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 Sonia (Jeanette MacDonald) is a widow that owns most of the country of
Marshovia. Captain Danilo goes to Paris in pursuit of her in an effort to
"avert his homeland's financial ruin by bringing Sonia back on the wings of
love." They say that this a "frothy and high-spirited gem" and note that
director Ernst Lubitsch was known for his style which was called "the Lubitsch
touch." "You'll have to look far and wide for a better comic operetta than
this." 1934, 99 minutes, VHS
And the winner of the 1935 Oscar for set design goes to The Merry Widow ! That's just the most obvious aspect of the movie that catches your eye and
lets you in on the fact that you're in for a delightfully tarty treat with this
Ernst Lubitsch film that is part of some bizarre genre called the movie
operetta. I'm not sure how this differs from the typical Hollywood musical,
though I did notice that the singing and dancing in this movie wasn't as
obtrusive as they tended to be in even the best musicals. With those,
everything grounds to a halt so they can bust out into some spectacularly
choreographed show tune that you hated yourself for humming (why can I still
hear "don't fall in love with a two-faced woman" from the otherwise forgettable
Joan Crawford monster, Torch Song ? And that movie might not really have even been a musical at all!) all the
while these people pranced, danced and belted their lungs out like they had
just seen a snakehead in their toilet. In Ernie's The Merry Widow, there's some singing, there's some dancing, but it didn't seem to exist
merely to call attention to how hard the stars had worked in rehearsals. Dare I
say that singing and placement of the songs seemed natural (okay, I'll admit
that when star Maurice Chevalier was marching through the streets with the
military and singing about surrendering to Girls! Girls! Girls!, I was holding
my
sides because I was so embarrassed for his family, but the longer he kept at it,
the more I realized that this French fry was just cool and rico suave enough to
carry it off). He managed to establish in the opening scene with his song just
what a Lothario he is and you were chomping at the bit to see what kind of jams
a dude this addicted to the ladies as he obviously was could get into.  Maurice doesn't disappoint either as he gets himself into something so crazy
and heinous it could only be called love! It doesn't start out that way of
course. Before our hero can settle down with the woman of his dreams he has to
first meet her, then as these types of mismatched screwball high society
comedies usually dictate, there needs to be a lot of mix ups, snappy one
liners, and a good deal of huffing and puffing by the object of his affection
before they finally and inevitably find happiness together. I suppose it's like
that hooker said in Porky's to Pee-Wee before his first time, "it's not the destination that's important,
its how bumpy and interesting the ride is". Or did she say that his
friends should tie a board across his ass so he wouldn't fall in? In any
event, no boards are needed to be attached to any asses here, because the movie
is as sly and good looking as the the stars that glide through it as
effortlessly
as they waltz in the film's gigantic dance number - you want to be sucked into
this one (I think we can understand Pee-Wee's reluctance to do likewise in his
situation). Maurice is the biggest womanizer in the fictional country of
Marshovia (I know that most of you readers probably needed me to tell you that
it wasn't a real country) which is most likely located somewhere near
Transylvania.
His name is Danilo and his day job is being a captain in the military.
Jeanette MacDonald is a widow named Sonia. The big deal about Sonia is that
she is the richest person in Marshovia and the king notes to his queen that she
owns 52% of every cow in the country. If she were to marry some foreigner,
then the majority of Marshovia's wealth would fall into foreign hands and the
king doesn't want that to happen. The majority of you already know that what
is required here is a scheme of screwball proportions. And the king is quite
the screwball so he fires up a scheme in no time at all: He must send someone
to Paris where the widow has moved, to marry her and keep the wealth in
Marshovian hands. But who would be the right guy for the job?  Danilo is enlisted for the job in an uproarious set piece when the king finds
Danilo in the queen's bedroom. Concerned about appearances in front of the
servants, the threesome pretend to laugh and chatter sporadically in an effort
to disguise the awkward situation. They decide they should just keep the
scandal between the three of them and Danilo says that he was hoping that he
could just keep it between he and the queen. The scene is a success because
both the characters of the king and queen are able to keep up with Danilo and
be his equal, comedically. Part of what makes these movies with ridiculous
premises work is the strength with which the secondary characters are written.
Someone like the queen that is basically a peripheral player in all this is
given good lines and able to contribute to the scene instead of just being
window dressing. In fact, some of the biggest laughs in the movie involved
scenes with neither Chevalier nor MacDonald. When the king hears that the widow
is leaving the country and gets reports that his subjects are so upset with him
that he's become the butt of their jokes, he asks his subordinate if the jokes
are good jokes and when his informant tells him "no" the king shakes his head
and says "oh, that's bad". Edward Everett Horton plays the ambassador in Paris
who is charge of Danilo's mission of getting him hooked up with the
widow and he likewise has funny scenes with his own lackey involving his
hapless efforts to keep Danilo under control. Just so you don't get the wrong
idea and think that the leads are a couple of moon-eyed stiffs doing some high
school Romeo and Juliet routine, they exchange salty banter (Is there any
better kind of banter for mismatched lovers?) at every opportunity, though
Danilo frequently has to end most conversations with how sorry he is for being
a liar, a cad, or just a man, giving this movie an uncomfortable realism for
most of guys in the crowd.  The king's scheme has a few runs in its stockings right from the get go. The
biggest problem is that while the widow was still in Marshovia, Danilo had
already tried to romance her without any luck. She never took her veil off
mourning off, so he didn't know what she looked like, but she knew what he
looked like, so she was obviously a little wary when she ran into him at
Maxim's
in Paris. I think Maxim's was some type of French nightclub that we in the
States would probably refer to as a whorehouse or more delicately, a cathouse.
There's lots of dancing girls and private dining rooms (And remember, there's
no sex in the champagne room!) and Danilo and Sonia meet up here. He puts the
moves on her and she seems receptive, even though she's undercover as a gal
named Fi-Fi. Once inside the private dining room things are going smoothly,
but as l glanced at my watch and noticed we were at about the halfway point, I
turned to
the stuffed sock monkey that I always watch old time musical comedies with
(these should always be enjoyed with company for proper effect) and said to him,
"too
smoothly, I'd wager, Mr. Wonkins". I could tell by the way the monkey's red
lips
didn't move that he was silently agreeing with me and that's when Sonia and
Danilo
get into a dispute when she starts talking about being with him beyond that
night and he didn't immediately bust out the "I never want to leave your side
for the rest of my natural born life and then some" take that all dames are
expecting you come out with in that situation. With that, she leaves in a
huff, basically telling him that he can have a good time with one of the Maxim
girls and she sings her way off into the night. Knowing that he's blown it (he
actually loves her and doesn't even know that this is the widow that he's
supposed to be romancing) he does the only thing any good man would do in that
situation: BENDER! The movie keeps things entertaining from here on out with a variety of
situations that have "urbane wit" stamped all over them: the Maxim girls have
to sober him up, the ambassador has to sober him up, Danilo babbles his secret
mission to everyone at Maxim's, the ambassador announces their marriage before
Danilo and Sonia can tell anyone themselves (and before the ambassador should
have known), she dumps him, he gets court-martialed, has a trial, goes to
prison, and then we get the big finish with the king, ambassador, Sonia and
Danilo in the prison, where everyone gets some good laughs in pretty short
order. All in all, a highly satisfying experience. Certainly, it probably
isn't something you're going to want to pop in the VCR when you're having a
beer party at your trailer and your buddies have come over because you
traded your food stamps for a copy of some Lucio Fulci import DVD, but to
anyone that has sense enough to enjoy any of the other old romantic comedies
starring Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, and William
Powell, this is a classy addition to your library. The music gives it a
slightly different dimension, as well as the setting (late nineteenth century
high society) than most of the typical screwball comedies, but Lubitsch and
his impressive stable of performers use these elements to liven up the picture
and give
the comedy more zing rather than let things drown in style and manners. A
movie where a lawyer objects to the prosecutor referring to a dog called to
testify at a trial, as an exhibit instead of a witness and gets sustained may
be
sophisticated but it certainly isn't stuffy (Judge: Yes, the prosecution will
not refer to the dog as exhibit number 1 but as witness number 2 from now on.
Huh?). At the end of the day I always judge these types of flicks by whether
I'm rooting for these crazy kids to beat the odds and make it work somehow in
this crazy, twisted-up world of ours (or of 1885 in this case). We could see
that Danilo had finally been cured of his womanizing ways by true love and knew
that Sonia loved him, but wanted to be sure that he loved her for herself and
not her majority stake in all the heifers in Marshovia. This, along with the
cavernous and expensive sets, supporting cast, visually impressive waltz scene
in the middle of the movie and the Chevalier's smooth singing voice (I wasn't
terribly enamored with Jeanette's voice here - it sounded screechy, but that
may be because the movie is three hundred years old) all add up to a sumptuous
and sleek vehicle worth tracking down.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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