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February 12, 2008

San Francisco Chronicle reviewer prefers Jeanette’s Paramount Films!

maceddy Jeanette & Nelson

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Music and Lubitsch

In the years after a rigid Production Code imposed morality on American cinema, occasionally a studio would go begging to the Production Code Administration. The studio would say, “Hey, we have this movie that was made before the Code. Please, please can we rerelease it?” Often the PCA would say no, but sometimes it would say, “OK, sure, but only if you make these cuts.”

Paramount went to the PCA in 1936 with such a request concerning director Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931) – one of the four films included in the Criterion Collection’s new Eclipse series DVD package “Lubitsch Musicals.” PCA chief Joseph Breen screened the movie and came back suggesting not one or two or three cuts – but 27. Basically, he suggested turning the movie into a short subject. But he was really saying something else. He was asking Paramount how it could waste his time on such licentious, offensive trash when everyone knew it was his job to shield the public from such monstrous, amoral horrors as “The Smiling Lieutenant.”

These days people are bound to feel differently about “The Smiling Lieutenant,” and the three other musicals in the four-DVD set. The films, made from 1929 to 1932, are some of the most urbane – and in some cases risque – that Hollywood produced at that time.

Three of the movies star Maurice Chevalier, a name probably unknown to younger movie fans and misunderstood by even those familiar with him. Today, to the extent that he’s remembered at all in America, he’s an old man singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” on a park bench in 1958’s “Gigi.” In fact, to know Chevalier for that alone would be like knowing Paul McCartney solely for his most recent album. In Chevalier’s prime – captured in this series – he embodied onscreen a character that was libidinous, playful, insinuating and sexually rapacious. He was America’s idea of a Frenchman: charming, fun-loving and sexually insatiable.

With Chevalier onscreen, it was always understood that he has gone to bed with hundreds if not thousands of women and has been faithful to none of them, but no one minds because, hey, he’s French. He is impish, and his behavior borders on ridiculous, but there’s a wise current underneath, an Old World understanding that the pleasures of life are the essence of life. Descriptions can go only so far. Imagine explaining Mae West to someone who has never seen her. You need to see this guy.

“The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931) finds Chevalier at the ideal place in his stardom, established but still flowering. He stars as a lieutenant who is flirting with his mistress (Claudette Colbert) one day as a parade goes by. A frumpy visiting princess (Miriam Hopkins, who is hysterically funny) happens to be passing, thinks he’s making eyes at her and becomes offended, provoking an international incident. What scandalized the censors is that the movie makes a mockery of marriage and celebrates premarital and extramarital sex, which is reinforced by the film’s slightly wistful and sophisticated ending.

Eclipse’s mission is to bundle undiscovered and forgotten classics. There are no commentaries or special features – just the movies, transferred according to Criterion’s rigorous standards and made available at a fraction of the cost of buying them separately. “The Smiling Lieutenant” was unavailable for so long that for years even some eminent film scholars assumed it to be lost. It found its way onto laser disc about 10 years ago, but aside from that and a single screening on Turner Classic Movies in 2003, it has been virtually unavailable

The other star of the Eclipse set is Jeanette MacDonald, another famous name who is remembered for the wrong movies. She is most often associated with the starched, sanitized films she made later with Nelson Eddy at MGM. But working at Paramount in the pre-Code years, MacDonald was sly and sexy – the difference is night and day. In the pre-Code days, she was known as the screen’s “lingerie queen,” and the aim of her movies was to find pretexts for her to stay in her underwear.

She was first teamed with Chevalier in “The Love Parade” (1929), the earliest film in the Eclipse series, an early talkie that has none of the stiltedness of other films from the same year. Working with the same heavy, boxy sound equipment that every other director was saddled with, Lubitsch turned in a gorgeous, flowing, effortlessly graceful film about a young queen who marries a notorious ladies’ man.

Their second collaboration was “One Hour With You,” about a happy couple whose marriage is threatened when the wife’s friend Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin) starts lusting after her best friend’s husband. This prompts Chevalier to sing: “I love Colette (MacDonald)/ I haven’t weakened yet/ But oh, that Mitzi.” When he finally does weaken, he sings, “I didn’t want to do what I did, but I did/ And now what can I do?” And then, looking straight into the camera, he addresses the men in the audience, “I ask you, what would you do? Heh, that’s what I did, too.”

The peculiar entry in the Eclipse series – but welcome for its very strangeness – is “Monte Carlo” (1930), with the young MacDonald, charming as ever, paired with Jack Buchanan, the British stage star remembered by Americans today mainly for playing the zany director in the Fred Astaire film “The Band Wagon” (1953). Buchanan looks like a sneaky servant more than a leading man, and his pairing with MacDonald is downright bizarre. It’s difficult to believe for a second that he’s attracted to her. Even Chevalier could sometimes seem fey, but next to Buchanan, Chevalier was John Wayne.

Chalk “Monte Carlo” up as a likable misfire, a curiosity piece more valuable for its historical value than its entertainment value. That leaves three others, which are good enough to be watched over and over. At a list price of $59.99 (but much cheaper if you do a little shopping), that’s not bad.

After you’ve discovered these films, get hold of “Love Me Tonight” (1932), the third Chevalier and MacDonald pairing and their best film together. It’s a lot like these movies. It has Paramount’s sophistication and gives you the same feeling that the others do, of having entered some benign erotic universe. The only difference is that it wasn’t directed by Lubitsch but by Rouben Mamoulian.

Link to complete article

February 12, 2008

Harry Knowles’ review of new Lubitsch collection

maceddy Jeanette & Nelson DVDs

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Harry Knowles runs the very popular Ain’t It Cool News movie website. His audience is largely made up of younger movie-goers. Hence, it’s nice to see his two thumbs up review of the new Lubitsch DVD release:

“One of the most forgotten great directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood amongst today’s younger set is Ernst Lubitsh. One of the greatest directors of any era. Here we have a great collection of his musicals – 3 of the 4 films were nominated for Best Picture. They star the likes of Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert – and the musicals are those fantastic melodrama musicals. As usual – Criterion kicks ass with the presentation and mastering of these four films. These are incredibly superior films – which is as usual with Lubitsch.”

Link

February 12, 2008

LA Times Review of the New Lubitsch DVD collection

maceddy Jeanette & Nelson DVDs

 

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Ernst Lubitsch added sex, bawdiness and sophistication to the musical

The director redefined the genre some 80 years ago with films starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 10, 2008

DIRECTORS like Rob Marshall, Bill Condon, Adam Shankman and Tim Burton might be the latest filmmakers to craft engaging cinematic musicals, but, back when sound was new to the art form, it was German emigre director Ernst Lubitsch whose breezy, clever style and sophisticated story lines redefined the genre.

After making a name for himself in silent cinema in Europe and Hollywood, Lubitsch brought his unique vision to the musical. His first sound film, 1929’s “The Love Parade,” also was the first movie musical that integrated songs within the story, and, over the next three years, he would direct three more glorious, sexy, bawdy musical comedies — 1930’s “Monte Carlo,” 1931’s “The Smiling Lieutenant” and 1932’s “One Hour With You” — before the Hays production code took effect in 1934.

But trying to see these films has been next to impossible. Finally, the four will make their DVD debut Tuesday via Criterion’s Eclipse line, and nearly 80 years after their initial release, these gems are just as exhilarating as they were back during the infancy of sound.

“The Love Parade” earned six Oscar nominations, including best picture and lead actor for Maurice Chevalier, who stars in three of the films in the collection and here plays Count Alfred Renard, a womanizing military attaché who finds himself marginalized after he weds Jeanette MacDonald’s queen.

The chemistry between MacDonald and Chevalier was undeniable, and the pair reunited with Lubitsch for 1932’s “One Hour With You,” another best picture nominee. They play a happily married couple whose “perfect” union is put to the test when her best friend, Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin), arrives for a visit.

Each of the stars pairs up with another romantic foil in the other two films in the collection. MacDonald’s feisty countess falls for Englishman Jack Buchanan’s morally dubious aristocrat in “Monte Carlo.” Buchanan has plenty of charisma, whether posing as Rudy the Hairdresser to gain access to the lady’s boudoir or performing the wacky number “Trimmin’ the Women,” with John Roche and Tyler Brooke.

Link to complete article

February 8, 2008

A newspaper article about Jeanette MacDonald from the Philippines!

maceddy Jeanette & Nelson In the News

Not sure we agree that Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae replaced Jeanette and Nelson with the same box office magic…no one has ever done that and Gordon MacRae was never the highest paid singer in the world like Nelson Eddy! Still, it’s great to see Jeanette mentioned in this article!

“By the mid-’30s Jeanette MacDonald was the Queen of Hollywood Musicals, having topbilled a series of successful films with Nelson Eddy. The duo was Tinseltown’s most successful singing pair—until Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae paired up in “Oklahoma” and “Carousel” more than 20 years later. Soon, the studios started importing opera divas like Lili Pons and Rise Stevens.”…

Link

February 8, 2008

2 More Articles About “Yes, Yes, Jeanette”

maceddy Jeanette & Nelson J/N Tribute Show 0 Comments

Link #1

Link #2

We heard nice things about the singers and the show, which apparently opens with Jeanette and Gene recreated on the Edward R. Murrow TV interview…then it flashes back to Jeanette’s early years. For the record, the Jeanette-Nelson off-screen romance is not addressed.

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Today in J/N History

1930 Jeanette guest stars on California Melodies radio show on KHJ, singing songs from her upcoming film, "Let's Go Native."

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