In the Ancient Oak Forest of Rouvray

One Hour With You (1932)
directed by Ernst Lubitsch
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

First Franzi, and now Mitzi, Jeanette MacDonald's old "school chum." What fine, droll names! (Pass me my top hot and martini!) If MacDonald is my favorite discovery of Lubitsch's first steps into song, One Hour With You is unquestionably the sprint to the finish line. It's the most understanding film of the bunch, anyway, forgiving of extra-marital betrayals in the same way The Affairs of Anatol was. Of course, maybe Lubitsch, going through a divorce of his own, was interested in the crumbling edifice more than the ruins; maybe the final stitch of empathy isn't his.

Nor is this some early-thirties myopic endorsement of the average misogynist's marital "rights." Well, not entirely, anyway, although MacDonald's near-assault by Chevalier's best man is framed as an "indiscretion" essentially the equal of Maurice flaunting his infidelity in the cab outside his own apartment. In the beginning and the end, both MacDonald and Chevalier want the marriage to work; the joke is realizing all the ways it can't.

I just watched Daisy Kenyon, and that movie made a similar point (sort of), although except for the moments when Dana Andrews climbed up on his soapbox, I didn't laugh once. One Hour With You begins with the Parisian police rounding up lovers in the Bois de Boulogne, not out of coldness, but because cafés lose too much money in the spring; no one's in them. When the cops find Maurice and Jeanne kissing on a bench, Maurice swears they're legitimate. If that were true, responds the chief, they'd be "the only married couple in the park." Everyone laughs at that, which I like. It reminded me of this exchange, way back from Monte Carlo:

"It's a silly story, only possible with music."

"That's possible even without music. Things like that happen everyday." Movies like these really don't.