The wrong girl gets the man, but not without each character learning something about themselves they previously denied. Strikingly, she projects her own innocence onto Chevalier, “so mild, he’s a sweet child…so modest and so gentle, so sentimental.” Hopkins’s inexperience is moving and human because she so clearly wants things that she cannot describe, tentatively unsure whether she has even been denied affection at all before resigning herself to a lifetime of winkless marriage. It is a credit to both Lubitsch and Hopkins that this character comes across as clearly and sincerely as she does. A dishonorable wink becomes the basis of an international incident.
That number, “Breakfast Table Love,” is a genuine oddity, but also more than that-an irrepressible, untroubled ode to post-coital bliss that succeeds seriously in pop terms.įittingly, their union ends when Chevalier’s overflowing, exergonic sexual desire inadvertently snares Miriam Hopkins, a visiting princess from Flausenthurm. Their scenes together are marvelous and inventive, expressing sexual frisson in any available materials, memorably muffins and grapefuits. (There’s no big performance, no back stage drama, it’s all treated as a lightly factual, none-too-interesting way of making a living.) Colbert’s profession allows for a sexual metaphor-chamber music, as the private realization of public flirtation-so perfectly integrated as to almost single-handedly demarcate the line between being witty and being dirty. It’s a concept that never comes off as twee-there’s nary a nod, the possibility of such a career taken casually enough that Lubitsch and screenwriter Raphaelson never labor under conventions. She plays a violinist who leads an all-girl band that’s apparently good enough to tour the European beer garden circuit as The Viennese Swallows. There’s a volatility in the performance, too, an angry awareness on Chevalier’s part of how little legitimate emotion resides under the schtick, of how simple American audiences want their French heartthrobs to be.Ĭlaudette Colbert is entirely different-no prevarications, no public pressures or presumptions. And yet his first number, “Toujours L’Amour in the Army,” betrays a prickly entitlement that amounts to a rote, unattractive sexuality, as if a bevy of European beauties at Chevalier’s call was a socially-mandated burden.
Maurice Chevalier begins as a roguish lieutenant in name only-with no wars to fight, his social position arises chiefly from conforming to sexual expectation. Within this slim treatment resides a universe of feeling. No mistaken identities or games of deceit here, just a man falling in love with one woman and then learning to accept another. There’s not much story and what of it there is is told at a deliberative, luxuriating pace. Suffice it to say, these are all among the film’s minor strengths, as well as elements that mark it as memorable and distinctive next to its more conventional contemporaries. Even Lubitsch’s generally sensitive biographer Scott Eyman complains that “the wrong girl gets the man” and judges the thing “too ooh-la-la by half.” What’s more, seen in an off light, its sexual politics-mysterious and intuitive, enacted rather than contemplated-can look rather conservative and, more important, emotionally unconvincing. As a pre-Code picture, The Smiling Lieutenant is thoroughly adult in sensibility and register, but lacks for moments of wincing depravity or bad manners to be quoted by admirers.
(Can you name another operetta with a song like “Jazz Up Your Lingerie?”) Its demonstration of Paramount panache is mixed: the sets are obviously expensive, but always maintain an accent of Astoria-slightly claustrophobic, presenting reasonable depth while never quite airy enough.
Retaining the elemental contours of the Strauss operetta and a good deal of its music, it presents songs few in number and definitely American and vulgar in character. For those expecting an out-and-out musical, it will disappoint. The Smiling Lieutenant is a divisive picture.