Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 16: Mostly Maurice

Over to the 1932 ceremony where two films starred the same leading man and had the same basic format. That man was Maurice Chevalier and those two films were One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant. Of course I've heard of Chevalier but at the same time am not aware of his films that well. Just like Mae West, Chevalier was one the successful vaudeville and Broadway performers who was able to make the transition to Hollywood. With his charming voice and trademark boater hat, Chevalier was a crowd pleaser when he took to the stage and continued to charm in his films. In this case the films were both directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Firstly One Hour With You which has a very flimsy storyline indeed involving Chevalier's doctor who seems only to treat female clients who all obviously fancy him rotten but he is faithful to his wife played by Jeanette MacDonald. Both Chevalier and McDonald have perfect singing voices and basically singing seems to be foreplay to most of the characters in both of the Chevalier films that I watch. Maurice is tempted by his wife's old friend Mitzi while in turn his wife his propositioned by a man named Adolph before the name obviously became synonymous with a certain Mr Hitler. In this film Chevalier addresses the audience on a number of occasions to ask their advice on what he should do with these two beautiful women. At the end of the day even though they've both been unfaithful to an extent MacDonald and Chevalier realise they love each other most of all so it's back to the bedroom for a bit of a 'sing song'. The film is supposedly set in Paris but is obviously an American production with Chevalier the only predominant French cast member. Honestly I don't see why this was nominated for Best Picture, but that's all it was nominated for and it was obviously there to make up the numbers.
But you think the academy would only have picked one Chevalier film that year but instead The Smiling Lieutenant was also nominated. I find the plot was a little more cohesive in this film although Chevalier did essentially play the same character this time there was at least some kind of motivations for all the misunderstandings and misbehaving. This time the two women that were fighting for Chevalier's affections were Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. After watching her as the smart-talking rich girl in It Happened One Night I was surprised how little Colbert had to do here. She was Chevalier's first romantic interest a violinist who he fell for even though his friend liked her, friendship doesn't seem to stand for much in a Maurice Chevalier film. Anyway as you can guess from the title Chevalier's character is a lieutenant in the army and when Colbert's character goes to watch him welcome the ambassadors from a small Austrian suburb to Vienna he winks and smiles at her but it gets deflected towards Hopkins' small town princess. The big plot jump sees Chevalier agree to marry Hopkins because if he didn't there would be an international incident or Chevalier would lose his job. Hopkins and Chevalier have a loveless marriage at first but when Colbert comes to confront the new couple she instead helps Hopkins improve her lingerie collection (in song no less!) and bed Chevalier. At the end Chevalier gives the audience a cheeky wink before going to bed his new wife. Again the film was only nominated for Best Picture.

So what've I learnt from Maurice Chevalier films released in 1931-1932? Women don't care if you screw around, basically everyone sings or at least talks in rhymes, America is ample substitute for either Vienna or Paris and women find Frenchmen in boater hats absolutely resistable. Surprisingly there was no nomination for Chevalier in the Best Actor line-up however that year there was only three nominees. But Maurice will pop up again in this search later on when I watch the film which he was nominated for Best Actor - The Love Parade. Until then its goodbye to cheeky French chit-chat and oh so twee musical numbers.