#81: Love Me Tonight
Part of the Top 150 Films series
Love Me Tonight is a film that, even more than the films of Ernst Lubitsch, brings to mind his comments about preferring Paramount’s Paris to the real thing. Mamoulian’s musical masterpiece was at least a decade ahead of its time in terms of imagination and innovation with the still nascent introduction of sound to cinema, and still looks sensational today. Poking fun at films of the period in which millionaires masquerade as paupers, Maurice Chevalier plays a penniless tailor mistaken for a baron by princess Jeanette MacDonald. From the ingenious opening number — which has influenced everything from Once Upon a Time in the West to Dancer in the Dark — it’s an unstinting barrage of joy and invention, full of dazzling shots, hummable tunes and classic Lorenz Hart lyrics, with a gorgeous Myrna Loy just about stealing the show in her breakout role as a witty, sex-hungry countess. Isn’t it romantic?
