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28
SCREENLAND
(^hevalier ~ /Lubitsch ~ .Success!
A French Star and a German Director Work Together on the Screen's First Original Operetta, "The Love Parade," for American Audiences!
By Rob Wagner
last, the dream of cinematic production— a screen operetta! Not a revue or Follies show of patched'together acts and gags, but a full' length opera with its own story, casts, solos, duets and magnificent choruses.
Nor is "The Love Parade" simply one of our well-known operas like "Carmen" or "The Mikado" translated to the screen. Such operas, like the present screen revues,, are essentially of the stage and carry with them all the stage limitations.
Leave it to Lubitsch to remember that the screen has a glorious technique that in the first excitement of sound pictures has been largely tossed aside. De Mille began the renaissance by returning to the
"tools of his trade in "Dynamite." Now the great German director is making a musical film in which he uses all the triumphs of the cinematic idiom.
Needless to say, "The Love Parade" has been written and scored directly for the screen; and while it is basically an operetta, the action is not confined to the time-and-space limits of
Above: shooting the royal staircase scene, showing the Queen, Jeanette MacDonald, descending the stairs between two lines of grenadiers. Note the seated figure of Director Lubitsch at the foot. As Miss MacDonald descends Lubitsch and the camera truck will precede her across the marble hall.
ts seven
Howdy, Queen! Her train yards long and two yards wide, weighted with sequins, pearls, and rhinestones.
a stage. There are, in fact, over fifty sets and locations used, and the songs and dances extend in many instances over several sets.
So much for the mechanical and technical side of the screen's first original operetta.
The most interesting phase of the artistic adventure is that it has brought together three great foreigners— Lubitsch, Chevalier and Guy Bolton. Lubitsch is regarded as one of our greatest directors. (He is the only one whose pictures have ranked among 'the ten best' every year since votes were taken) ; Chevalier's instantaneous repetition of his European successes has placed him at the top of our screen entertainment, and Guy Bolton's name as an author is famous throughout the operatic world.
A German, a Frenchman, and an Englishman — and an American cast! Who says the war is not over and forgotten? Perhaps the most eloquent evidence is the devotion that has developed between Chevalier and Lubitsch.
The other day I barged over to watch them work. Chevalier was singing a song beneath an apple tree — an amusing song about his out-of-work charms — while Lubitsch sat beside the igloos (sound