Jeanette MacDonald

  • One Hour with You (1932)

    One Hour with You (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) It’s easy to see in One Hour with You why Maurice Chevalier was Hollywood’s Favourite Frenchman in the early 1930s—It’s not just about the really charming accent, it’s about the congenial bonhomie, the joie de vivre and the almost irresistible charm of the man. This may not be a great movie, but it’s a lot of fun and it allows Chevalier to do what he does best, up to speaking (and singing) directly to the audience in an attempt to explain himself. The story, slight as it is, has to do with a happily married couple being tempted by adultery—and while, in the freewheeling pre-Code era, our heroes do succumb to “temptation” by kissing, modern audiences may want to fill out more salacious details in their minds. Still, the plot isn’t nearly as interesting as seeing Chevalier (and Jeanette MacDonald as his wife) sing and deliver some great monologues, along with some witty repartee and sophisticated European attitude toward marriage, love and courtship. Amazingly enough, the film can be said to have been directed by Ernest Lubitsch and George Cukor thanks to some production shenanigans, although the Lubitsch touch is more obvious. Clocking in at a tightly tuned 80 minutes, the film earns a few laughs and leaves us with a big smile on our faces (which, considering that I watched it in close proximity with other tales of adultery through the decades, is no mean feat). A great script filled with witty dialogue and sophisticated comedy wraps up the rest. A clear star vehicle that delivers, One Hour With You is a shining example of Pre-Code romantic comedy, funny, daring and still incredibly effective ninety years later.

  • The Merry Widow (1934)

    The Merry Widow (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) According to some contemporary accounts, Maurice Chevalier was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors of the 1930s, and his cultural influence essentially defined the French stereotype in American movies. He reportedly spoke English quite fluently in real-life, only to revert to a distinctive French accent in his movies. As much as I dislike the artifice, I must say that it helped create a strong screen persona: That of a bon vivant, gentle womanizer, easygoing hedonist… or, in other words, close to the stereotype that Americans still carry about French people, one that French people don’t do much to try to dispel. You can see that persona and attitude at play in The Merry Widow, a romantic fantasy in which imaginary European kingdoms are used as reasons for a soldier to court a rich widow. From the get-go, the film seeks an amiable, generally harmless tone: one early scene has soldiers chanting as they go to war, but with lyrics clearly stating that their only reason to go there is to impress the girls at home. Against this backdrop, Chevalier takes on the role of a playboy tasked with the serious business of national union through romantic courtship, and the rest of the film goes from there. There are plenty of reasons why this premise wouldn’t fly today, but the result is quite likable as a historical capsule. Ernest Lubitsch directs with his usual touch, and the music is surprisingly catchy. It’s clear that the film celebrates women, romance and courtship in a harmless fashion without any predatory overtones. Chevalier is truly likable, and Jeanette MacDonald is also quite good as the wooed widow. Top-notch production values in terms of sets and costumes mean that there’s always something lavish to look at. Still, the comedy is the draw and The Merry Widow is funny enough to entertain. Chevalier at his peak was not to be underestimated.

  • Naughty Marietta (1935)

    Naughty Marietta (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While largely forgotten today, Jeanette MacDonald was a major musical star in the 1930s, and she made no less than eight films with co-star Nelson Eddy, the most memorable of those (for all sorts of bad reasons) being Rose-Marie. But their collaboration began with Naughty Marietta, a competent musical that sees her play a French princess fleeing an arranged marriage and trying to begin anew in New Orleans, with many adventures prior and during that flight to the United States. MacDonald’s specialty was operetta signing, and this film definitely plays into that strength with a number of musical scenes tailored for her vocal register. It’s all unobjectionable—a lot of music, of mushy French, of frilly costumes and some chemistry between MacDonald and Eddy. Naughty Marietta was a hit at the time (being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award) and was more recently selected as part of the National Film Registry. But it’s not particularly distinctive or interesting—the better-than-average moments don’t really stand out, and they’re widely spaced between some very conventional material. Still, MacDonald can sing, that’s for sure.

  • San Francisco (1936)

    San Francisco (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) One of my working hypotheses in my Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood is that everything was invented during the 1930s, and we’ve been running variations on a theme ever since. San Francisco is another validation of that statement, as it credibly sets up the template that later disaster movies would follow closely. Set during the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco features no less than Clark Gable as an atheistic saloon owner and gambler. Then popular singer Jeanette MacDonald is the love interest, while Spencer Tracy has an early role as a Catholic priest fit to act as the protagonist’s conscience. Much of the early film is spent showcasing the city as it existed at the turn of the century and setting up the dramatic conflicts that will be settled definitively by the earthquake. For modern viewers, there’s also another kind of suspense: How, exactly, are the filmmakers going to portray the impending disaster on-screen? Is it going to look effective to our modern CGI-jaded eyes? That question is answered convincingly two thirds of the way through with an utterly thrilling sequence in which real-world sets are split apart. It’s a long and still-impressive moment in the movie as characters scream, building crumble and even the era’s limitations in special effects technology can’t quite diminish the importance of the moment. Once the disaster is over, it’s no surprise if our atheistic character had found God and his love interest, affirming San Francisco’s Phoenix-like endurance. The slightly historical nature of the film, looking backwards twenty years, actually gives it an interesting weight that the speculative disaster films of the 1970s can’t quite match. While primitive by today’s SFX standards, I found San Francisco surprisingly enjoyable when it gets on with the show, and prescient as to how it creates a template for an entire subgenre to follow.