The Merry Widow (1934)

#3 in my ranking of Ernst Lubitsch’s filmography.

I knew that The Merry Widow was Lubitsch’s first film subjected to the Hays Office’s rules upon its original release, so I was a bit shocked as the film went on and it felt like a bawdy pre-Code film. Thankfully, the actual release process was a bit bungled on the film, leading to a situation where all of the trims were preserved, and we get what is effectively Lubitsch’s final pre-Code film. Where Design for Living had embraced a certain frankness around sex, The Merry Widow, adapted from the operetta by Franz Lehár, makes it all but explicit, especially regarding its transactional nature. It’s also some of the most fun I’ve had watching a Lubitsch film.

The titular widow is Madame Sonia (Jeanette MacDonald), former wife to the richest man in the small country of Marshovia, ruled by King Achmet (George Barbier). She is in her ninth month of mourning for her husband when she attracts the attention of Captain Danilo (Maurice Chevalier), a notorious womanizer who has jumped out of every window in Marshovia, leaving happy women wherever he goes. According to Marshovian custom, though, Sonia hides her face behind a black veil, so she becomes something more than just another potential conquest for Danilo. She becomes a mystery that he must conquer, despite her resistance. When she leaves the country for Paris, though, Achmet is in a panic. If she were to marry outside the country, she could take 52% of the country’s wealth with her. He must keep her wealth in the country, and the only way to do that is to marry her to a Marshovian. After consulting with his wife Queen Dolores (Una Merkel), he knows that he needs to find a man that Queen Dolores herself would leave him for.

Now, let’s talk about comedy. There’s a late in life interview with Billy Wilder where he describes what he sees as the Lubitsch Touch (there are a few different definitions floating around, and they’re all a bit different), and in his mind it’s all about how to efficiently convey narrative information through visual comedy, and the example he uses is the scene where King Achmet discovers that Dolores is having an affair with Danilo, a member of his guard (he misattributes it to The Smiling Lieutenant, though). In it, Achmet leaves his wife’s bedroom, Danilo goes in, Achmet goes back in to retrieve his belt, comes out, realizes that the belt is too small, and goes back in. That’s it. It’s a quick series of actions, but we get all of the information we need about Dolores, Danilo, Achmet, and we can quickly connect it with Achmet’s predicament about finding the right man to marry Sonia and keep her money in the country. It’s also really, really funny without being inefficient narratively or explicit in nature. It is one of the best examples to pull about how Lubitsch made movies the way he did.

Being a good patriot, Danilo accepts the mission, especially since it means he gets to go back to Paris and to all the girls he knew there. Sonia spies him in the city first, though, and she follows him to Maxime’s. Now, Maxime’s was apparently one of the main targets of the Hays’ Office, and it’s where I became confused about the film’s status as a Code-era film. It’s all but explicitly a brothel, a Moulin Rouge with private “dining rooms” complete with beds and hired girls who are encouraged to get male patrons to drink. It’s not just a burlesque with dancing can-can girls. It’s an outright brothel, and into it walks proper, wealthy Sonia, and this is honestly where the film is its most fun.

Most of Lubitsch’s musical numbers up to this point have been single characters singing while stationary, sometimes to the camera directly like in the “Oh, that Mitzi” number in One Hour With You. Here, there’s actual dancing (mostly from the chorus girls) on a large floor. It goes even further in the later ball sequence that more fully involves our characters, but the dancing sequences in general are really delightful, full of energy, and just fun to watch. It’s in Maxime’s where the film embraces farce as Sonia introduces herself as Fifi to Danilo, just a new girl at Maxime’s, and she becomes playfully resistant to his charms. She flirts with other men while at Danilo’s table which angers him (an obvious irony the film doesn’t spend much time on but obviously understands). She resists going up to the private dining room, only going up because he steals her shoe (there has to be a Cinderella implication with that), and remarking on the look of Napoleon’s portrait on the wall just as he’s trying to make his final move. It angers him greatly, but she’s the only woman to have resisted him ever, it seems, and that sticks in him. It ruins his taste for other women completely.

There are comic events around getting Danilo to the ball, centered on the Marshovian’s ambassador’s, Popoff (Edward Everett Horton) effort to get him recovered from his bender and into the private room where he will introduce Sonia to Danilo for the first time (to his knowledge, of course). When she sees the change in him, she falls for him as well, until the truth is inevitably revealed and Danilo does the honorable thing, admitting to the truth of his mission. The finale involves a trial for treason and a ruse to keep Danilo and Sonia in a prison cell together until they fall in love, and it’s kind of adorable.

Really, it’s hard to do more than just describe what happens in a Lubitsch movie to try and mine out the reasons why I love them. The big dance numbers, the charismatic performances, the comic timing, and the light tone all combine together in such a unique way that it’s a challenge to do more than point at it and say, “Isn’t it grand?” Because it is grand, and it’s all about enjoying the moment. Now, that does have it’s limits of which, I think, Lubitsch hit them with the mixed up narrative in One Hour With You, but The Merry Widow rides that fine line between mild naughtiness and morality deftly here. It’s also interesting to compare this to Erich von Stroheim‘s version of the same operetta. I found it light and fun as well, but Erich von Stroheim simply did not have the same kind of comic touch that Lubitsch had. The silent version is nice and a bit fun. The early sound version is an infectious delight.

That it was a financial dud at the time is a disappointment, but at least the original version still exists to enjoy.

Rating: 4/4