The second musical romantic comedy teaming of director Ernst Lubitsch and co-stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, after their Best-Picture-nominated "The Love Parade" (1929), "One Hour with You" is a pleasant musical remake of the director's silent film "The Marriage Circle" (1924), both of which are adapted from the same play. The 1924 film was a watershed in Lubitsch's career, marking his turn towards sophisticated romantic comedies with more deliberate pacing and subtlety than his prior work, allowing for that so-called "Lubitsch touch."
When the talkies arrived, he, along with Chevalier and MacDonald, created a new kind of integrated musical for the screen, with a dual-focus narrative, as opposed to the backstage plots of prior ones. Because Lubitsch already understood the visual touch required in cinema, he was free to master the new technology of synchronized sound right off the bat, while so many others seem to have been under the impression that they needed to revert back to theatre or adapt to a kind of illustrated radio. By 1932, however, it seems Lubitsch was already beginning to break away from the musical genre he helped invent; while he made this and, later, another reuniting of Chevalier and MacDonald, "The Merry Widow" (1934), the non-musical "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) seems more indicative of the type of picture that had and would continue to comprise the bulk of his legacy, although, at this point, both 1932 films were nominated for Best Picture, the first time two works by the same director received such an honor in the same year.
While "One Hour with You" lacks the historical precedence of "The Marriage Circle" or "The Love Parade," it's arguably just as entertaining, and some may consider it more so, which is quite a feat by itself given its rather tumultuous production history where Lubitsch, in his supervisory role, essentially forced his way into replacing George Cukor as director. Anyways, I certainly appreciate the addition to the original 1924 adaptation of rhyming dialogue and song and, continuing from his persona in "The Love Parade," Chevalier's breaking of the fourth wall to address the audience, inviting us to participate in the shenanigans. MacDonald is rather surprisingly delightful in a change of pace from the display of her professional operatic training in "The Love Parade," to join her on-screen husband in a more down-to-earth style of performance and song. But, oh, that Mitzi. Genevieve Tobin is a wonderful improvement upon the role of the other woman. She's so vivacious, who can entirely blame Chevalier for a wandering eye, even if not for the rest of his wandering. The business of her berating her servant, however, should've been cut. On the other hand, the impervious Professor, who hires a detective to provide him a divorce from Mitzi, was better portrayed by Adolphe Menjou in the 1924 version. Menjou also had more to work with in Paul Bern's script than is this Professor by Lubitsch's new screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson (author of the play that was turned into the first talkie-musical feature film, "The Jazz Singer" (1927)). Here, the Professor is almost a vestigial bookend character to the play of infidelity and comedy of remarriage.
While the casting of Menjou has been credited as something of a nod to the influence of Charlie Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (1923), a film, which although highly melodramatic, is noted for its groundbreaking nuance and subtlety in screen characterizations, "One Hour with You," unlike "The Marriage Circle" set in Vienna, freely adopts the Parisian setting as both a sort of explanation and cover from potential censorship for its depictions of sexual promiscuity. Even in the pre-Code days, one was assured to get away with more if the alleged immorality took place in Paris as opposed, to say, Middle America. Lubitsch had been exploiting this convenience since, at least, "So This is Paris" (1926), which likewise could've been set anywhere without actually affecting the narrative, although "One Hour with You" does get a couple gags in early with the police concerned that tourist lovers were spending too much time making love in parks and not enough on spending money in Parisian cafés.
Besides the sound, location and name changes and added police business, "One Hour with You" retains the basic plot and many of the details of "The Marriage Circle." Adolph, previously Gustav, the friend of the Chevalier's doctor and admirer of his wife, is no longer the doctor's partner, and it's not clear what his profession is here. Instead of the car and office scenes in the 1924 film, his character is established, instead, by a phone call scene, which has the benefit of showing MacDonald in a slip and adding a homoerotic joke involving Adolph's butler tricking him into dressing in tights. This version also adds some business regarding men's ties. The house call scene with the doctor and Mitzi also has a bonus gag of Chevalier fixing himself a drink. It also doesn't show the scene of the doctor's visit to Mitzi's home at night, which strongly suggests they had sex; whereas, in "The Marriage Circle," the scene showed them precisely not doing that. Implying the husband's full-fledged adultery also upsets the gender balance of "fifty-fifty" for infidelity between him and his wife.
The "director of doors" also gets some nice Art Deco designs for those entryways in this one, and I also like the mirrors in the dance room. Most of all, much of the visual wit of the 1924 version is traded out here for the verbal kind, and, as usual for an early talkie, there's less scene dissection. As per the Cinemetrics website, "The Marriage Circle" has an average shot length of 5.6 seconds compared to over 12 seconds for "One Hour with You." Regardless, "One Hour with You" succeeds in maintaining a light tone, does well to trim a bit of fat from the prior film, as well as adding verbal rhyme in place of the superior visual rhythm of "The Marriage Circle."
When the talkies arrived, he, along with Chevalier and MacDonald, created a new kind of integrated musical for the screen, with a dual-focus narrative, as opposed to the backstage plots of prior ones. Because Lubitsch already understood the visual touch required in cinema, he was free to master the new technology of synchronized sound right off the bat, while so many others seem to have been under the impression that they needed to revert back to theatre or adapt to a kind of illustrated radio. By 1932, however, it seems Lubitsch was already beginning to break away from the musical genre he helped invent; while he made this and, later, another reuniting of Chevalier and MacDonald, "The Merry Widow" (1934), the non-musical "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) seems more indicative of the type of picture that had and would continue to comprise the bulk of his legacy, although, at this point, both 1932 films were nominated for Best Picture, the first time two works by the same director received such an honor in the same year.
While "One Hour with You" lacks the historical precedence of "The Marriage Circle" or "The Love Parade," it's arguably just as entertaining, and some may consider it more so, which is quite a feat by itself given its rather tumultuous production history where Lubitsch, in his supervisory role, essentially forced his way into replacing George Cukor as director. Anyways, I certainly appreciate the addition to the original 1924 adaptation of rhyming dialogue and song and, continuing from his persona in "The Love Parade," Chevalier's breaking of the fourth wall to address the audience, inviting us to participate in the shenanigans. MacDonald is rather surprisingly delightful in a change of pace from the display of her professional operatic training in "The Love Parade," to join her on-screen husband in a more down-to-earth style of performance and song. But, oh, that Mitzi. Genevieve Tobin is a wonderful improvement upon the role of the other woman. She's so vivacious, who can entirely blame Chevalier for a wandering eye, even if not for the rest of his wandering. The business of her berating her servant, however, should've been cut. On the other hand, the impervious Professor, who hires a detective to provide him a divorce from Mitzi, was better portrayed by Adolphe Menjou in the 1924 version. Menjou also had more to work with in Paul Bern's script than is this Professor by Lubitsch's new screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson (author of the play that was turned into the first talkie-musical feature film, "The Jazz Singer" (1927)). Here, the Professor is almost a vestigial bookend character to the play of infidelity and comedy of remarriage.
While the casting of Menjou has been credited as something of a nod to the influence of Charlie Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (1923), a film, which although highly melodramatic, is noted for its groundbreaking nuance and subtlety in screen characterizations, "One Hour with You," unlike "The Marriage Circle" set in Vienna, freely adopts the Parisian setting as both a sort of explanation and cover from potential censorship for its depictions of sexual promiscuity. Even in the pre-Code days, one was assured to get away with more if the alleged immorality took place in Paris as opposed, to say, Middle America. Lubitsch had been exploiting this convenience since, at least, "So This is Paris" (1926), which likewise could've been set anywhere without actually affecting the narrative, although "One Hour with You" does get a couple gags in early with the police concerned that tourist lovers were spending too much time making love in parks and not enough on spending money in Parisian cafés.
Besides the sound, location and name changes and added police business, "One Hour with You" retains the basic plot and many of the details of "The Marriage Circle." Adolph, previously Gustav, the friend of the Chevalier's doctor and admirer of his wife, is no longer the doctor's partner, and it's not clear what his profession is here. Instead of the car and office scenes in the 1924 film, his character is established, instead, by a phone call scene, which has the benefit of showing MacDonald in a slip and adding a homoerotic joke involving Adolph's butler tricking him into dressing in tights. This version also adds some business regarding men's ties. The house call scene with the doctor and Mitzi also has a bonus gag of Chevalier fixing himself a drink. It also doesn't show the scene of the doctor's visit to Mitzi's home at night, which strongly suggests they had sex; whereas, in "The Marriage Circle," the scene showed them precisely not doing that. Implying the husband's full-fledged adultery also upsets the gender balance of "fifty-fifty" for infidelity between him and his wife.
The "director of doors" also gets some nice Art Deco designs for those entryways in this one, and I also like the mirrors in the dance room. Most of all, much of the visual wit of the 1924 version is traded out here for the verbal kind, and, as usual for an early talkie, there's less scene dissection. As per the Cinemetrics website, "The Marriage Circle" has an average shot length of 5.6 seconds compared to over 12 seconds for "One Hour with You." Regardless, "One Hour with You" succeeds in maintaining a light tone, does well to trim a bit of fat from the prior film, as well as adding verbal rhyme in place of the superior visual rhythm of "The Marriage Circle."