LOVE ME TONIGHT

PARAMOUNT, 1932 | BLACK AND WHITE, 104 MINUTES (ORIGINAL RUNNING TIME)

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER: ROUBEN MAMOULIAN SCREENPLAY: SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN, GEORGE MARION JR., WALDEMAR YOUNG, BASED ON THE PLAY LE TAILLEUR AU CHÂTEAU BY LÉOPOLD MARCHAND AND PAUL ARMONT SONGS: RICHARD RODGERS (MUSIC) AND LORENZ HART (LYRICS) STARRING: MAURICE CHEVALIER (MAURICE), JEANETTE MACDONALD (PRINCESS JEANETTE), CHARLIE RUGGLES (VISCOUNT GILBERT DE VARÈZE), CHARLES BUTTERWORTH (COUNT DE SAVIGNAC), MYRNA LOY (COUNTESS VALENTINE), C. AUBREY SMITH (DUKE D’ARTELINES), ELIZABETH PATTERSON (FIRST AUNT), ETHEL GRIFFIES (SECOND AUNT), BLANCHE FRIDERICI (THIRD AUNT), JOSEPH CAWTHORN (DR. DE FONTINAC)

A tailor is mistaken for a nobleman and falls in love with a princess.

History can sometimes make amends after going initially awry. In 1932, Love Me Tonight was released to a public far more interested in seeing gangster and sex stories than it was in attending musicals. Now, happily, it is regarded as a masterpiece.

Great films, for the most part, both look back and peer ahead. While Love Me Tonight honors such predecessors as The Love Parade and Le million, it also finds countless ways to advance in new directions. First among its creators is director Rouben Mamoulian, who had already blazed new paths on the stage before turning to film with Applause and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His mastery is evident as soon as the credits are done, with an opening sequence that has become legendary: as a new day begins, Paris slowly awakens in a riot of sounds, images, and artful cutting. Most films could not improve upon such a scene, yet Mamoulian is just getting started.

In a few minutes, Maurice Chevalier, as a Paris tailor, sings “Isn’t It Romantic?” and very quickly that wonderful Rodgers and Hart song is wafting through Paris, into the country and finally to a distant balcony. Jeanette MacDonald, a lovelorn princess, gives it a final chorus, and thus are the two lovers connected before they ever meet. The modern fairy tale that follows is both hilarious and tender, embellished by Mamoulian with unconventional camera angles, musically conceived editing, unexpected sound effects, trick photography, and sly jokes. “Mimi” and “Lover” are among the tunes, and the supporting cast—which sometimes acts as a Greek chorus—includes Myrna Loy as likely the most charming nymphomaniac in movie history. There are mistaken identities, love scenes, reversals of fortune, and a stirringly feminist last-minute rescue by horseback, followed by the happiest of ever-afters.

Because of Chevalier and MacDonald, Love Me Tonight is frequently grouped with the films both stars made with director Ernst Lubitsch, which isn’t really fair. Where Lubitsch laughs at sex, Mamoulian wholeheartedly embraces the idea of true and sincere love, and his virtuosity even exceeds that of another formative influence, René Clair. In grace and elegance, perhaps the only cinematic equivalents to Love Me Tonight may be the best of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers titles, which are vastly different in most ways. Here, the stars don’t dance, and don’t need to—the director’s already done the choreography with the camera and the microphone and the editing, and he’s done it brilliantly.

Director Rouben Mamoulian and Maurice Chevalier on the set

It’s something of a wonder that, with all its radiance, this monarch among musicals is less well known than many others of far, far less distinction. For those who haven’t seen it, a huge treat lies in store. And, with apologies for stating the obvious, the answer to that lyrical question “Isn’t It Romantic?” will always be an emphatic “You better believe it!”

Myrna Loy, Charles Butterworth, Charles Ruggles, C. Aubrey Smith