Love Me Tonight
d. Robert Mamoulian, 1932
Hilarious. Love Me Tonight is everything I would want in a musical, except funnier, more technically astonishing, and much more overwhelming. In essence, this is Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise with music (both films were released in 1932), except that instead of a jewel thief, the lead in this film is a Parisian tailor.
Love Me Tonight's musical numbers are not done as they are in most Hollywood musicals; Robert Mamoulian does not interrupt his story in order to throw in some music, but instead sees the songs as extensions of the same thematic groundwork. This same technique would later be used brilliantly by French director Jacques Demy, whose The Umbrells of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort share the same dreamy mood with this film.
The two lead roles are played by Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald; with Chevalier playing a tailor who rides out to MacDonald's chateau in order to charge her cousin for some of the suits he purchased. Their relationship, much like the one between Madame Colet and Gaston in Lubitsch's movie, is based around the man's actual identity not being known, he plays the role of the stranger invading the woman's boring world. However, this only becomes a problem in the last 10 minutes of Love Me Tonight, with the rest of the film playing as a wonderful celebration of why movie musicals are the most magical of genres.
Even more astonishing than the film's humor and wonderful songs are Mamoulian's compositions. Usually, the direction of a musical is centered around the choreography of the actors. This film, on the other hand, contains really no choreography, which allowed the director to use more complicated compositions. The scenes in the chateau call to mind later films like Renoir's The Rules of the Game (with its use of large open spaces) and even Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad and its symmetrical framing.
Love Me Tonight is a musical for the ages that I will be watching for years to come.
