The Love Parade
About The Love Parade
Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier), military attaché at the Sylvanian embassy in Paris, is ordered home after a string of scandals, including an affair with the ambassador's wife. Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald), tired of her subjects' talk about whom she will marry, reads his file and is interested rather than angry. She asks him to dinner when she is supposed to punish him. He marries her and promises to obey. As prince consort he has nothing to do, and even advice on affairs of state is refused him. He will not live as a figurehead. The marriage turns on whether Louise will give him a share of power.
Cast & crew
More about The Love Parade
Ernst Lubitsch directed and produced his first sound film. Guy Bolton wrote the libretto and Ernest Vajda the story, from the French play Le Prince Consort by Jules Chancel and Leon Xanrof. Victor Milner photographed it. Merrill G. White edited. Victor Schertzinger wrote the songs and Clifford Grey the lyrics. W. Franke Harling, John Leipold, Oscar Potoker, and Max Terr are credited with the score. New York opened it on November 19, 1929. The U.S. release was January 18, 1930. A French-language version was issued as Parade d'amour. Lupino Lane plays Jacques, Lillian Roth plays Lulu, and Eugene Pallette plays the minister of war.
Themes
Background
Lubitsch's first talkie opened in New York on November 19, 1929, less than a month after the stock-market crash. Paramount credited the grosses with steadying the company.
In film history
The first Chevalier-MacDonald musical, and the film in which Lubitsch worked out how to cut a song between two sets while an orchestra played live between them.
Making
Chevalier did not believe he could play a courtier. Lubitsch talked him into it. For a number in which two couples sing the same song by turns, Lubitsch built two sets with an orchestra hidden between them and directed both scenes at the same time, then cut from one to the other.
Look
Victor Milner shot the picture, including the double set built so two couples could share one song under a single off-camera orchestra.
Technique
Two sets and one orchestra let Lubitsch direct both halves of a duet at once and intercut them, which sound cameras of 1929 otherwise made impractical.
Music
Victor Schertzinger wrote the music and Clifford Grey the lyrics, among the numbers "Nobody's Using It Now" and "The Queen Is Always Right." The underscore is credited to W. Franke Harling, John Leipold, Oscar Potoker, and Max Terr.
Preservation
Prints survive, including a copy posted for viewing and a file on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- It is Jeanette MacDonald's film debut.
- The play had already been adapted for Broadway in 1905 by William Boosey and Cosmo Gordon Lennox.
- Chevalier sings "Nobody's Using It Now." Lane, Roth, and the chorus sing "The Queen Is Always Right.
- Reported British receipts were £125,000. The film opened weeks after the October 1929 crash, and Paramount treated the returns as a rescue.
- At the 1929-30 Academy Awards it was nominated for six prizes and won none: outstanding production, director, actor, art direction (Hans Dreier), cinematography (Victor Milner), and sound (Franklin Hansen).
- Sylvania is a made-up kingdom, so the plot never names a real court.
Scenes
- Louise, expected to punish Alfred, asks him to dinner.
- After the wedding he finds that a prince consort may not touch the business of the state.
- Two couples trade the same song, cut together from sets that were filmed at the same time.
Influenced by
- Le Prince Consort (Jules Chancel and Leon Xanrof)
Also available
- Internet Archive (love-parade-1929)
