Some where about a half century ago in Dallas, Texas, I saw a summer stock company present "Maytime", and I can tell you it was much better than this anti-feminist turkey. All of Romberg's lovely romantic music except "Sweetheart" has been tossed, a typical MGM trick, but Jeanette does get to sing some good stuff in its place. There's "Les Filles De Cadix", for example, but a good part of the end of the film is taken up by an ersatz "opera" called "Czaritsa", derived from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. You should plan to snooze through this, but set your alarm to wake up for the tragic ending. I won't tell you what it is, even if I did check the spoilers box.
I used the phrase "anti-feminist" advisedly. The slant is (emphasised more in this film than in the operetta) that women should not want to have careers. That's for the men. The girls should just live for love, probably mainly in the kitchen and the nursery. To be fair, Jeanette isn't relegated to housewifely duties. In fact, she lives mainly in marble halls, but in this story she might not have been so lucky if she had given up her career for love.
Hardly anyone shines in this botched "Maytime". Barrymore is uniformly glum, even when things are going his way. Eddy is an overbearing masher, the gods gift to women. Bing is embarrassingly unfunny in what I presume was intended as a comic relief role. Jeanette seems a bit thin of voice, but that may have been the fault of the recording, or aging of the source print. What is there to say good about it all? Well, the camera work is first rate, and MGM seemingly spared no expense for the sets.
I used the phrase "anti-feminist" advisedly. The slant is (emphasised more in this film than in the operetta) that women should not want to have careers. That's for the men. The girls should just live for love, probably mainly in the kitchen and the nursery. To be fair, Jeanette isn't relegated to housewifely duties. In fact, she lives mainly in marble halls, but in this story she might not have been so lucky if she had given up her career for love.
Hardly anyone shines in this botched "Maytime". Barrymore is uniformly glum, even when things are going his way. Eddy is an overbearing masher, the gods gift to women. Bing is embarrassingly unfunny in what I presume was intended as a comic relief role. Jeanette seems a bit thin of voice, but that may have been the fault of the recording, or aging of the source print. What is there to say good about it all? Well, the camera work is first rate, and MGM seemingly spared no expense for the sets.