Sure, the talkies knocked the cinema industry for six, but we rallied well, and one of the greatest assets in our armoury was the musical. The early sound features could appear stilted and static, but with songs to carry the narrative along, the new medium could really come into its own.
It's sometimes been claimed that there were no "integrated" musicals - the ordinary-people-bursting-into-song type - before the 1940s. This is of course nonsense as any 30s musical buff should know, and in fact The Love Parade is the first example of such on the screen. But the tradition is older still, and this picture is only really a cinematic update of the operetta, a popular stage format most often associated with Europe. Appropriately enough The Love Parade has a light-hearted tone and Ruritanian backdrop, and is helmed by that most Ruritanian of directors, Mr Ernst Lubitsch. But this being the "pre-code" era, and Lubitsch being his usual sly self, it is also a rather modern and uninhibited affair. In this world, bed-hopping is the norm and marriage is the exception. It's all conveyed with crackling wit and subtlety, from the cheeky dialogue of Guy Bolton and Ernest Vajda (such as Chevalier's illegitimate descent from royalty being described as "from a good family") and Lubitsch's own smart little constructions with the implied rather than the stated.
In many ways The Love Parade harks back to Lubitsch's Berlin comedies from a decade earlier. It is filled with many of the absurd visual gags that characterised the director's German output, such as the unfeasibly large heap of apple cores that Chevalier has amassed during his garden sulk. It may be that with the coming of sound, Lubitsch was being careful to keep things image-based and not let too much verbal humour slow the story down. Whether or not this is the case, these silly sight gags are very welcome. Certainly, in the earliest scenes there seems to be a deliberate reference to this still being a primarily visual comedy. Even for viewers who don't speak French, the opening routine is very funny. Chevalier's occasional English asides, addressed directly to the camera, function like intertitles.
But the aim here is not to pretend the sound revolution isn't going on. After all, this is a musical! The Love Parade in fact makes the most of sound. We are treated to the heavenly melodies of composer Victor Schertzinger, who oddly enough had a day job as a film director. Lubitsch does not shoot the musical numbers with as much zip as Rouben Mamoulian would for the sublime Love Me Tonight, but he nevertheless shows some musical sensibilities, keeping the camera back when a song swells up, and showing off each character's performance within the song as if it were a dance.
And of course with the coming of sound we get a wave of sound-friendly stars. Maurice Chevalier did not have the voice of a crooner, but he was a true performer. With superb control over his movements, inventive little twitches and fluorishes that make him uniquely interesting, and impeccable comic timing, he is like a cartoon character come to life. He is absolutely enchanting to watch and listen to. Jeanette MacDonald is more in the vein of an opera singer, and as such while her voice is beautiful her words are hard to pick out. Still, she can certainly act, and has the comedienne's touch, playing the queen as a spoiled little girl, a little like Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth I in Blackadder. It's just a pity, what with the misogynist plot, her character doesn't have the authority of Elizabeth. Chevalier's prince consort could do with being reminded of what happened to the Earl of Essex.
And let us not forget the supporting roles played by Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth. These two clowns are a delight to watch, although they do highlight the lack of confidence producers had in these early days of sound. The tendency was to turn these early talkies into a kind of variety show, packing diversions in between the chunks of plot. I don't begrudge Lupino and Roth's appearance because they are great entertainers who are now rarely seen, but their inclusion seems somewhat tacked on (Roth, despite playing the queen's maid, appears in no scenes with MacDonald) and Chevalier and MacDonald could easily have carried the picture unaided. Lubitsch and co. would realise this, and successive Paramount musicals are shorter and more streamlined, with just a little more substance.
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