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Ernst Lubitsch is more than up to the challenge of an early-talkie musical, his fluency of image and sound quickly becomes part of the joke. (The tale of the doctor's wife has a naughty punchline, the camera is on the other side of a window when it is whispered.) The opening is a boulevardier's burlesque of creaky infidelity melodrama, a pantomime of death and resurrection complete with prop pistol and a foretaste of L'Année Dernière à Marienbad. One too many indiscretions in Paris, back to Sylvania for the libidinous attaché (Maurice Chevalier), in song he bids adieu from the balcony, seconded by his valet and thirded by his pooch. (Rhythmic barking is just one of the privileged vibrations, there's also bridal cannon fire and defiant coughing.) Roused in her castle, the Queen (Jeanette MacDonald) luxuriates in the memory of an erotic reverie ("Dream lover, your romance has found me...") but is brought down to earth by a reminder of the need for marriage, the kingdom's most pressing concern. Lubitsch understands seduction as the screen's greatest spectacle, so the royal date with the exiled rascal is eagerly described by an audience in the sidelines (cabinet members, ladies in waiting, assorted voyeurs) as it moves from dining chamber to boudoir. "Oh, we are in the best of humor, eh?" The heroine is the roué's every past conquest rolled into one, still trouble is plain already at the wedding ceremony when he flinches at the vows. Tiptoeing brigadiers in the morning and the alarming omen of Ben Turpin in imperial uniform, Lupino Lane's acrobatic stumbling alongside Lillian Roth's inflamed brass, Shakespearean clowning for days. "Lovely moon, lovely night/ What's wrong with you, you're so polite!" Cruelty at the opera house (cf. Ophüls' Liebelei), the crown that paralyzes and the wink that dissipates it all. Cinematography by Victor Milner. With Eugene Pallette, Lionel Belmore, and Edgar Norton. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |