User reviews

The only thing wrong with this delightful movie is that it's been so hard to find on video or DVD over the years. Despite the ongoing fame of the stars and the director, even museum screenings are rare. I was lucky enough to see One Hour with You recently along with an earlier gem called The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), another saucy Pre-Code musical comedy starring Chevalier and directed by Lubitsch, and they complemented each other nicely. The earlier film is set primarily in a mythical kingdom, populated with the sort of uniformed dignitaries and nobles Lubitsch loved to send up, while One Hour with You takes place in contemporary Paris-- although "Paramount Paris" may be the more apt phrase. Production values are comparable, and the films even share a couple of supporting players in similar roles. Still, while both are highly enjoyable, I feel One Hour with You is the more satisfying film, and for me the main reason is that Chevalier's character is so much more sympathetic here.

The cheerful Chevalier of the early '30s is always interested in one thing only, and Lubitsch's slyly suggestive material leaves absolutely no doubt as to what it might be, but that doesn't mean his Gallic lover roles were all the same. Chevalier's Smiling Lieutenant is an arrogant skirt-chaser, as obsessively horny as Pepe Le Pew and equally convinced of his own irresistibility, while in One Hour with You our leading man is more the pursued than the pursuer, perhaps a little flustered by the chase, and frankly he's more likable when he's less sure of himself. Chevalier plays a prosperous doctor, happily married to Jeanette MacDonald. They share a stylish modern home and seem quite pleased with each other, but when Jeanette's aggressively sexy friend Mitzi shows up her husband is tempted to stray; he's flattered and gratified but also perplexed by Mitzi's relentless pursuit. The good doctor's mixed feelings are obvious, and amusing. At key moments when he's alone he'll turn and address the audience, even confessing that he's confused about what to do next, and this uncertainty is an appealing character trait. Cinematically, it also marks a rare occasion (Groucho notwithstanding) when a movie character's direct address to the camera is a welcome and successful device. And it underscores the point that Chevalier Bewildered is more attractive than Chevalier the Grinning Tom Cat.

Speaking of attractive, Jeanette MacDonald is a revelation here. Those who know her only from San Francisco, or who're familiar with her prim, tightly controlled performances in the operettas she made with Nelson Eddy, will be startled to see how loose, appealing, and sexy she could be with this director and this co-star. She's adept with comedy, and surprisingly moving in the last scenes when the situation turns more serious. Jeanette's supporting cast isn't half bad, either: Charlie Ruggles is hilarious (especially when he sings) as Jeanette's long-suffering, rejected suitor, while Roland Young is a stand-out, as usual, as the cuckold professor who seems both furious and oddly amused by his situation, and whose every uttered syllable conveys icy, carefully nuanced irony. Young was one of those rare players like Claude Rains who could take a secondary role and deftly steal the show. Here, he makes his first appearance early on and returns only intermittently thereafter, but he makes every moment count.

In his day director Ernst Lubitsch was almost as famous as the stars of his films; his distinctive, sophisticated, merry style was enjoyed by audiences and celebrated by critics. Like Hitchcock or Sturges, Lubitsch himself is a presence in his work. We know from the opening moments of One Hour with You's first scene exactly who is at the helm of this picture, when a rotund Prefect of Police (George Barbier) delivers a speech to his men, warning them that people come to Paris for One Reason Only-- and coincidentally, it's the same thing that so concerns our leading man. This is fine with the Chief, of course, as long as these tourists are willing to pay hard cash. The Chief's speech is delivered in rhyme, a device which recurs throughout at key moments, usually as a lead-in to songs. The title tune is the most memorable one and became a standard, but the others serve their function: each song tells us something about the lead characters' state of mind while offering Lubitsch-style wit about the film's central themes: the joys and drawbacks of marriage and the lure of extra-marital dalliance.

Anyone seeking a good definition of the "Lubitsch Touch" could profitably begin with this movie. Still, Maurice Chevalier is very much the star of this show, and in my opinion he was never better, never more charming, than in One Hour with You.

P.S. Winter 2007: I'm pleased to add that this film will soon be available in a DVD box set, along with three other Lubitsch rarities from the Pre-Code era. Paradise for the director's fans awaits!

In the second of their four films together and the only one in which they start out as man and wife, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald play a happily married couple who face a comic crisis in their marriage when Jeanette announces she's going to be visited by an old friend in Genevieve Tobin in One Hour With You.

What she doesn't know is that Tobin and Maurice have had a flirtatious rendezvous in one of those legendary speedy Paris taxi cabs. Tobin as Mitzi is one saucy wench whose marriage to Roland Young is coming to an end. The only question remaining is who will be caught in a compromising position first for the sake of the alimony.

The whole thing is directed with typical continental charm by Ernest Lubitsch replete with various things in the film identified as the Lubitsch touch. My favorite of those is when Genevieve gets Dr. Chevalier to make a house call, you see a shot of her feet kicking off her shoes and then wiggling in anticipation.

Oscar Straus and Leo Robin wrote most of the music, but the title song was written Richard Whiting with lyrics by Leo Robin. It's introduced during a nightclub scene by radio singer Donald Novis who occasionally did film and stage roles and then sung by nearly all the principals in the cast. Jeanette made a good selling RCA Victor recording of it.

Maurice Chevalier got to sing Oh That Mitzi which both advances the plot of the film as he tells of his dilemma between his wife Colette{MacDonald), but Oh That Mitzi and is a number perfectly suiting his style. It was part of his nightclub act forever after.

Genevieve Tobin is great as the saucy Mitzi and filmgoers probably know her best as the dowager Mrs. Chisholm who was held captive by Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. Tobin had to be one talented lady, that's quite a difference in parts between One Hour With You and The Petrified Forest.

One cannot ignore Charlie Ruggles a rather timid suitor who is so hoping to get Jeanette on the rebound from Maurice. He's got some very funny scenes with her.

One Hour With You is one of those sophisticated comedies depicting a world gone by. I'm not even sure in Europe if they still dress in tuxedo for dinner.

In the second of the four Chevalier - MacDonald films the leads are a married couple (Chevalier is a upper class doctor, of all things) who are happy together. In fact they are first seen preparing for their anniversary party. Both have friends who can spoil this. Chevalier's closest friend is Charlie Ruggles, who secretly loves MacDonald (but who is usually too nervous or intense to get anywhere with her - if she were interested). MacDonald is close to an old school friend, Genevieve Tobin, who is a continuous flirt (one can even consider her a nymphomaniac). She is married to Roland Young, but their marriage is on the rocks because of her affairs (his too - he wants to marry their maid). So MacDonald invites her friend into her home, and Tobin soon is being coquettish towards Chevalier. When she returns home, she asks him to see her on a professional (i.e. medical) problem, and proceeds to try to seduce him. This upsets Chevalier, who tries to remain faithful to MacDonald, but she (blind as she is to what Tobin is doing) insists he help her friend. Young is delighted. He is closing in on a divorce with Tobin. Finally, being weak, Chevalier gives in. MacDonald learns of this, and turns to Ruggles (!). And the film is set for some kind of resolution of these problems in sexual politics.

The music is best recalled for the title tune, "One Hour With You". It would pop up for years in Paramount film musicals (in DUCK SOUP, it is played in the sequence when Harpo Marx is doing a "Paul Revere" ride to rally the countryside, only to stop at his girlfriend's for "one hour with her."). It also appeared as the national love song of Klopstokia in MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, with Jack Oakie singing the words, "Woof bootle gik..." instead of the original words to it. However, the number that gets me is the one mentioned in the "Summary" line, which Chevalier sings to explain to the audience his dilemma regarding his loyalties to his wife versus the fascination of the beguiling Tobin. In all of his films in the 1930s he would sing some tune that dealt with the heroine or another woman: "Mimi" in LOVE ME TONIGHT is an example, as is "Louise". "MITZI" is another example of this.

The Lubitsch touch is shown throughout. One of the best moments is when Ruggles is talking to MacDonald about attending a party at their home, and learns it is a dinner party, not the costume party he is dressed for. He turns to his butler, and demands to know why he told Ruggles it was a costume party. "Oh sir," says the giggling butler, "I so wanted to see you in tights!" With bits like that sprinkled about, this film is a small treasure.

Director Ernst Lubitsch made some marvelous films during the 1930s. Because they were so deftly created and the films seemed so magical and perfect, many have dubbed these films as having "the Lubitsch touch". Well, ONE HOUR WITH YOU does have many of these touches, but to me it just didn't have the magic that his best films, such as TROUBLE IN PARADISE, had--though it is still a very good film.

The film begins with a deliriously happy married couple, Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. They defy the stereotype that married people are dull and their love wanes--that is, until MacDonald's best friend, Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin), arrives. Mitzi is man-crazy and again and again Jeanette foolishly forces her husband to be with Mitzi alone. Eventually, he succumbs to her horny overtures--though the film seems to imply they didn't go very far. In retaliation, Jeanette grabs the first pipsqueak she can find (Charlie Ruggles) and sows a few (a very few) oats of her own. Can this couple survive? Will they live happily ever after? Sure, you betcha.

This film is a musical. While none of the numbers are especially memorable and occasionally Ms. MacDonald hit some notes that made my skin crawl, the songs were very good--very light and simple with excellent lyrics. In addition, at times the dialog was spoken in rhyme--though this confused me. At times, they rhymed beautifully (almost like a Dr. Seuss book) but then the dialog became much more normal. Later, they started rhyming again. I think they should have either stuck with this or dropped it altogether. As it was, it just seemed like they lost interest in this and forgot to keep rhyming. One thing I really did like, though, was how Chevalier occasionally broke character and spoke to the camera--like he was having a dialog with the audience. This was clever and the film had enough good moments to recommend it, but still it doesn't rank among the director's very best.

By the way, I saw this on DVD but was saddened to see it only had the American version. According to IMDb both MacDonald and Chevalier also filmed a French version at the same time, as Ms. MacDonald was apparently fluent in French!

I first saw ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932) one magical evening in the summer of 1987. I was 19 years old; I ditched work, and drove up to UCLA on the strength of an LA Times blurb. I knew very little about Lubitsch, and had pre-conceived notions about MacDonald and Chevalier. ONE HOUR WITH YOU was one half of a perfect double bill that night with Mamoulian's fantastic LOVE ME TONIGHT (also from 1932). Both films blew me away: they have the special, magical glow of other great Paramount films from that era; the humor is racy and modern; the songs are memorable and funny; and the playing by everyone is exquisite. I've always thought of that night as being one of the best nights at the movies that I've ever had. Both films are enchanting -- I can still remember people running to talk to each other after the screenings of how much they loved them... The audience's joy was palpable throughout.

Of course, as time has past, I've caught up with the rest of Lubitsch's work -- but this film for me is the tops. (TROUBLE IN PARADISE comes a very close second.) Jeannette MacDonald for me was such a revelation. She's both knowing and naive, sexy and sweet... her final confrontation with Chevalier ("...if you're a Don Juan... than I'm a Cleopatra!") is really extraordinary: she utterly transforms herself from a mousy housewife to a believably sexy and silly siren within the span of a few seconds. (Her performance here is similar to that of Mia Farrow's performance in ALICE (1990), when Farrow first comes on to Joe Mantegna's character...) Genevieve Tobin also deserves mention as the sexually insatiable Mitzi. Her first encounter with Chevalier where she is coming on to him in the back of the tax cab ("Let's put our newspapers away and let us face that facts!") is a fantastic bit of acting. And of course Maurice Chevalier is wonderful as the doctor. I especially love his shocked, mock-horror expressions when his two women are whispering to each other, looking at him ("He can...?" "No..." "I tell you he can!")

The film is interesting also for being an early musical, before the genre had the defining imprint of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire . It's a musical-comedy hybrid, and as such -- there's no other musical out there like it: the film employs rhyming verse, MacDonald's operatic trilling, playful double-entendres, and Chavalier's directly-addressing the audience. No musical numbers per se (in the traditional sense), but a barrage of musical elements that make this film unique.

The only time this film has been released on home video was in 1997 when Universal briefly released a laserdisc box set called "The Lubitsch Touch," along with other classics, such as THE LOVE PARADE (1929), MONTE CARLO (1930), THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931), and DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933). Universal needs to get on the stick and release this on DVD! Even though this film was nominated for Best Picture of 1931/32, it's barely known today. Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932) and Mamoulian's LOVE ME TONIGHT are revived more often than this. One reason for this critical oversight might hinge on the film's authorship: George Cukor began the film directing from Lubitsch's own ructions, only later to be replaced by Lubitsch himself, mid-way through the production. Cukor took Lubitsch to court and ultimately won a co-directing credit -- though it's next to impossible to tell who directed what: it's Lubitsch's picture, without a doubt.

Being such a huge fan of a film most people haven't seen or heard of has led me to one special meeting with a fellow enthusiast of ONE HOUR WITH YOU: I was working at a poster shop in San Francisco, selling some film posters to David Packard who owns the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto. His was going to be showing ONE HOUR WITH YOU in the upcoming month, and I mentioned to that it might be my favorite American film. He said (or sung to me): "Me too! Why don't we start singing right now!?" (And then he broke into a few bars of "Oh, That Mitzi!") He said that it was one of his all-time favorites, and also told me that he feels that it's his duty to show every person he knows or lives in the Bay area ONE HOUR WITH YOU before he dies!~ I wish that Universal Home Video felt the same way!

Ernst Lubitsch (with some "assist" from George Cukor) directs this charming and witty farce which gives Maurice Chevalier a chance to steal the film from his very talented co-stars, including Jeanette MacDonald and Genevieve Tobin.

His rendering of "Oh, that Mitzi!" (he breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the camera--as in "Gigi" years later), and "Three Times A Day" remain the highlights of the film. The story itself is pure fluff, a tale about a happily married couple who each have a fling but remain faithful to each other for the finale. Of course, it's all pre-code morality done with style and wit.

The sprinkling of songs also includes some rhyming dialogue, always a clever mix of words and music. Jeanette's voice sounds tinny here and there's no use made of her operatic range as the songs are simple and sweet, but she's charming and appealing as Chevalier's happily married wife. It's hard to see why she couldn't suspect that her best friend Genevieve Tobin would want to seduce her husband when the woman is such an obvious flirt. But of course, the story is strictly fluff and full of many improbable moments. The rather abrupt ending seems an awkward way to resolve the whole marital situation.

Worth viewing to watch Maurice Chevalier deliver one of his most satisfying performances, especially good when addressing the audience with his problems. The catchy title song by Richard Whiting gets some nice singing moments from several players.

ONE HOUR WITH YOU (Paramount, 1932), directed by Ernst Lubitsch (co-directed by George Cukor), premiered on American Movie Classics March 11, 1993, as part of its annual film preservation. Prior to that, it was shown on the Movie Channel in 1991. A musical comedy, it reunites Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, stars of THE LOVE PARADE (Paramount, 1929), offering them a rare opportunity playing husband and wife from start to finish, and an amusing couple at that.

As for the plot: Chevalier plays Doctor Andre Bertier, happily married man, who comes upon the flirtatious but much married Mitzi Olivier (Genevieve Tobin), who turns out to be his wife, Colette's (MacDonald) best friend in town for a visit. Mitzi's no-nonsense husband (Roland Young) suspects his wife for infidelity and has hired Detective Henry Dornier (Richard Carle) to follow her. While Mitzi makes a play for Andre, Andre's best friend, Adolph (Charles Ruggles), best man at his wedding, does the same for Colette. Situations become involved when Andre finds himself accused of having an affair not with Mitzi but with Mademoiselle Martel (Josephine Dunn) and later on, Professor Olivier visiting Andre and naming him as correspondent in his divorce trial.

Songs by Oscar Struss and Leo Robin, with interpolated music by Richard Whiting, include: "But Spring is Here" (introduced by George Barbier); "What a Little Thing Like a Wedding Ring Will Do" (sung by Chevalier and MacDonald); "We Will Always Be Sweethearts" (sung by MacDonald); "Three Times a Day" (sung by Chevalier and Genevieve Tobin); "One Hour With You" (sung by Donald Novis, Tobin, Charlie Ruggles, MacDonald and Chevalier); "It Was Only a Dream Kiss," "We Will Always Be Sweethearts" (Chevalier and MacDonald) and "What Would You Do?" (Chevalier).

This pre-production code comedy with singing was previously done in the silent era as THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE (Warner Brothers, 1924) starring Adolphe Menjou, Florence Vidor, Monte Blue and Marie Prevost, also directed by Lubitsch, which was distributed on video cassette in the 1990s. This remake was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1932, but in spite of its popularity, this is nearly a forgotten movie. While Jeanette MacDonald is remembered mainly for her costume operettas at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and singing duets with Nelson Eddy in their eight films together spanning from 1935 to 1942, ONE HOUR WITH YOU offers a different Jeanette MacDonald, singing contemporary songs in modern day Paris. At times she's very funny which is a shame that she never was given the opportunity to appear in a "screwball" comedy, but this, being a "drawing room" or "sophisticated" comedy will do. Risqué dialog all around adds to the amusements, with Chevalier occasionally narrating the story to the audience, looking directly into the camera in the way comedian George Burns did on his "George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" on television back in the 1950s.

While a delightful 78 minutes, the next Chevalier and MacDonald musical, LOVE ME TONIGHT (Paramount, 1932) ranks the very best of their four collaborations as a team. Available on DVD as of 2008, and on Turner Classic Movies where it premiered February 23, 2010. (****)

Sometimes these old films are useful if only because they are a fossilized record of the evolution of certain film techniques.

Here it is the technique of the main character looking directly at and addressing the audience outside of the story. As this really is expertly put together, there are many discrete steps of reality woven into this. There's the standard overlay of play and song that musicals had for decades. But there's also a couple other modes: one in which the characters speak their lines in rhyme. And a more subtle level where the tone is more deliberately artificial, play-like.

Incidentally, I have mentioned elsewhere that the current reputation of Paris as a romantic place was largely manufactured by the US film industry using hidden subsidies. The idea was attract US tourist dollars as part of the Marshall plan. Before the war, it was a place of sex without romance. Romance was deliberately out of the equation. You can see that here. The one hour is all that is required for the liaison that matters.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Lubitsch's musical remake of his THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE (1924), with George Cukor as the original director, another case of creativity discord for insiders to dig, stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald as a happily married middle class couple. It comes off as an accomplished guidance of how to manage your marriage while encountering flirtation or crazed suitors, a tad old school but it is pure fun.

Constantly breaking the fourth wall with self-revealing asides, the smooth-talker Chevalier's obtrusive French accent and mellow chanson are contagiously prepossessing, an honest man cannot withhold his feelings towards a seductress (Tobin), his wife's best friend, on the other hand, a demure MacDonald, famous for her high-pitch soprano lilt, is an excellent option to cast as his high-strung wife, who in turn is the love interest of his husband's best friend (Ruggles), but generally she only fences with him and only becomes intimate with him as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth to Chevalier's philandering. So see the double standard here? Wife is not allowed to exude her real affection toward a third man while husband is granted full amnesty since Chevalier asks in our face "what will you do?", it's merely biological. But it is made in 1932, what do we expect?

One singling-out scene is the awkward moment between Chevalier and Tobin's divorce-seeking husband (Young) when they first meet, Young's self-claim of himself as a man with absolute no sense of humour puts a preposterous veil of parody in this chamber comedy, all 6 main characters are well-selected, Genevieve Tobin is a natural force as a temptress with her heavily eye-lined vixen eyes, moreover, her singsongy communication with her husband is so naturalistically phoney. The mockery of woman's self-praising instinct is largely exculpatory, all the way, the film possesses an uplifting comical rhythm without overblown theatricality, and the musical numbers are soothingly intoxicating, you can have a wonderful one hour (and a bit more) with it.

Ernst Lubitsch was a great director who very rarely made a dud. While One Hour With You may not be as good as The Merry Widow, Heaven Can Wait and The Shop Around the Corner it is still well worth watching and is a very good film overall. The film does drag a little towards the end and the ending is rather abrupt and awkwardly staged. But One Hour With You also has many pleasures, a case of the pros far outweighing the cons. One Hour With You is stylishly photographed with elegant period detail, and Lubitsch directs with his usual classiness. The songs are just great and generally do deserve to be much better known, the title song is the most well-known one and it is a catchy one indeed but we mustn't forget the risqué(for the time) Oh Mitzi, the witty Three Times a Day or the charming We Will Always Be Sweethearts. The dialogue is funny and sophisticated, the rhyming was really inspired and Maurice Chavalier's talking to the camera could have been annoying but was far from it. The story is very fluffy but very light-hearted, warm-hearted and sweet and nowhere near as improbable as the story for Monte Carlo(a better film than it's given credit for but the weakest Lubitsch I've seen so far). One Hour With You is beautifully acted especially from the sassy and beguiling Genevieve Tobin. Maurice Chevalier oozes wit and easy-going charm and avoids being creepy in Oh Mitzi despite the risqué/suggestive material. Jeanette MacDonald radiates on screen and sings beautifully in We Will Always Be Sweethearts(sad that she didn't sing more) and Roland Young is deliciously ironic and induces fireworks whenever he appears. All in all, a very good film if not among the best from Lubitsch. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Oh, it is good to see Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald together again. Since their first coupling in 1929's The Love Parade, each had been paired with a number of other stars with varying success. For One Hour with You, it is charmingly effective to see them as an established couple rather than two singletons meeting and falling in love. Both have matured and improved in the years since their first appearance together, and they make a delightfully appropriate match.

Chevalier is boundlessly entertaining as always. There seems to be no end to the amusingly exaggerated gestures and utterances he can come out with. MacDonald, who in her earlier pictures had had an unintelligible (albeit beautiful) operatic singing voice, now delivers her vocals with clarity or character. She has also refined her comedic sensibilities, and is almost a match for Chevalier in quirkiness. And this is perhaps the best supporting casts the two were ever aligned with. Genevieve Tobin is not a well-known player, but she is marvellous here, projecting a kind of confident, overbearing flirtatiousness. Listen to the way she pronounces "sex" in the cab scene – she says it in the sense of male or female, but she is clearly thinking of its other meaning. Playing her husband, Roland Young is full of little mannerisms that are inexplicably funny, and Charles Ruggles is superbly creepy in the role of Adolph.

Director Ernst Lubitsch, in spite of the increasing freedom of camera movement, appears to have simplified his technique as the talkies have progressed. Much of One Hour with You is shot in long, static takes. This is all the better to show off the superb talents of the stars, and their routines are allowed to play out undisturbed. That is not to say Lubitsch is not thinking about what he is doing. His shot composition is, as usual, geared towards lucidity, minimalism and aesthetic beauty. The images contain nothing to distract, they simply look good and focus all our attention on the performers.

At the time, Paramount was at the forefront of developing the screen musical, and in the early years of the talkies we see the genre becoming more abstract and pure. One Hour with You is famed for its rhyming dialogue, a great device which perks up potentially dull scenes and keeps the musicality alive, but there is more going on besides. There is a neat use of incidental music based on the melodies of the songs, which is used to comment not only tonally but also verbally on each situation. For example the tune of "What a Little Thing Like a Wedding Ring Can Do" is played in a number of different styles at appropriate moments, reminding us of the song's lyrics in a new context.

Chevalier and MacDonald would make a few more pictures together, and indeed they made better pictures together, but One Hour with You is perhaps the pinnacle of their screen partnership because it is the picture in which they worked best together as a couple. MacDonald would soon go on to an even more famous and prolific pairing with Nelson Eddy, who while pretty good was no Maurice. And Chevalier was to return to his native France, where in any case his advancing years began to exclude him from playing romantic leads. One Hour with You is not an outstanding musical as the genre goes, but it is classic Chevalier and MacDonald.

The second musical romantic comedy teaming of director Ernst Lubitsch and co-stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, after their Best-Picture-nominated "The Love Parade" (1929), "One Hour with You" is a pleasant musical remake of the director's silent film "The Marriage Circle" (1924), both of which are adapted from the same play. The 1924 film was a watershed in Lubitsch's career, marking his turn towards sophisticated romantic comedies with more deliberate pacing and subtlety than his prior work, allowing for that so-called "Lubitsch touch."

When the talkies arrived, he, along with Chevalier and MacDonald, created a new kind of integrated musical for the screen, with a dual-focus narrative, as opposed to the backstage plots of prior ones. Because Lubitsch already understood the visual touch required in cinema, he was free to master the new technology of synchronized sound right off the bat, while so many others seem to have been under the impression that they needed to revert back to theatre or adapt to a kind of illustrated radio. By 1932, however, it seems Lubitsch was already beginning to break away from the musical genre he helped invent; while he made this and, later, another reuniting of Chevalier and MacDonald, "The Merry Widow" (1934), the non-musical "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) seems more indicative of the type of picture that had and would continue to comprise the bulk of his legacy, although, at this point, both 1932 films were nominated for Best Picture, the first time two works by the same director received such an honor in the same year.

While "One Hour with You" lacks the historical precedence of "The Marriage Circle" or "The Love Parade," it's arguably just as entertaining, and some may consider it more so, which is quite a feat by itself given its rather tumultuous production history where Lubitsch, in his supervisory role, essentially forced his way into replacing George Cukor as director. Anyways, I certainly appreciate the addition to the original 1924 adaptation of rhyming dialogue and song and, continuing from his persona in "The Love Parade," Chevalier's breaking of the fourth wall to address the audience, inviting us to participate in the shenanigans. MacDonald is rather surprisingly delightful in a change of pace from the display of her professional operatic training in "The Love Parade," to join her on-screen husband in a more down-to-earth style of performance and song. But, oh, that Mitzi. Genevieve Tobin is a wonderful improvement upon the role of the other woman. She's so vivacious, who can entirely blame Chevalier for a wandering eye, even if not for the rest of his wandering. The business of her berating her servant, however, should've been cut. On the other hand, the impervious Professor, who hires a detective to provide him a divorce from Mitzi, was better portrayed by Adolphe Menjou in the 1924 version. Menjou also had more to work with in Paul Bern's script than is this Professor by Lubitsch's new screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson (author of the play that was turned into the first talkie-musical feature film, "The Jazz Singer" (1927)). Here, the Professor is almost a vestigial bookend character to the play of infidelity and comedy of remarriage.

While the casting of Menjou has been credited as something of a nod to the influence of Charlie Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (1923), a film, which although highly melodramatic, is noted for its groundbreaking nuance and subtlety in screen characterizations, "One Hour with You," unlike "The Marriage Circle" set in Vienna, freely adopts the Parisian setting as both a sort of explanation and cover from potential censorship for its depictions of sexual promiscuity. Even in the pre-Code days, one was assured to get away with more if the alleged immorality took place in Paris as opposed, to say, Middle America. Lubitsch had been exploiting this convenience since, at least, "So This is Paris" (1926), which likewise could've been set anywhere without actually affecting the narrative, although "One Hour with You" does get a couple gags in early with the police concerned that tourist lovers were spending too much time making love in parks and not enough on spending money in Parisian cafés.

Besides the sound, location and name changes and added police business, "One Hour with You" retains the basic plot and many of the details of "The Marriage Circle." Adolph, previously Gustav, the friend of the Chevalier's doctor and admirer of his wife, is no longer the doctor's partner, and it's not clear what his profession is here. Instead of the car and office scenes in the 1924 film, his character is established, instead, by a phone call scene, which has the benefit of showing MacDonald in a slip and adding a homoerotic joke involving Adolph's butler tricking him into dressing in tights. This version also adds some business regarding men's ties. The house call scene with the doctor and Mitzi also has a bonus gag of Chevalier fixing himself a drink. It also doesn't show the scene of the doctor's visit to Mitzi's home at night, which strongly suggests they had sex; whereas, in "The Marriage Circle," the scene showed them precisely not doing that. Implying the husband's full-fledged adultery also upsets the gender balance of "fifty-fifty" for infidelity between him and his wife.

The "director of doors" also gets some nice Art Deco designs for those entryways in this one, and I also like the mirrors in the dance room. Most of all, much of the visual wit of the 1924 version is traded out here for the verbal kind, and, as usual for an early talkie, there's less scene dissection. As per the Cinemetrics website, "The Marriage Circle" has an average shot length of 5.6 seconds compared to over 12 seconds for "One Hour with You." Regardless, "One Hour with You" succeeds in maintaining a light tone, does well to trim a bit of fat from the prior film, as well as adding verbal rhyme in place of the superior visual rhythm of "The Marriage Circle."

The sheer joy of watching films from this era are that you're pulled into the world of 1932. The penny-pinching early WB films and those subsequently produced by D Zanuck tend to focus on how the little man or little lady manage (sometimes) to survive or even achieve happiness against the dredging backdrop of the depression.

This stylish Paramount offering is the complete opposite! It's pure escapism for a bedraggled 1932 audience who don't want to be reminded of how bad their lives are. We haven't got that crushing desire and so this just doesn't work.

Seen a few of Lubitsch's later films which are heart-warming and gorgeous but this is just horrible, almost as bad as a stage musical.

......and I hate the songs!

A good movie often gets upgraded by a superior cast. So it is with "One Hour With You", one of director Lubitsch's lesser works but which is aided immensely by the presence of Maurice Chevalier, one of the entertainment world's greatest showman. Here he is a Parisian doctor married to Jeanette MacDonald. They are apparently very much in love. Genevieve Tobin is her flirtatious friend who catches the eye of Chevalier, which starts the engine of the plot. Along the way we meet Roland Young, Tobin's husband, and Charles Ruggles, an old suitor of MacDonald's.

"One Hour With You" is a light-hearted musical comedy which was considered 'naughty' at the time and contains many 'Lubitsch touches', many of which are tame by today's standards but unique back then as a way around accepted moral norms. I was not alive in the 30's, but I look on this type of movie to determine how far our society has come and to reflect on the American social psyche of the time.

Considered in this light, this picture is great fun and the cast of old pros give it more status than it deserves. The songs are very tuneful, although the only one that has endured to this day is the title song. Enjoyed the cast occasionally talking in rhyme and appreciated the quick pace of the film. Very worth watching.

I first saw this film in 1955 at a tiny art cinema in Oxford. The print was in perfect condition and the shimmering dresses and art deco were fascinating. I sat through three showings and left on a wave of good feeling which has lasted ever since. (I can still sing "Three Times a Day" in which Chevalier as a doctor prescribes pills to his patient (with its the sexual innuendo). The comparison with Mamoulian's"Love me Tonight" with the same principals is very interesting. Mamoulian sends up the aristocratic Ruritanian musical comedy while Lubitsch adores the middle class. Both in their different ways are brilliant. Both use surrealist effects to heighten a sense of unreality. This is pure entertainment in a European tradition. Genevieve Tobin is a wonderful support but her career never really took off.

Over the past month my wife and I have been on a Lubitsch bender. His films are completely intoxicating as he invites the viewers to a fantasy world where wealthy people cavort around and constantly get into trouble with the opposite sex.

One Hour With You is no different, as Maurice Chevalier's aw-shucks smile and French charm are on center stage as he considers an affair with his wife's best friend. It is a musical, but not in the traditional Hollywood sense; rather a more subtle approach where it just might actually be possible for these characters to break into song.

There were some down moments in this movie, which is extremely rare in anything Lubitsch. They are few and far between, however, and there are some laugh out loud moments as Chevalier justifies his actions to the audience, since, after all, he is only doing what any of us would do. The good far outweighs the less than great, and One Hour is well worth the watch.

Rating: 30/40

I taped this one off UK TV in 1988 on the off chance it was good, kept it and have seen it about 10 times since. I wonder if a remastered DVD would be a little less murky as this is in places. Although a notch down from "Trouble in Paradise" it would still make it a worthy bookend, same director in Lubitsch, same studio, same year, same lightheartedness. Or maybe a triple bill with "Love me tonight", Mamoulian's masterpiece for my money, or a foursome with Sternberg's "Blonde Venus" if you feel in an even more arty mood.

The plot is pretty straightforward, turning the unfaithful wife and cuckolded husband scenario on its head with Roland Young (and his maid) pleased at the situation instead of demanding a duel to the death with Chevalier. The climax seems a little awkwardly handled, but ultimately the end credits plus a final snatch of the theme make it OK. And the music is brilliant and witty, helped by Paramount's brash Orchestra producing some marvellously angular but tuneful interpretations - even with the background noises (and similar in this respect also to the non-musical TIP).

Lubitsch re-used the plot from his film "The Marriage Circle", a silent with Adolphe Menjou, and although it has some fine moments is nowhere near as classy as the talkie version is. Being silent it has a completely different ambiance, but it's fun guessing where the songs should go.

All of the a/m films are sublime and should be on prescription!

Jeanette Macdonald is perhaps best known these days for her series of films with Nelson Eddy in the late 1930s/early 1940s, but this is a good example of her previous teaming with that naughty French export Maurice Chevalier.

'One Hour With You' features several great songs plus a fluffy plot around a married couple and misunderstood flirtations - helped a lot by other cast members Genevieve Tobin, Roland Young, and Charles Ruggles. Chevalier's charming persona is served well here in asides to the camera and a couple of great solo numbers, while Macdonald is sparky, beguiling, and a real tease.

A remake of Lubitsch's earlier The Marriage Circle, this is essentially the same movie with two major differences: songs and the guy caught in the middle of the two women, his wife and her best friend, actually goes through with the infidelity. It's a change that introduces a real moral imbalance in the film's final moments that it just tries to glide past without much consideration, and it makes the ending work far less well than the earlier version did, though there's real charm from the leads, in particular around the musical nature of the story.

Dr. Andre Bertier (Maurice Chevalier) is happily wed to his wife Colette (Jeannette MacDonald). In fact, our introduction is a visual motif that Lubitsch has revisited several times over the previous few years where couples are kissing in a park at night only to be interrupted by a policeman (it was even in his segment of Paramount on Parade), except that there's a twist! Andre and Colette are married, and the policeman can't bring himself to write them a ticket. It's cute, and a nice play on Lubitsch's own work. Andre sings directly to the audience about his love for Colette, and then we get our introduction to the other woman, Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin). Married to Professor Olivier (Roland Young), she's obviously not terribly concerned with her husband at all, and when she coincidentally steals Andre's cab without realizing who he is, she immediately hits on him. He's resistant while outright admitting that she's pretty and would if he weren't married, jumping out of the car and admitting that he's a coward for it.

In the original, the Andre character was completely resistant to the Mitzi character's charms, totally dedicated to his wife, so having Andre here admit outright from the beginning that he's tempted by Mitzi is a change. I wasn't sure how it was going to play out, whether it was just going to be a wrinkle in the telling or an outright change, and, of course, it led to an outright change. That's not necessarily bad on its own, but it takes something that works in the original and changes it. Is it for the better? Well, we'll see.

The plot follows along with Mitzi continuing to pursue Andre under Colette's nose while Colette begins to suspect that Andre is trying to have an affair with Mademoiselle Martel (Josephine Dunn), who, like in the original, gets introduced at about the halfway point with barely any build up. There's also Adolph (Charles Ruggles) who is in love with Colette, though this time he's not Andre's business partner. The main centerpiece of the film is the large dinner party where Andre tries to distance himself from Mitzi by moving the name cards at the table of both Mitzi and Martel, which Colette interprets wrong, and the movie splits with the original as Andre decides that he will spend some alone time with Mitzi, the titular one hour that's also the title song which gets sung during the dancing part of the party.

This being the early 30s and Lubitsch, the movie isn't going to show much explicitly, allowing for some small interpretation of events early in the process, but when Andre leaves Colette after the party because her emotional state due to her suspicions of his supposed affair with Martel, he just goes with Mitzi to her apartment. This, of course, gets discovered by Professor Olivier through his private investigator, and Andre tries to lie his way through the situation. This was where I was beginning to waver on the film. It's entertaining, anchored by one of those wonderful Maurice Chevalier performances, and, up to this point, there was just enough gray area about what was actually going on. In the original version, the Andre character did go up, but it was also completely innocent. Once it's revealed that Andre does have his affair, his one hour with her, the whole comic premise kind of falls apart.

When we get to the film's final moments, essentially a direct recreation of The Marriage Circle's ending, it just no longer works. The husband being held accountable for something he doesn't do while the wife tries to make him feel jealous for something she didn't do is amusing. The whole actual affair being just swept away while the wife pretends to have done something she didn't do is completely off balance, and it almost feels malicious towards Colette. And then it ends with the message of "infidelity doesn't matter because we love each other", and none of it feels right. It's not heartwarming. It's just odd.

Up until those final movements, One Hour With You is a fun little remake of The Marriage Circle. Using music, witty dialogue, and some delightful performances, Lubitsch brought his silent film into the sound era, but then the changes go much further in another direction. The comic ending simply ceases to work because the implications are no longer light but heavy, and just brushing it off like it doesn't matter, especially when Colette is anguishing for about half the movie because she thinks Andre is going to have an affair, doesn't make sense from a character point of view. I was disappointed.

You can have the best directors, costumes, set designs and musical score in the world, but nothing is going to take away from the fact that this movie celebrates infidelity and makes light of it. As such, it only goes to show that the values of Hollywood film makes haven't changed that much since the 30s. No wonder the Hayes Code put a halt to this moral decay if this is the sort of stuff that was being cranked out. It's not "sophisticated" or "clever" as those who have no moral compass would have you believe. It's immorality glorified at worst or at the very least dismissed as nothing serious enough to break up a marriage.

I was expecting a light delightful musical instead what I got is an improbable plot, characters totally unbelievable and a music that was thoroughly forgettable. This "gem" can stay buried forever as far as I am concerned. What a total let down.