Love Me Toniight is one of my favorite musicals because no other film ever captured quite so successfully what it’s like to have a song in your heart and sex on the brain.
From the first moments, we’re introduced to a community that has an internal rhythm that speaks to its vibrancy and love for the workings of everyday life. Director Rouben Mamoulian was an innovator in many ways (his use of filters in Dr. Jekyll; the first 3-strip Technicolor of Becky Sharp), but his use of sound here was truly revolutionary, with each additional “musical” moment (broom sweeping, rug beating, nail hammering, car honking) adding to the rich texture of Paris street life.
Like many musicals, LMT operates under some basic oppositions—rich and poor, randiness and repression, propriety and impetuousness, zeal for life and stodginess, nobility by birth and sincerity of heart. But it’s the juggling of these oppositions in a myriad of clever and satirical (often purely visual) ways that places the sheer romanticism of the tone in a more tongue-in-cheek environment.
This is helped greatly by some funny Rodgers & Hart songs with even funnier deliveries. “Mimi” is hilarious in Chevalier’s over-the-top (and in-your-face) libidinousness, and the reprise is even funnier when we remember that, for the entire castle to have learned the song, Maurice has likely been regaling them for hours in earshot of the resistant object of his affection. Similarly, Maurice entertains the crowd by wallowing in the depravity of working class prejudices with his gangster ode “The Apache Song”, when we know his portrayal may be closer to autobiography than anyone actually expects. And class division snobbery is sent up when even the chambermaid resents having stooped to flirting with “the son-of-a-gun who’s nothing but a tailor”.
But even the “serious” songs are given equally subversive levity. The standard “Lover” ends with the line, “You and I will roll in the…Hey!” when her horse-drawn wagon crashes. “Love Me Tonight” is a romantic duet between two sleeping partners, physically separated but united via splitscreen to end up in bed together. And “Isn’t It Romantic?” reminds us of the mercurial power of song, with the simplest tune enrapturing cab drivers, soldiers, gypsies, and princesses as the melody wafts its way across the countryside.
In each one of these songs, ruminations of sex are never far away, and sights of MacDonald having her bust measured in a negligee or Mryna Loy doggedly chasing men (the younger the better) only play up the connection between sexual satisfaction and the never-ending pursuit of a happy ending. Compared to Charles Butterworth’s fractured flute, Maurice can’t help but bring a jolt of erotic energy to the proceedings, as he confidently prances up the stairs and, later, hosts a stag party that Jeanette drops in on.
But as fun as these characters are, when the Princess declares her love for the “Count”, he’s taken genuinely off-guard. It’s a very real and touching moment from Chevalier, and MacDonald manages to abandon some of her typical stiffness and actually become accessible in a way we rarely saw from her throughout her career. And for this, Mamoulian (who directed the likes of Garbo, Miriam Hopkins, and Cyd Charisse to career-best performances) deserves a good share of the credit. As a director, he was always a bit hard to pin down—his Dr. Jekyll is more unnerving than the Universal horror films from the period, his Zorro has better sword-fighting than any of Errol Flynn’s pics, and Silk Stockings is another musical worth some serious re-examining.
But he largely disappeared after the 30s, and the memory of him is usually eclipsed by the likes of Paramount’s Lubitsch and xxx. But Love Me Tonight remains a masterpiece in the way it giddily embraces natural impulses, both musical and carnal, in a way that, over 70 years later, few films have done as well.
Anyone else get a chance to hunt the DVD down?
