Maytime (1937)

Maytime made me think of Beau Brummel (1924) and Love Me or Leave Me combined into an operetta. The movie was based – loosely – on an operetta by Sigmund Romberg and Rida Johnson Young from 1917 and is constructed like an extended flashback.

When a rather flighty young lady contemplates trying to become an opera singer, she quarrels with her boyfriend, who wants to marry and settle down. Her neighbor, the elderly and mysterious Miss Morrison (Jeanette MacDonald) counsels thinking twice about leaving the man she loves and tells the young lady her own story, of how she was once the great Marcia Mornay, opera singer during the time of Louis Napoleon in Paris.

Marcia was a young singer from Virginia who was found by the great voice teacher/manager Nicolai Nazaroff (John Barrymore) and through his coaching and guidance, propelled into stardom. When the flashback begins, she is just beginning to make a name for herself in Paris.

In the meantime, Nazaroff proposes marriage. His usual mode of operating is to ask sexual favors from the women he mentors, but in the case of Marcia, he has fallen too deeply in love. Mostly, it seems, out of gratitude and a little bit of awe that he would propose, Marcia accepts him. But soon after, she also meets a carefree young American, Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy) who is also training to be an opera singer, except that he does not apply himself or wish strongly to succeed. They fall in love, but Marcia is unwilling to hurt Nicolai, who she feels has given so much to her and her career, and she and Paul part ways and she marries Nicolai. An inevitable, tragic love triangle ensues.

In certain ways, this film did remind me of Love Me or Leave Me. Barrymore’s Nazaroff is not physically abusive or bombastic like James Cagney’s character, but the dynamics are the same and John Barrymore is excellent at suggesting the passion hidden beneath the elegant exterior. He’s like a languid vampire, always behind her like a brooding shadow, sucking the lifeblood out of her. No wonder she seems so tired after seven years of marriage to him. It’s not the lifestyle of an opera singer, as she assumes; it’s him. He seems to control her entire life and career.

You know from the beginning that he’s going to be the possessive, jealous type, though he seems to be trying not to be. He knows he has no right to be jealous, because he asked her to marry him knowing she did not love him. But though he tries, one can just tell that something is wrong and that at some point he’s going to explode and Hyde is going to emerge from Jekyll.

And Jeanette MacDonald also does an excellent job of showing that, subconsciously, Marcia is afraid of Nicolai. She never articulates it, but you can tell in the tentative and careful way she treats him. One can’t help but wonder if there was fear, as well as gratitude, that prompted her to marry him and not tell him about Paul.

Nelson Eddy as Paul gets the least interesting role of the film. Love Me or Leave Me had the right idea in making the story about Ruth Etting’s relationship with her husband rather than her lover. And might have been nice to have more between MacDonald and Barrymore in Maytime. Nelson Eddy’s role is necessary, but he doesn’t have any character dynamics to offer. He does, however, share an excellent chemistry with Jeanette MacDonald when they sing. I am constantly surprised at how sexy and emotionally intense opera can be on film. The climactic scene where they sing together while Nicolai watches from the wings and begins to boil over is believable largely because of the chemistry they generate. Nicolai is not just seeing things.

I also found it ironic that the only intimate moment Paul and Marcia can share during the production of the opera at the end of the film is on stage – very publicly in front of a whole audience – where they can whisper a few words to each other.

The songs are lovely, though I don’t know if I found them quite as memorable as Rose-Marie, New Moon, or Naughty Marietta. Many songs from many operas are featured, but the opera at the end is a fictional opera, called Czaritza, and was written using music from Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony. There’s really only one song from Romberg’s operetta left, the love song “Will You Remember.”

It’s a tearjerker, but in a good way, with an ending like Beau Brummel or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I call those kinds of movies cosmic romances, a romance that transcends time or space. It’s one of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy best films, aided tremendously by John Barrymore.

His history as an actor plays well into the role of Nazaroff. Perhaps we read more into it knowing he’s played Jekyll and Hyde or Svengali (which he did in 1931). Though he’s not exactly a Svengali in Maytime. This is, after all, Jeanette MacDonald, who already has tremendous talent and drive, but it’s a related idea.

As an aside, I think Barrymore would have made an excellent vampire or Count Dracula.

This post was written as part of the Barrymore Trilogy Blogathon, hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. Be sure to read the rest of the contributions to this blogathon in honor of John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, and Ethel Barrymore!

 

Gigi (1958)

If I had a time machine and could go anywhere at all, I would go back to the opening night of My Fair Lady in 1956. My Fair Lady has what is for me one of the most glorious, exhilarating, beautiful, even magical, scores of any musicals. However, while My Fair Lady was enjoying its sensational run on Broadway, the composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner came to Hollywood and helped turned Colette’s novella Gigi into a musical.

The stories are so similar, it’s almost impossible not to compare the two. Critic Bosley Crowther even joked that Gigi “bears such a basic resemblance to My Fair Lady that the authors may want to sue themselves.” The first time I saw it, my reaction was tepid. The music just never seemed to take off and soar like it does in My Fair Lady. However, on viewing it a second time, I have to admit that as a movie, Gigi might be more successful than the later 1964 film adaptation of My Fair Lady. Vincente Minnelli directed, some filming was done in Paris and on the whole it feels far more fluid and attractive than the more stage-bound and slightly stiff My Fair Lady (which I still watch frequently because it’s the closest I’ll ever get to the opening night in 1956 and I really shouldn’t complain).

The story occurs during the turn of the century in Paris. Gigi (Leslie Caron) is being raised to be a courtesan by her grandmother, Mamita (Hermione Gingold), and Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans). Meanwhile, Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan) is wealthy and bored, while his uncle, Honore Lachaille (Maurice Chevalier), seems to love every minute of his life as a roue. The only people Gaston feels like he can relax with is Gigi and Mamita…until he realizes that Gigi’s no longer a child and he offers to make her his mistress.

When I watched Gigi this second time, it struck me that though the musical is called Gigi, it’s not really about her as much as it is Gaston (though I suspect that is not the case in the novella). Gigi seems like an enigma to me. We never find out why she’s like she is – unaffected, innocent despite being trained up as a courtesan, dissatisfied with the prospect of being a courtesan and playing the games of love. What makes her so different? Was it her grandmother’s doing?

Louis Jourdan, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold

Hermione Gingold as Madame Alvarez – “Mamita”-  provides an unexpected center and heart for the film, suggesting all sorts of depths of character. She’s savvy, has a sense of humor, knows how to ingratiate herself with men, even Gaston. She was, after all, a professional courtesan, though she doesn’t seem to have made out as successfully as her very wealthy sister Alicia. Was she, perhaps, not as hard-core as her sister? Alicia is the one who really preaches to Gigi about pleasing men and making sure you get the right kinds of jewels from one’s lovers and so on.

But Mamita, after all these years, seems to harbor a soft spot for Honore Lachaille, though he was untrue to her while they were together, and carries a touch of sadness and wistfulness. Life didn’t really give her all that she wanted, it seems. And she lets her daughter work in opera, even though she cannot sing. Whatever makes her daughter happy, apparently. Ultimately, Mamita has the same approach with Gigi. They seem to be an unorthodox bunch.

I have not seen Louis Jourdan in much (except in the beautiful Letter From an Unknown Woman), but he evidently did all his own singing, somewhat in the style of Rex Harrison. Initially, when we meet his character, he seems like a crank. He’s “bored” with everything, while his uncle, Honore, finds so much to enjoy in life. However, as the story progresses, one begins to understand why Gaston is so bored and to feel less sympathy with Honore’s attitude towards life and women.

Gaston pretty much does what everyone tells him to do – especially Honore – and what society expects of him. Ironically, the film shows how a promiscuous society can be just as much a prison as excessive puritanism, with its own rules and codes of conduct. Gaston hops from mistress to mistress, without love or affection. He must defend his “honor,” pretend to be a cheerful bon vivant and at all costs never appear ridiculous. Why? Because that’s what everyone does and he hasn’t yet realized that he neither needs nor wants to live that way.

The best songs in the film, in my opinion, are the ones that Gaston sings. They reveal his character and show his inner thoughts and how he comes to understand himself better – especially in the song “Gigi” when he realizes that he loves her. Lerner and Loewe seem especially good at using music this way. They do the same thing in My Fair Lady when Professor Higgins sings that he’s “grown accustomed to her face.” And the songs are long enough to make the transformations feel plausible.

I was watching a video on youtube recently, where a film editor explained that emotions take time and film editors have to take that into account and not rush the scene along. What Lerner and Loewe do is use music and song to give us that time. Those moments, for me, are some of the most compelling in Gigi.

One of the best scenes is when Gaston realizes that Gigi has grown up and he loves her – something that comes as a complete shock to him because it never before occurred to him that she was someone he could love (like how we put certain people off-limits for ourselves. It doesn’t occur to people to love siblings or cousins because it is not really an option. It’s partly a social construct, a mental block we put up. Gaston discovers that he doesn’t need to have that mental block about Gigi).

The other song is between Honore and Mamita, as they sit and reminisce. It’s such a gentle song, witty and amusing, but with a touch of sadness and a layer of irony. Honore clearly does harbor fond memories of Mamita, but the lovely things he tells her (like how he loved her so much he had to have an affair with another women to remind him that he was not the marrying kind) sound so nice we want to believe them, but it is clear that Mamita does not, but she harbors no rancor towards him.

I still can’t entirely decide what I feel about this movie. It’s charming, I like it, the story is intriguing, but the music never quite captures my imagination the same way that My Fair Lady does. My Fair Lady is sheer exhilaration. The acting in Gigi is good. I was especially impressed with Louis Jourdan and Hermione Gingold this time around. Perhaps the greatest mark of its affect on me is that I would like to watch it again and give the movie a chance to grow on me, because I suspect I will like it the more I see it.

 

Cafe Metropole (1937) – Tyrone Power and Loretta Young

1930s Hollywood had a thing for impoverished royal Russians in exile who were obliged to take menial jobs to earn their living, like being a waiter, a taxi driver, elevator operator or dressmaker. Irene Dunne was the dressmaker in the 1935 musical Roberta and Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer go into service in the 1937 Tovarich. In Cafe Metropole, a charming and somewhat obscure screwball comedy, the exiled Russian is a waiter.

Set in Paris, a young American named Alexander Brown (Tyrone Power) loses a bet to Monsieur Victor (Adolphe Menjou), the manager of Cafe Metropole. But Victor offers to waive the debt if Alexander will pretend to be a wealthy Russian prince named Alexis. Victor is quite sure the real prince is dead. Alexander is then supposed to woo heiress Laura Ridgeway (Loretta Young), daughter of self-made businessman Joseph Ridgeway (Charles Winninger). The idea, never exactly stated, is to either get money from her father or to marry her without her realizing that he’s not a real prince. Alexander, however, falls in love with Laura for real (something of an occupational hazard in the movies).

What is funny is that the movie doesn’t pretend that Alex’s  Russian accent is anything but atrocious and Victor comments that he hopes Alexander will not meet any Russians. As Alexander explains to Laura, his accent, “it comes and it goes, comes and goes…” She doesn’t seem to mind, however, because he is handsome and rather sweet.

Though, of course, the real prince (played with elan by Gregory Ratoff) is not dead after all. He is a waiter at Cafe Metropole and when he realizes that he is being impersonated he is indignant and storms into Victor’s office. It turns out that Victor used to work for the prince, back in the days of Imperial Russia, but he had not recognized the prince working in his own cafe. Through some rather skillfully ingratiating flattery and obeisance, along with a hefty bribe, Victor manages to pay the prince off (so he can return to the dissipated lifestyle that the prince’s family was noted for).

Loretta Young and Tyrone Power

Meanwhile, Laura has determined that she wants to marry Alexander and even proposes to him, though her father is uneasy about the whole thing. Alexander is too nice. All the nice men with titles that he’s previously met turned out to be frauds. The only man who truly had a title was rude. Besides, it seems odd that there should be a Russian prince who actually has money. But Laura doesn’t care if he’s a prince or not. She’s made up her mind to have him and she intends to have him no matter how much Alexander demurs (owing to his guilty conscience).

Cafe Metropole is a somewhat understated screwball comedy. There are no pratfalls, manic action (except a bit at the end with Young) or manic dialogue and the problems people must overcome are not serious. Humor is found in the situations and the tone of the film, the charming way that everyone deports themselves. For example, Alexander and Laura are having a serious conversation while Alexander is buying a hat and they are so absorbed by their conversation and too sophisticated, anyway, to pay attention to the whole serious of ridiculous hats that the clerk tries on Alexander’s head. And Victor is constantly getting himself into trouble, usually financial, and manages to extricate himself always with grace and charm, without ever breaking or sweat or registering rancor.

This was the third movie that Tyrone Power and Loretta Young made together (though the first movie, Ladies in Love, barely counts since he was a side-character, but audiences liked their chemistry, so they made four more movies together). They are one of the most glamorous Hollywood couples you will ever see, beautifully attired (Loretta Young appears in a whole serious of gorgeous, though improbable, dresses by Royer that no woman would wear except in a movie) and have good chemistry together. Tyrone Power only made his film debut the year before and looks extremely young (he was twenty-three) and he doesn’t have much to do, though he does it gracefully. Loretta Young, on the other hand, was twenty-four, but had been making movies since she was around fifteen and had over fifties movies to her credit already. It’s more her film than his. She is the one scheming (she schemes practically as much as con artist Victor) and although Alexander is supposed to be wooing her, it doesn’t take long for it to really be her who is doing the wooing.

Tyrone Power, Loretta Young and Adolphe Menjou

Adolphe Menjou is extremely good as the dapper, though slippery, manager who never lets his troubles dampen his suavity. He is even too dapper to be  ungracious when Alexander fails him. Charles Winninger usually plays genial buffoons, but here he is a little more restrained as Laura’s highly skeptical father who doesn’t really trust foreigners. Helen Westley also has a fun role as Laura’s aunt, who has seen too many gangster films. Gregory Ratoff – who wrote the story, though not the screenplay – is hilarious as the hedonistic, down-on-his-luck prince who is insulted by the very thought of someone pretending to be him…who can’t even speak Russian, no less.

Though it’s difficult to pinpoint specific moments of hilarity, the entire package is cute and worth seeing if you like screwball comedy or Tyrone Power and Loretta Young. The DVD is currently only available as part of the Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection, which contains 10 of his less-known films.