The remarkable soundtrack, created entirely in a studio, in contrast to the images, which were all filmed on location, is an essential part of the films voluptuous and haunting otherworldliness. Vampyr was originally released by Dreyer in four separate versionsFrench, English, German, and Danish. Most circulating prints now contain portions of two or three of these versions, although the dialogue is pretty sparse. If youve never seen a Dreyer film and wonder why many critics regard him as possibly the greatest of all filmmakers, this chilling horror fantasy is the perfect place to begin to understand. JRos
See all movies from the 1930s
1930s
LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932)
U.S. (Paramount) 104m BW
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Producer: Rouben Mamoulian
Screenplay: Samuel Hoffenstein, Waldemar Young, George Marion Jr. from the play Tailor in the Château by Paul Armont and Lepold Marchand
Photography: Victor Milner
Music: Richard Rodgers, John Leipold
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Elizabeth Patterson, Ethel Griffies, Blanche Frederici, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Greig, Bert Roach
As with so many of this sadly underrated directors finest films, the delightful thing about this masterly variation on the romantic Ruritanian musical is the way Rouben Mamoulian manages to debunk, through an idiosyncratic combination of irreverent humor and technical innovation, the traditions of the very genre he is simultaneously helping to establish and expand. Here he contrives to outstrip the achievements of the then-widely-acclaimed masters of the formErnst Lubitsch and René Clairwithout even seeming to make an effort; he makes the whole thing feel so wonderfully relaxed, good-natured, and somehow perfect. True, he is helped no end by having Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Harts supremely witty yet hummably melodious songs to work with; but its the unforced sense of sophisticated fun coexisting with real cinematic invention that reveal the Mamoulian touch, considerably lighter than that in most Lubitsch movies.
Jeannette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier must also take credit for playing their respective romantic leadsthe haughty but bored (and, let it be said, sexually frustrated) princess holed up in a fusty chateau, and the visiting tailor (the best in Paris) sufficiently aroused by her to forget his lowly statuswith emotional commitment and an engagingly delicate parodic irony. The supporting cast is top-notch, too: Myrna Loy, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth, and the inimitable Sir C. Aubrey Smith (the last three especially delightful when improbably enlisted to sing, solo, verses of Mimi) are merely the most memorable. But what is really impressive about Love Me Tonight is how music, dance, dialogue, performance, decor, lighting, camera work, editing, and special effects are all combined to create a cogent comic/dramatic whole in which each element serves narrative, characterization, and theme. The Isnt It Romantic? sequence, for example, which starts with Chevalier and a
client in Paris, and proceeds with the song being passed via various minor characters (including, at one point, a whole platoon of soldiers!) to arrive finally at the lonely MacDonalds boudoirthe first link between the future lovers, who have yet to meetis impressive; so, too, is the final, climactic chase sequence (as exhilaratingly constructed as anything by the Soviets and with far more wit). In short, an enormously entertaining masterpiece. GA
See all movies from the 1930s
1930s
BOUDU SAUVÉ DES EAUX (1932)
BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING
France (Pathé, Sirius) 90m BW
Language: French
Director: Jean Renoir
Producer: Jean Gehret, Michel Simon
Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Albert Valentin, from play by René Fauchois
Photography: Léonce-Henri Burel, Marcel Lucien
Music: Léo Daniderff, Raphael, Johann Strauss
Cast: Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia, Severine Lerczinska, Jean Gehret, Max Dalban, Jean Dasté, Jane Pierson, Georges DArnoux, Régine Lutèce, Jacques Becker
Renoir had already made eleven films before being selected to direct Boudu Saved from Drowning by Michel Simon, who had decided to produce this adaptation of a stage play by René Fauchois. The pair had worked together three times previously, they were both the same age as the birth of cinema, and they were both rising personalities with a sense of freedom and a desire to explore unknown territories.
So, like a monstrous Aphrodite, Simons Boudu the tramp was reborn from the water, brought back to a life he wanted to leave by the kindness of the Lestingois family, its generosity, and its wealth. Of course, comparisons with Charlie Chaplins character in a similar situation come to mind here, and the two tramps do have a lot in commonthe survivors sense of life, the amoral relationship with societys rules, the focus on rich versus poor, and the urge for sex. But it is the differences between the two that reveal the power of the recipe above, about the films connection and rupture with vaudeville (the rules of bourgeois theater), and about the body and diction of Simon.