Best Pictures #115 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Wicked

by A.J.

Best Pictures #115 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Wicked

“Popular! I'll help you be popular!”

It is a shame that it took so long for the major Broadway musical Wicked to be adapted into a movie for a few reasons. One is simply that it took so long for a stage musical with great songs to come to a medium that can be widely seen by anyone anywhere. The other reasons are to the film's detriment I'm afraid. Wicked debuted on Broadway in 2003, was a major hit, and became influential, directly and indirectly, on other musicals, movies, and books. By 2024 however, many tropes and trends it helped popularize have become tired and cliched. Every time I see yet another movie or read yet another fantasy book that purports to invert “everything you thought you knew” about a well known story, or in which the main character discovers that the revered figure or institution is actually villainous,  I roll my eyes. Wicked does not deserve eye rolls but the effect of subverting the familiar world of Oz has been lost. 

There are still things to enjoy of course. The highlight for me was the surprising comedic talent of Ariana Grande as the glamorous Galinda, later to be the Good Witch of the North. Her funniest moment happens when she tries to turn green-skinned outcast Elphaba's frumpy coat, or froat, into a ball gown by shaking her training wand and saying "ball gown!" She's shocked when it doesn't work, after all, isn't that how casting spells works? I suppose it helps that she has the performance of the great Kristen Chenoweth, who played the role on Broadway, to help model her own performance. 

Once Galinda finally stops being a mean girl and befriends Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the future Wicked Witch of the West, the movie really takes off. They have some wonderful moments together, including Galinda promising to make Elphaba popular (one of the signature songs). Galinda’s makeover of Elphaba turns out to be less about fashion and more about Galinda becoming a nicer person. Erivo handles the songs and dramatic moments well though her best moments are when she and Grande are together. They have much better chemistry as friends than as adversaries which makes the middle section of the movie enjoyable and adds tension to the final moments. Both Erivo and Grande have received Oscar nominations for their performances in the Lead and Supporting categories, respectively. 

Wicked’s Oscar nominations for Production Design and Visual Effects are very well deserved. Watching the deleted scenes with unfinished effects and the making-of featurette on the Blu-ray I was impressed by how much of any given set was real and tactile. Despite flaws with the pacing, on this level Wicked certainly qualifies as an impressive achievement. I read complaints about the look of the movie but I saw no problems. I wonder if people were unimpressed by the sights because Oz is a fantasy world that nearly everyone is already familiar with to some degree. 

It is not all songs and costumes, of course. There is a plot too. Elphaba, born green and marked as an outcast, is drafted into the Shiz, a sort of school or academy, after one of the teachers, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), witnesses Elphaba's magical talents. She's forced to room with Galinda, the pretty, pink, popular, and mean girl. After seeing the effects of a prank, Galinda has remorse and becomes friends with Elphaba. Although only Elphaba is invited to visit the mysterious and wonderful wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), she brings Galinda along. Together they learn a dark secret truth about their world and their friendship is tested. There are important themes in Wicked, but they, like many side characters and plots, are not fully explored because of what is by far the biggest flaw of the movie. 

The big screen adaptation of Wicked unfortunately fell victim to the most cynical and unnecessary trend of current big budget fantasy films: splitting one story over multiple movies. The advertising did not mention it, but this is actually Wicked Part 1. On stage, the entire musical runs at 2 hours 45 minutes. For the movie, the first act of the stage version has been stretched out to be as long as the entire show, so that after 2 hours and 40 minutes we’re only halfway through the story. A few characters have been added but mostly scenes and songs have been stretched and stretched. Many stretch out beyond the breaking point of dramatic effectiveness and lose their poignancy. The scene of Galinda mirroring Elphaba’s dance at a prom-like event to show her newfound empathy lasts so long I went from feeling moved to thinking, “I get it already!” The most egregious example of a scene being stretched and broken up for the sake of runtime is the climactic song Defying Gravity. This wonderful and powerful song happens in fits and starts. It is broken up for dialogue and action beats, including a personal reflective moment for Elphaba, so that it stretches out for almost 14 minutes. I was expecting to be overwhelmed and blown back in my seat but instead I found myself frustrated and wondering if now the movie would let Erivo hit that big finale. 

Director Jon M. Chu has made successful movie musicals before, including my beloved In the Heights, but here I think the task of adapting Wicked must have overwhelmed him. The scenes of actual dancing are very well done and lively; he even finds a way to include his favorite touch, people dancing through water. In his commentary track Chu admits that it was difficult to decide what to show and when and for how long. This is unfortunately obvious, especially in Defying Gravity. Chu did his best to make a Part 1 that would stand on its own and it stands, but unevenly.

Wicked, the stage musical, made its debut on Broadway in October of 2003. I started college in New York in September of 2003 and it was all the rage among many of my friends who sang Popular so often that I knew the words without ever listening to the cast recording album. I never saw the original Broadway run and still haven’t seen any stage version, but I am absolutely ready to believe that the show is as fun and enchanting as my friends found it in the fall and winter of 2003. It seems like the movie had a built in fan base ready to like it no matter what–in that way it is like a Marvel movie–but they and my college friends deserve a better movie. 

Nominees: Marc Platt, Producer

Director: Jon M. Chu

Screenplay: Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox; based on Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman and the novel by Gregory Maguire

Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh

Production Companies: Universal Pictures, Marc Platt Productions

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release Date: November 22nd, 2024

Total Nominations: 10, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Cynthia Erivo; Supporting Actress-Ariana Grande; Editing-Myron Kerstein; Production Design-Nathan Crowley (production designer)Lee Sandales (set decorator); Costume Design

Paul Tazewell-Makeup and Hairstyling; Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, Sarah Nuth; Original Score-John Powell, Stephen Schwartz; Sound-Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson, John Marquis; Visual Effects-Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, Paul Corbould

Best Pictures #114: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Emilia Pérez

by A.J.

Best Pictures #114: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Emilia Pérez

“Hello, very nice to meet you! I'd like to know about sex-change operation.”

Emilia Pérez received a stunning 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Best International Picture, becoming the most nominated foreign language film in the history of the Academy. It won the Special Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received much critical praise. I cannot for the life of me understand why. Even aside from its controversies, including backlash from the transgender community and being offensive to the entire nation of Mexico, this is just a very bad movie on many levels. 

The controversy-free Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a Mexican lawyer recruited by the drug lord Manitas to help facilitate their transition to female. Rita goes about finding a good and discreet surgeon and setting up safety nets for Manitas's wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children since he will fake his death to fully become Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón). Years later Emilia misses her children and has Rita arrange her return to Mexico City and bring Jessi and the children to live with her, now posing as Manitas's cousin. Emilia begins a romance with a woman widowed from cartel violence but when Jessi becomes involved with a former lover and wants to leave Mexico City with the children, trouble ensues.

Karla Sofía Gascón made Oscar history by becoming the first openly trans performer nominated for Best Actress–the goodwill for this accomplishment has since been soured by reporting on racist and hateful tweets followed by awkward non-apology statements. Off screen statements or actions aside, Emilia is a surprisingly bland character. After she transitions, Emilia is a benevolent figure. She starts an organization to locate the bodies of people missing and killed because of drug cartel violence. It does not come up that certainly some of these “disappeared” people are victims of Emilia’s past as a drug lord. She also retains and enjoys all of the wealth made in the drug trade. However, Emilia’s gentleness and benevolence last only as long as things are going her way. The idea that an unhappy and violent person may continue to be unhappy and violent even after they receive gender affirming treatment is brought up by the surgeon from Tel Aviv. This is an interesting idea, but it is not explored. The climax involves kidnapping, drug money, a big shoot out, and a car chase that could have been directed by Toonces the Driving Cat, because, you know, Latins are so hot blooded.

Of all the movie’s Oscar nominations Saldaña’s is the least perplexing, until you realize that is for Supporting Actress and Saldaña’s Rita is the main character. Selena Gomez stands out in a bad way but the fault is not entirely hers; her character has no personality or background or growth. Does Emilia react with shock at the thought of Jessi moving away with their children because Jessi is a bad mother or is it simply out of jealousy? We don’t see Jessi being a bad mother or a good mother. We don’t know if she was a party girl that never wanted to be a wife. She mentions to Emilia that she was afraid of Manitas but even this moment falls flat offering little insight into her past or present state of mind. 

Also this movie is a musical. I did not mention that until now because the movie itself barely cares about being a musical. There is good lively pacing at first but that stumbles when it becomes obvious that the movie could not decide if it should be sung through like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or just have songs periodically. The Tel Aviv surgeon seems unable to figure out if he should sing in a traditional style or talk-sing like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. This is the result of bad direction. Somehow, two songs received Best Original Song nominations. El Mal is a big showy number, memorable because of Saldaña’s physicality while moving around tables and guests at a banquet. This is the song most like something from a Broadway musical. The other nominated song, Mi Camino, I only remember because at this point a bag of chips suddenly and mysteriously fell off the top of my refrigerator. For the most part the choreography is just as forgettable as most of the songs, if not just outright bad--especially for the song where Selena Gomez is just rolling around in her bed and messing about with pillows. When even I notice how bad the choreography is, something has gone terribly wrong.

Of course LGBTQ viewers and critics are better suited than I to speak about the film’s problems from that perspective though I can say with confidence that the screenplay uses transitioning like a soap opera plot device at best. There are so many other problems though and unfortunately the root seems to be the French director Jacques Audiard. Audiard does not speak Spanish or English; perhaps this accounts for the clunky dialogue and mistranslated swear words–you can confirm this with any 8-year-old with a Spanish last name–since the screenplay was presumably written in French, translated into Spanish, and then into English. He also admitted to doing little to no research about Mexican culture, wanting to use Mexico merely as a backdrop, and said that Spanish is a language of poor people and immigrants. It does not help that he cast non-Mexicans (two Americans, Saldaña and Gomez, and a Spaniard, Gascón) in the major roles. This is not necessarily a problem (a film like La Bamba, about the Chicano/Mexican-American Ritchie Valens stars people of Filipino, Puerto Rican, and Cuban background but that is hardly the flaw with that movie; Selena stars Jennifer Lopez, but don’t you dare say anything bad about Jennifer Lopez when she’s playing Selena) but it comes across as laziness on the part of the filmmakers–surely there exist 3 actress in Mexico who can sing and dance and act. I am not Mexican and I do not speak Spanish but I am of Mexican descent (3rd generation), a Chicano, or Hispanic, or Latin–though I cannot keep up with the ever changing terms, each claiming to be more correct than the last, so I identify as “whatever-white-people-call-us” and I am 100% not joking about that–and I grew up in South Texas so I have a strong sense for when a movie is legit about portraying Mexicans, or people of Mexican descent, or Mexican culture. Emilia Pérez is not legit. 

Statements from Audiard seem to suggest that he thinks the problems people have with Emilia Pérez are because it is so shocking. Positive reviews have also used adjectives like shocking, outrageous, audacious and compared it to the films of the Spanish master-filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. This is a foolish and unworthy comparison. The films of Almodóvar (High Heels, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Broken Embraces to name a few) are most outrageous and audacious in the grandiose emotions on display, not simply their subject matter. If I want to see a movie set in Mexico, directed by a non-Mexican, starring a Spaniard that actually portrays the drug trade in a negative light and has a real show stopping musical number I will watch Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado.

Nominees: Pascal Caucheteux and Jacques Audiard, Producers

Director: Jacques Audiard

Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, Nicolas Livecchi

Cast: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez

Production Companies: Why Not Productions, Page 114, Pathé, France 2 Cinéma, Saint Laurent Productions

Distributor: Pathé Distribution

Release Date: November 13th, 2024

Total Nominations: 13, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-Jacques Audiard; Actress-Karla Sofía Gascón; Supporting Actress-Zoe Saldaña; Adapted Screenplay-Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, Nicolas Livecchi Paul Guilhaume on Le Bureau des Légendes S5e10 directed by Jacques Audiard; Cinematography-Paul Guilhaume; Editing-Juliette Welfling; International Feature Film-France; Makeup and Hairstyling-Julia Floch-Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier, Jean-Christophe Spadaccini; Original Score-Clément Ducol, Camille; Original Song-Clément Ducol, Camille,Jacques Audiard For "El Mal"; Original Song-Clément Ducol, Camille For "Mi Camino"; Sound-Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz, Niels Barletta

Best Pictures #77: 2021 (94th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: West Side Story (2021)

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #77: 2021 (94th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

West Side Story (2021)

“Life can be bright in America/If you can fight in America/Life is all right in America/If you're all white in America.”

Nearly every remake is unnecessary. The first exceptions that come to mind are John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Each of these remakes found an approach that made the source material more effective on film, or expanded or modernized the story, or approached it from a different angle. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, nominated for a total of 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Director, makes slight changes here and there to the original and none of them help in any way. The 1957 Broadway musical and 1961 movie version updated the story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the present day (at the time), moved the setting to a then blue collar, multiracial neighborhood in Manhattan, and injected the story with a youthful, lively energy by making it a musical and casting young people as the leads (the first film version of Romeo and Juliet to cast young people in the title roles wouldn't happen until 1968). It may feel dated or classic now, but it also feels very of its moment.

This version keeps the story in late 1950’s Manhattan with the only real update being smoothing over the more uncomfortable racial aspects of the original. Actual Latin actors play the Latin characters and are given more screen time and background. The Upper West Side is shown in the process of being demolished to make way for Lincoln Center (the opening scene of the original movie was filmed where my alma mater, Fordham University Lincoln Center, now stands). The white gang, the Jets, and the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, are both the victims of gentrification, but this isn’t really explored beyond signs for demolition and new construction and a protest against evictions in the background.  

One night, Maria (Rachel Zegler) sees Tony (Ansel Elgort) across the dance floor and they meet behind behind the bleachers where he happens to be, seemingly lurking. They kiss and their fates are sealed. Unfortunately Zegler and Elgort don’t have much chemistry which is not good for a Romeo and Juliet adaptation. Scenes with Tony and Maria, even the balcony number, aren’t very compelling and that is when my focus began to wander. The less time between when the lovers meet and when they are married, symbolically or actually, the better. Otherwise, they might go on a boring date to the Cloisters museum and you would wonder why Maria wants to even be around this incredibly dull young man. Ansel Elgort is stiff as a board (I totally unintentionally spelled that “bored'' the first time) in nearly every scene. His lack of charm and charisma nearly sink the whole film, but everything else works well enough to keep the movie afloat. It helps that the real stars of the movie are the songs and dancing. 

Rachel Zegler gives a good performance as Maria but is overshadowed by the more interesting characters: Bernardo (David Alvarez), her brother and leader of the Sharks, and her best friend, Anita (Ariana DeBose, in a standout, Oscar nominated performance). Tony’s hotheaded friend, Riff , is not a very complex character but he is an exciting one thanks to a great performance by Mike Faist. Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in the original, is cast as the owner of the store where Tony works. Her presence is always welcome (whether she was in the original version of something or not) and she can’t help but be good, but the film seems to rely on her to lend it credibility.  

The cinematography by Janusz Kaminski is dazzling and uses lens flair and faux spotlights with great frequency but also to great effect. The production design and costumes are also great and eye catching, as you might expect. All have received Oscar nominations. The “rumble” scene in a salt warehouse is an exciting scene from start to finish that makes great use of all three elements. 

It took me a while to catch on that the order of songs had been changed and also who sings them. In the original, Riff and the Jets sing “Gee, Officer Krupke”, a song mocking the policeman always harassing them, directly to Officer Krupke, which is a pretty daring and defiant thing to do to a cop. Here, the Jets, sans Riff, sing it while waiting around in lock up after Officer Krupke has left. Tony is given more songs to sing which is a mistake. After the "rumble" scene there are only two songs, both of which are downbeat, and the movie really loses steam. These changes feel arbitrary and detrimental to the songs’ effectiveness and the flow of the story. It turns out that the creators of the original West Side Story thought out which order would make the songs most effective and found the best way. 

Is this version of West Side Story bad? No. Is it good? I suppose. I guess changing the order of the songs was one of the only ways this version could distinguish itself from the original. The sensibilities about race and gender and the acting styles have changed, but nothing else is really different. This is still the same story from 1957 that spoke to that era. A version of the story from Bernardo or Anita’s perspective or more directly dealing with gentrification or modern racial dynamics would mean the story would change. New songs would be required. If the plot or time period or setting were significantly changed then it wouldn’t be West Side Story. Spielberg and company set out to do West Side Story and that’s what they did.

P.S.

There is another movie musical from 2021 based on a Broadway show about a Hispanic/Latin neighborhood in Manhattan undergoing changes like gentrification with charming, lively characters dealing with these changes while also trying to live their idea of the American dream...and none of the characters are even in a gang or wield a knife. It is In the Heights, relatable and moving no matter your background or location, and it is the best movie of 2021. 

Nominees: Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, producers

Director: Steven Speilberg

Screenplay: Tony Kushner; based on the stage play, book by Arthur Laurents

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, Rita Moreno

Release Date: December 10, 2021

Production Companies: Amblin Entertainment, TSG Entertainment

Distributor: 20th Century Studios

Total Nominations: 7, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Supporting Actress-Ariana DeBose; Director-Steven Spielberg; Cinematography-Janusz Kaminski; Costume Design-Paul Tazewell; Production Design-Adam Stockhausen (production design), Rena DeAngelo (set decoration); Sound-Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson, Shawn Murphy

Best Pictures #33: 2016 (89th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee, La La Land

by A.J.

Best Pictures #33: 2016 (89^th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
La La Land

La La Land is one of best reviewed, most lauded, and most loved movies of 2016. It has already won several awards and is very likely to win more. It received 14 Oscar nominations, tying the record set by All About Eve (1950), though All About Eve’s 14 nominations was done with fewer categories, which seems slightly more impressive. La La Land is the front runner to take home the Best Picture Oscar. Let’s get one thing straight: I like La La Land. I might even really like it, but I did not love it, at least not the way everyone else did. 

The plot is simple enough: Struggling jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) meets and falls for aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone). Together they sing and dance through some of the loveliest scenes of Los Angeles on film. This is a side of L.A. not often seen movies. The center of American filmmaking is most often the setting of action and crime movies or it is meant to be a nonintrusive background. In La La Land, Los Angeles is stylized and romanticized. It is a city of purple sunsets, cool, blue nights, and hills and canyons and highways for song and dance numbers. I would not say that Los Angeles is a character because sets aren’t characters, but it is at the forefront of La La Land.

It’s no surprise that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have good chemistry; this is their third movie together after all. Each does a fine job in their respective roles. They sing and dance well enough, though they sing and dance like nonprofessionals that have been taught specific, not too challenging choreography. Each has a signature song: Sebastian has the melancholy “City of Stars” and Mia’s “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” serves as the film’s climax. Both songs have been nominated for the Original Song Oscar.

La La Land takes place in a daydream world and writer-director Damien Chazelle seeks to transport the audience to this wonderful musical world. He succeeds, to a point. La La Land is meant to be a loving, enthusiastic tribute to the musicals of the 1950’s and 40’s. The misstep it makes is this: instead of taking inspiration from the great musicals of the past to create a new, fresh take, it simply lifts from and imitates those films instead. Action and science fiction are the genres most often criticized for being derivative, but musicals can be derivative too. There are numerous visual references to other musicals (enough for a side by side video comparison). Some are indirect: the bold, bright color pallet of costumes and sets is reminiscent of the musicals of Jacques Demy. Others are more direct: Gosling jumps up on a lamppost just like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Unfortunately, since I’ve already seen most of the movies La La Land references (Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherourg, Young Girls of Rochefort; Fred Astaire musicals: Shall We Dance, The Band Wagon, Funny Face; and, most of all, Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris, and every other Gene Kelly musical), subtly and not so subtly, it comes off less as a tribute and more as a hollow imitation.

There’s a lot to like in La La Land. It’s a nice story about aspiring performers falling in love and trying to achieve their dreams. From the pink and purple sunsets to Stone’s bright, yellow dress, La La Land is filled with bold and vibrant solid colors that cannot help but catch the eye. The songs are pleasant and enjoyable, even if you don’t like jazz (and I don’t). Some of the musicals numbers are very visually appealing—I’m thinking of Sebastian and Mia’s dance at the observatory specifically—but others never open up to be as grand as I was expecting. The opening number plays like generic tableau of what someone that hasn’t seen a musical thinks a musical is like. I suppose I just can’t help but be reminded of the classic musicals with undeniably better performers and songs and wonder why I’m not just watching one of those again. I didn’t get the feeling of unabashed joy and love and wonder that I get whenever I watch Truffaut’s Day For Night, Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain, or even Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (all about performers in the entertainment business). But still, I enjoyed this movie.

Nominees: Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt, producers

Director: Damien Chazelle

Screenplay: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend

Production Companies: Black Label Media, TIK Films Limited, Impostor Pictures, Gilbert Films, Marc Platt Productions

Distributor: Summit Entertainment

Release Date: December 9^th, 2016

Total Nominations: 14, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-Damien Chazelle, Screenplay-Damien Chazelle, Actor-Ryan Gosling, Actress-Emma Stone, Cinematography-Linus Sandgren, Editing-Tom Cross, Costume Design-Mary Zophres, Production Design- David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds-Wasco (set decoration), Sound Editing- Ai Ling Lee, Mildred Iatrou, Sound Mixing- Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee, Steven Morrow, Original Score-Justin Hurwitz, Original Song-Audition (The Fools Who Dream): music by Justin Hurwitz, lyrics by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Original Song-City of Stars: music by Justin Hurwitz, lyrics by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul

Best Pictures #24: 1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Nominee, The Love Parade (1929)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #24: 1929-30 (3^rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Nominee

The Love Parade(1929)

Director Ernst Lubitsch’s final silent film, The Patriot (a Best Picture nominee the previous year), is a lost film unfortunately, but, thankfully, his first talkie and musical has been preserved and is available on home video as part of the Eclipse series released by the Criterion Collection. It also airs occasionally on TCM. The Love Parade received the most nominations of any film at the 3^rd Academy Awards with a total of six, including nominations for Maurice Chevalier and Ernst Lubitsch, but it did not win in any category. This film is allegedly the first movie musical to incorporate songs and performances into the narrative, as opposed to a backstage musical, such as The Broadway Melody, in which the characters are singers and dancers.

Lubitsch, who had directed many silent films, takes to talking pictures quite well right out of the gate. There is nothing clunky or awkward with the composition and staging of shots or overall style that suggests someone working through a learning curve. Of course The Love Parade has several strong elements working together in addition to Lubitsch’s skill behind the camera. Based on the play The Prince Consort, the script is loaded with lively dialogue, a sharp sense of humor that does not shy away from innuendo, and likeable characters. Maurice Chevalier plays Count Alfred, who is recalled from Paris to his homeland of Slyvania after (several) scandals involving married women.

Lubitsh transitions from silent filmmaking to working with sound and dialogue smoothly. He does not over indulge in dialogue and music and still uses silent visuals to great effect. When a servant in the Queen’s palace asks why Alfred has a French accent, Alfred says that he went to see a doctor about a cold but was greeted by the doctor’s wife. The movie cuts to an exterior shot of the palace and through a window we see Alfred whisper the rest of the story to the servant. When the movie cuts back inside Alfred says that the cold was gone, but he had that terrible accent. I had never seen a movie starring Maurice Chevalier before and he is as charming and lively and French as I’d imagined.

Jeanette MacDonald, in her screen debut, plays Queen Louise who in addition to having the responsibilities of a governing queen is also under pressure from her ministers and advisors to marry. The trouble with finding her a suitor is that he would be only Price Consort and have no power or responsibility in governing. She meets Count Alfred to reprimand him for his scandals, but they both quickly charm each other and flirt through song.

Aside from a dolly shot or two, I must confess that I was so caught up with the characters and story that I hardly noticed the camerawork, or lack thereof. Lubitsch fills the screen with entertainment, so even static shots are hardly dull. The songs are pleasing and catchy. The palace sets and costumes are opulent and impressive. There are memorable scenes both with and without music. From his balcony at the beginning of the film, Chevalier sings his goodbye to Paris and the women on nearby balconies. His valet, Jacques, played by Lupino Lane, joins in and sings goodbye to Parisian maids. Then Chevalier’s dog sings, by barking, to the female dogs of Paris. We see none of Alfred and Louise’s first date. Instead we see the Queen’s advisors, her ladies in waiting, and Jacques and the Queen’s maid spying on the date and reporting to each other like a game of telephone. The Queen’s maid, Lulu, played by Lillian Roth, and Jacques have some good songs together too.

The Love Parade is almost overwhelmingly enjoyable, up to a point. There are two distinct halves to this movie. The first half is very funny, jaunty, and romantic. The second half, after Alfred and Louise are married, deals with their marital problems. There is still humor and entertainment value in this half of the film but at a diminished level. Queen Louise and Alfred seem to misunderstand and mistreat each other immediately after they are married and solely for the sake of dramatic conflict. Their main conflict is that Alfred does not have the traditional role of a man in their marriage or in the monarchy. Queen Louise runs the country and palace. Traditional gender roles in marriage and government being the central conflict of a musical from 1929 is interesting, however, as you might imagine, these issues are addressed but not challenged. The two tonally different halves of The Love Parade make for an uneven but overall enjoyable musical. There is still a lot to enjoyed in The Love Parade and it is a good step forward for the nascent musical genre.

Nominee: Paramount Famous Lasky

Producer: Ernst Lubitsch

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Screenplay: Ernest Vadja and Guy Bolton, from the play The Prince Consort by Leon Xanrof and Jules Chancel

Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Lillian Roth

Release Date: November 19^th, 1929

Total Nominations: 6, including Outstanding Production

Win(s): N/A

Other Nominations: Actor-Maurice Chevalier, Director-Ernst Lubitsch, Cinematography-Victor Milner, Art Direction-Hans Dreier, Sound Recording-Franklin Hansen