Rouben Mamoulian

(On Cable TV, September 2021) If you’re looking for the state-of-the-art of what musicals were in the early 1930s, there’s Love Me Tonight to offer a counterpoint to the Broadway revue musicals that were also in vogue (and, alas, about to send the genre into eclipse due to overexposure). The always-compelling Maurice Chevalier stars in a story of a commoner falling in love with royalty, with the usual deceptions and complications that this kind of romantic fantasy usually entails. Jeanette MacDonald ably goes up against Chevalier as the princess, with Myrna Loy in a supporting role. This film was reportedly a technical marvel at the time, with one musical number cutting through several characters and locations. More significant is the film’s place in history as the first “integrated musical” where the songs are tightly integrated in the plot. (Something obvious to us now, but not quite as practised at the time.)  Director Rouben Mamoulian would go on to direct many more musicals, and Chevalier would star in several funnier films, albeit not necessarily better ones. Still, Love Me Tonight has lost some of its lustre: It doesn’t have the immediate appeal of the comedies that Chevalier would make with Lubitsch et al., and the wow-factor of the Broadway revues isn’t there either — as a result, many of the innovations pioneered by the film now go unnoticed. (Although that opening sequence is still really good.) But Chevalier is a charmer no matter the film, and that alone still justifies seeing Love Me Tonight.