New Moon (1930) User Reviews (15)

"With Passion's Flower Unfurled"

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 28 July 2009]

After New Moon had completed its run of 509 performances on Broadway a year earlier, MGM bought the rights to the film and for reasons known only to Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg scrapped the French colonial New Orleans setting and transferred the story to Tsarist Russia. They realized their mistake and 10 years later filmed it with most of the original story intact with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. It's the version that most know today.

The score was also mostly scrapped except for some of the most well known numbers. But what MGM did do was engage two of opera's greatest voices to star in this film, Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore.

If you were willing to pay some exorbitant ticket prices you could see Tibbett and Moore on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in any number of productions. Or you could listen to them on the radio and on record where they were some of the biggest classical selling artists of their day. Until Mario Lanza came along, Grace Moore in fact was the biggest classical selling artist.

And as I'm a real fan of operetta, hokey plots and all, a film like this is a real treat for the ear. Even Nelson and Jeanette don't sound as good as Larry and Grace singing the Sigmund Romberg-Oscar Hammerstein,II score.

The plot is hokey however. Tibbett and Moore meet on a sea voyage, the Caspian Sea where Moore is to marry the provincial governor and Tibbett, an Army lieutenant, to take up a new post. Of course they meet on the ship called The New Moon and fall for each other.

When the governor Adolphe Menjou hears of it, he gets Tibbett transferred to the far reaches of the frontier where the savage Turkomen are not real accepting of the Tsar's authority. Menjou's character is Boris Brusilov and he's known in court circles as Bedroom Boris so we know it's his vanity that's hurting not his pride. Still Tibbett insults Moore before taking his leave.

But Grace does not like to be scorned. She travels with her uncle Roland Young out to the outpost for the sole purpose of slapping Tibbett with her riding whip. But with the Turkomen closing in, she might pay big time for her little temper tantrum.

Of course it's ridiculous, more ridiculous than the original New Moon plot. But the chance to see Tibbett and Moore together is well worth it. Gus Shy even though the plot has changed still plays the same role as sidekick to the hero as he did on the stage version. He's the only one from the original stage production to make it on the screen.

Roland Young is as always drolly amusing. He steals every scene he's in. The New Moon is for fans of classical voices and escapist operetta of which there are fewer and fewer unfortunately.

My personal favourite of Lawrence Tibbett's movies

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 16 May 2011]

I do like operetta a lot, and I love Lawrence Tibbett not just for his unique voice in that it is powerful whatever register he sings in but also for his vivid and charismatic presence. Of the films he did, New Moon is my personal favourite with Metropolitan not close behind. I agree about the story, it is creaky, hokey and very ridiculous like the story of the operetta except in this case more so, and I also think the movie is too short. However, I do like the production values, especially the costumes, excepting the poorly shot climatic battle. The music is absolutely great, both songs and score, and there is some amusing dialogue and snappy pacing. Roland Young is delightfully droll, and Adolphe Menjou is a fine presence. Then we have Grace Moore, charming yet shrewish, she is my personal favourite of the leading ladies in the films of Lawrence Tibbett. As for Tibbett, aside from the delightful music and sweet romance, with his charisma and wonderful singing, he steals the picture. Overall, I like New Moon a lot, I tend to forget the creaky story, when the music, Moore and Tibbett are so good. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Another View

[docrob44 · 8/10 · 13 January 2004]

This obviously dated film has much to recommend it, viz. that the two title roles were performed by world reknown artists, no mean achievement on the part of MGM. Grace Moore is simply magnificent and would shine most brightly among today's finest sopranos. Lawrence Tibbett, while not at his best, nevertheless reveals a high baritone which most tenors would covet. The acting is quite good for the period as well. In addition to the fabulous singing artistry the film can be said to reflect the cultural and social mores of the period and as such is a "must see" for those in love with pre 1940s films.

love triangle between the classes

[ksf-2 · 8/10 · 26 January 2019]

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore get their names above the title, but the more well-known name here is Adolphe Menjou, who was in SO many films right from the start of film-making. Onboard a ship in the caspian sea, Lt. Petroff (Tibbett) falls in love with a princess (Moore) who belongs to someone else, and that's the crux of the story. Moore was quite talented, as she was also a star singer for the Met Opera, as well an accomplished, versatile actress. Sadly, Moore died quite young in a plane crash. keep an eye out for the quiet, under-stated comic Roland Young from all the Topper movies. It's all quite good, and because so much of the story is told in song, this was remade in 1940 with singing team J. MacDonald and N. Eddy. and they kept a couple of the songs, written by Oscar Hammerstein, of course. This better, 1930 version is directed by Jack Conway, who had directed one of the first talkies. the 1940 version was also from MGM, but there was some hullabaloo over directing, and Leonard replaced van Dyke, causing continuity issues. Both are shown on TCM occasionally.

Rather unromantic and silly.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 15 May 2011]

I was a bit surprised when I noticed that the leading man (Lawrence Tibbett) looked an awful lot like John C. Reilly! See for yourself.

"New Moon" is an operetta starring two big-time opera singers of the era, Tibbett and Grace Moore. In many ways it's a lot like a Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy film, though Moore and Tibbett clearly had stronger voices and were singers first and movie stars second. Now I must admit that I hate films with this sort of singing and why I decided to see this film escapes me! On an ocean voyage during the latter days of Czarist Russia, the Lieutenant (Tibbett) meets the Princess (Moore). Despite the huge disparity in their social classes, the two quickly fall in love. However, when they reach port Moore goes off with her fiancé (Adolph Menjou) and seems to completely forget about Tibbett (what a creepy thing to do!). Clearly this lady is interested in marrying for money and prestige.

When the fiancé meets the Lieutenant, he decides to get him out of the picture and assigns him to a fort in the middle of nowhere--and a very dangerous one at that. And, Moore does absolutely nothing--again, it's hard to like or respect her. Well, she actually does something--she whips him in the face!! And, you wonder why the film will end with them falling in love for good as per the formula)! I agree with the other reviewer that felt that Moore's character was totally unlikable!! And, as a result, the film seems oddly unromantic and a bit silly. But, being an MGM production, at least it looked nice and the singing, for what it was, was very good.

By the way, if you do see the film, get a load of the battle sequences, as they are surprisingly brutal. I liked the guy hopping about on one leg during the height of battle.

Oh, those mad Russians

[marcslope · 12 January 2004]

MGM scrapped the ridiculous plot of the 1928 Romberg-Hammerstein stage operetta and replaced it with an even more ridiculous one, with Russian lieutenant Lawrence Tibbett romancing Princess Grace Moore despite her engagement to nobleman Adolphe Menjou. It's the sort of movie where characters say things like, "The one attractive woman on this ship and she would be a princess!" And Moore isn't especially attractive; she's dowdy, looks oddly at the camera, and is got up in some genuinely bizarre MGM fashions. Her character is shrewish, too, so when Menjou dispatches Tibbett to some remote outpost to battle some menacing, vaguely Turkish insurgents, you really feel he's better off without her. An eternally suave and amusing Roland Young defuses some of the operetta silliness; but it's hard not to get the giggles when Tibbett, trying to rouse the troops, barks endless song cues -- "All right, can I have 20 brave men with me? Fifteen? How about 10?" -- before launching into "Stout-Hearted Men." The climactic battle is clumsily shot and unconvincingly run in fast motion, like a Mack Sennett comedy, and it's never really in doubt whether Tibbett will return to Moore in one piece (singing full-voice, of course, whatever his wounds). The ludicrous conventions that killed operetta are omnipresent. But the score's good, and the two opera-trained stars do give enthusiastically of themselves when called on to sing. That's what counts.

Not full moon, but still bright

[Revelator_ · 6/10 · 21 December 2018]

Yes, it's an early musical based on an operetta and inherently ridiculous, silly, and overblown. Those are its best qualities too. As Oscar Wilde said, nothing succeeds like excess.

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore don't go together, except when they sing. The combined force of their voices on "Wanting You" and "Lover Come Back to Me" is a sonic wonder to behold. Moore's acting is not bad, but she has a haughty standoffish quality toward the camera. Tibbett is more relaxed and retains the buoyant swashbuckling brio--and shattering baritone--that made him unique as an opera singer/film star. The supporting cast is a worldly set of sly dogs: Adolphe Menjou, Roland Young, and Gus Shy.

Director Jack Conway and cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh sneak in bits of camera movement more sophisticated than expected, but the editor seems to fall asleep on occasion. The picture throws in some vigorous battle scenes at the end; they're marred by undercranking.

New Moon is a pre-code film, with some eyebrow raising lines and innuendos in its first third. Most jaw-dropping is Tibbett's savage performance of "What Is Your Price Madam"--at an engagement party!

Strengths and Weaknesses

[boblipton · 5/10 · 24 January 2019]

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore meet on board the New Moon, crossing the Caspian Sea, bound for Adolph Menjou's newest assignment and marriage to Miss Moore. Of course the two great singers fall in love singing duets. Menjou gets wind and looks to get Tibbett resassigned some place he can't pose a threat.

MGM made some peculiar changes when they filmed the hit operetta (it had played over 500 performances on Broadway). They changed its setting from New Orleans to the Russian Empire for one thing. Well, exotic Russia was a popular setting for drama and comedy in the period. Cameraman Oliver Marsh struggles to keep his camera moving, leaving most of the struggle for cinematic excellence to Margaret Booth's editing. Also, Mr. Tibbett is a funny-looking fellow, with an obvious hairpiece and a double chin. He's not at all anyone's idea of what a romantic leading man should be.

Still when the leads start to sing, I forgot these issues. While the stye of music that Sigmund Romberg wrote for this show is strident, it includes the martial "Stout-Hearted Men" and the splendid "Lover Come Back To Me."

glorious voices, little else

[mukava991 · 5/10 · 26 April 2011]

The plot of this Hammerstein-Romberg operetta worked just fine on the Broadway stage in 1928, but for some incomprehensible reason was relocated by the filmmakers from New Orleans during the French Revolution to Tsarist (!) Russia in some undefined fantasy time period, complete with flagrantly anachronistic 1920's automobiles. The lovers, Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, are vocally superb but physically ill-suited to each other. Although she sings beautifully, Moore looks frumpy, middle-aged and rather sour throughout, and behaves more like her own disapproving aunt than the young princess she is supposed to be playing. It's hard to tell if she is in love with Tibbett or contemptuous of him. Tibbett himself, with his unusually boyish features, nevertheless cuts a commanding figure, making a compelling hero in the military mode. Two of the best-known songs from the piece, "Stouthearted Men" and "Lover Come Back to Me," are given ample screen time. Generally speaking, the tone of the film is light and even tongue-in- cheek, as befits the operetta tradition. But the experience of the Tibbett-Moore duo makes it clear why there was a need for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The pacing isn't bad (better at the beginning) and the songs occur frequently enough, though after about an hour you just want them to get on with it.

A real disappointment

[richard-1787 · 3/10 · 26 January 2019]

Some of the 14 previous reviewers of this movie find very positive things to say about it, leading me to wonder if they actually saw the same movie I just sat through. I'm a big fan of Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore. I like operetta. Director Jack Conway made some of my favorite movies, like *A Tale of Two Cities*. But pretty much everything goes wrong here.

First, this movie isn't an operetta. It's not just that the setting and plot were changed. That's not uncommon with operetta. It had been changed into an uninteresting, unmusical melodrama/foreign adventure movie (think *The Charge of the Light Brigade* without Eroll Flynn) with some musical numbers tossed in at random. Imagine Flynn and Olivia de Havilland breaking out into song in one of their movies together for Michael Curtiz and you get some idea of how strange this movie is, how mismatched the new plot is with the old musical format. The director, Jack Conway, made some great movies. But here he had no idea how to find a tone appropriate to a melodramatic story interrupted by light musical numbers.

But there's lots more wrong here as well. The plot and the script are bad, yes. It goes completely over the edge when it moves to the mountain outpost. Moore sounds very awkward in most of her dialogue, especially when speaking with a professional like Menjou.

And, while they were both very good singers - Tibbett was a great singer - neither is well-recorded here. Tibbett too often sounds strained, Moore's voice sounds thin - which it certainly was not.

Perhaps it was the microphone placement - remember, there were no separate soundtracks back in 1930. Mikes had to be hidden on the set. (Remember that great scene in *Singing in the Rain* when they try to capture Lola's voice with a mike hidden in her dress and then a nearby plant.) Perhaps the two singers weren't in good voice during the filming.

And there's much more wrong with this picture. There is no chemistry between Moore and Tibbett. When they sing *Wanting you*, they don't even look at each other half the time. They seem to want anything but each other.

And, as a few previous reviewers have pointed out, Moore looks downright dowdy in this picture. It's not just that she was carrying a few extra pounds. It was that her outfits, one after the next, are neither stylish nor flattering. Think about the great outfits Jeannette MacDonald was wearing at the same time in her Paramount pictures with Ernst Lubitsch and Maurice Chevalier and you can see what's wrong.

There are a few good musical moments in this picture. Moore sounds good in "One Kiss", not over-singing as she does in some of the other numbers.

But that's about it. This movie was a big-budget mistake. A lot of talent badly misused.

Voices carry insipid story.

[st-shot · 5/10 · 27 April 2011]

There is no escape from the overt silliness in this stage operetta slapped together by director Jack Conway featuring the magnificent voices of Met opera stars Lawrence Tibbet and Grace Moore. The acting is stiff and the the plot inane but it is easy to forgive when one or both launch into song.

Michael Petrov, a Russian officer with a roving eye falls for Princess Strogoff on board The New Moon. She reciprocates but withholds the fact she is engaged to his commanding officer (Adolph Menjou) who sensing the spark between the two sends Petrov off to command a fort on the frontier where the soldiers have a habit of murdering commanding officers. He establishes order by shooting a few malcontents but soon finds the outpost surrounded and grossly outnumbered by the enemy. As tensions mount the princess comes roaring up in a Stutz Bearcat to the front gate to find some closure with Petrov. Like I said, quite silly.

Pre-dating the more famous singing sweethearts Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald Tibbet and Moore are their vocal equals and then some. With finer production values, technical improvements, better chemistry and the fact that McDonald was a fine actress, the others just superb singers, everything about New Moon is inferior, but watching the pair sing Wanting You and Lover Come Back to Me is solid gold. It nearly makes up for the ridiculous plot and execution of the film which can be remedied in some way by embracing its unintentional humor.

Wonderful music; better than average movie operetta

[moveebob · 10 April 1999]

In this technically proficient (for 1930) MGM'er, Lawrence Tibbett is wooden; Grace Moore isn't. One listens for the songs which are nicely done. Adolph Menjou is his usual oily presence. Jack Conway does a decent directorial job. I'd rate it 2 and 3/4 stars.

I knew I was in trouble when I saw the cossack dance

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 4 August 2015]

1930's New Moon is "New Moon" in name only, but it has two world-famous operatic singers, Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, even if a lot of the songs from the original production were scrapped.

MGM moved the story from France to Russia, as evidenced by the opening cossack dance. It reminded me of a New Year's Eve many years ago where a friend of mine, in his cups, leaped into the air, came down on bent knees, arms across his chest and did a cossack dance. The next day he couldn't move.

The story concerns a ship, New Moon, going across the Caspian Sea. Lt. Petroff (Tibbett) meets Princess Tanya (Moore) and they fall in love.

Petroff learns when they dock in Russia that Tanya is engaged to a governor (Menjou). Long story short, the governor, to reward Petroff for finding a lost bracelet for Tanya (which was just the excuse they used when he found them together), he sends him to a remote fort, where a huge battle is about to take place.

I couldn't understand too much of what was being said because the sound was fuzzy, but I have to say the singing was magnificent from both Moore and Tibbett.

The 1940 version with Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald is more the actual "New Moon," including the music. While Eddy also had a beautiful baritone voice, he could accommodate it for the movies, whereas Tibbett used the full power of his voice. Despite this, I prefer Eddy; neither were great actors, but Tibbett looked like Snidley Whiplash from Fractured Fairy tales.

Jeanette MacDonald was a better actress than Grace Moore but though she had some beautiful tones, she couldn't touch Grace's singing.

Both versions are worth seeing. Softly, As In the Morning Sunrise, which is such a beautiful song, is missing from the 1930 version due to no tenor. In the 1940 version, the tenor and baritone roles were combined into Eddy's part.

If you like opera, check this out.

Awkward

[jaykay-10 · 16 January 2004]

Having deleted much of the music in the stage production, the film makers injected a lengthy battle sequence - presumably to offer something the original could not. This was a regrettable decision for an operetta, as it alters the tone of the film to such an extent that the romance, sweetness and charm of the earlier segments are pushed to the background, and music seems inappropriate for what follows. The editing of this film, particularly in those battle scenes, is heavy-handed; but even the light moments are pockmarked by overly-long pauses, and shots of sets that remain empty for several seconds, until someone walks into the frame.

Lawrence Tibbett lacks the commanding presence of a leading man. He and Grace Moore do not make for an electrifying couple. She looks old enough to be his mother (or, more charitably, he looks young enough to be her son). Of course, they sing beautifully and/or vigorously, as required. That's why they're in the picture. But it's not enough. Little or no help from Roland Young and Gus Shy in supposedly humorous supporting roles.

The sky was blue the nights where cold....

[sean1908 · 10/10 · 23 July 2016]

Wonderful film. It is a very early talkie and does not feel like an early film the acting is not wooden unlike many other early films and the singing is clear and crisp. Lawrence Tibbett (Captain Michael) plays a charming and sexy if I dare say so lover who charms his way into the heart of the beautiful and angelic voiced Princess Tanya (Grace Moore). I have scene both version of New Moon the Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy version that apparently had kept the original story line better. I still prefer the 1940 version but, New Moon 1930 gives you the glimpse into a rare talkie treat filled with wonderful songs and set in Russia!