Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
The Love Parade
The queen of Sylvania marries the one man her court cannot keep in line, and then has to find him something to do.
Lubitsch's first talkie treats sound as one more thing to be witty with. Maurice Chevalier is the attaché recalled from Paris in disgrace, Jeanette MacDonald the queen who reads his file and summons him anyway, and the comedy begins after the wedding, when a prince consort turns out to have no job but walking two steps behind. Watch the servants: Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth repeat the royal romance below stairs as knockabout, and the songs pass from the palace to the pantry and back. A door that closes on the couple tells you as much as any lyric.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Ernst Lubitsch
- Photographed by
- Victor Milner
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Chevalier a year apart as a European charmer who marries above himself, and then has to prove he is more than decoration. Lubitsch makes him a queen's consort with nothing to do; Sturges sends him to the factory floor.