What better way to round up this season’s series of comedies and musicals than with a masterpiece from the greatest comedy director of Hollywood’s golden age, Ernst Lubitsch?
Lubitsch’s 1934 musical comedy “The Merry Widow” re-unites stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in the funniest and naughtiest film version of the famous Franz Lehar operetta.
As the New York Times review enthused when the film opened, “It’s a show in the excellent Lubitsch manner, heady as the foam on champagne, fragile as mist, and as delicately gay as the good-natured censor will permit…Everyone can now sit back and take a deep breath. The Winter season has been royally crowned!”
Not surprisingly, there was much more than meets the eye going on behind the scenes on the set of “The Merry Widow”. The stars were less than thrilled to be working together, but Lubitsch was able to smooth the waters, resulting in screen magic that oozes with love and sexual energy (not necessarily in that order).
The “good-natured film censors” had an absolute fit with the first version presented and insisted upon 13 cuts. MGM was forced to retrieve all the prints already delivered and trim Lubitsch’s work. That’s the bad news.
The good news is they didn’t touch “The Merry Widow” negative, so we’ll be treated with the complete uncut version on Thursday May 7 at 7 p.m at the Easton Library. I hope you’ll join us for more background and insights, so you can experience for yourself the almost impossible to explain or resist “Lubitsch Touch.”
