of The Big Pond, welcome back to the blog, Maurice Chevalier. We've
Renard is a wily rascal who spends most of his time seducing beautiful ladies (ah, now that I believe), including the Ambassador's wife. Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald) recalls him for a formal reprimand, but the Queen has problems of her own, including a shrill, piercing singing voice, but more importantly, she's had it up to here with all the speculation on when, and whom, she will marry. This Queen isn't exactly a blushing, prrrroper young royal, and in fact, her first scene has her waking up from an erotic dream. It's made clear that she has no use for marriage, but some use for sex. And one of her first scenes is getting nekkid and into a bath. Ah, the pre-Hayes Code days.
One of the biggest problems with finding her a husband is the fact that the laws of her land state that there is only a Queen, and her husband, when she has one, would not be King but merely Prince Consort, a position of high visibility and responsibility, but no power. Perfect punishment for a man with a string of scandals?
One of the first issues I had with this movie is that it's just too long. This story, with some stretching, is about 45 minutes long, but instead it's 109. A majority of the padding are songs, naturally, as this is a Maurice Chevalier movie. Unfortunately I'm not all that keen on Chevalier's voice. He's not a bad singer but he's a boring singer, which is bad because having him sing is supposed to be one of the highlights of his films. And as I've already pointed out, her voice is just annoying.
It was amusing how risque this movie was for a time period we think of as being so innocent. Sure, the Hays Code didn't exist yet, but this is the first movie I've seen from this era where a womanizer is the hero of the story, and a woman who seems sexually interested despite being unmarried is the heroine. At their first dinner together, the Queen asks Renard what he would do if she were not the queen. He immediately holds her close, kisses her hand and gazes into her eyes. "All that the first time you meet?" she asks. "Then what could be left for later?" "...Plenty..." he says, suggestively. Then they sing. Again. And he leaves. The 20's, gang.
The song "Let's Be Common", sung between Renard's servant and the Queen's maid, is essentially a celebration of the fact that commoners don't have to worry about being decorous and if they want to do things without being married, that's fine.
I won't say there weren't moments that I thought worked well, but ultimately this thing is so long and yet so little is happening that my attention kept wandering throughout. Of the two performances that Maurice Chevalier was nominated for this year, this one is probably the more deserving, but that's like saying I'd nominate Adam Sandler for Big Daddy before I would for Happy Gilmore.
No comments:
Post a Comment