The acting in this movie is really good.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Blistering performances.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

When Criterion released its Lubitsch Musicals set a few years ago, I watched and really loved the other three films, and meant to get around to a second viewing of The Love Parade. I failed to do that until now. Well, it's awesome. The best of those four films, and that's saying a Hell of a lot. This rivals my favorite Lubitsch film, Trouble in Paradise. He was one director who really understood right away how to use sound. This was his first talkie, and most consider it the first musical where the songs drive the plot, instead of the classic revue/Broadway show type of musical like The Broadway Melody or The Hollywood Revue of 1929, both of which were so impressive to people at the time that they were nominated for Best Picture (with The Broadway Melody winning, of course). The Love Parade was also nominated, but not until the next year, since it didn't get a Los Angeles release until January of 1930 (and it lost, of course, to All Quiet on the Western Front). Maurice Chevalier plays a philandering count who gets kicked out of Paris. He retreats to his homeland of Sylvania, whose queen (Jeanette MacDonald, in her film debut) is being pressured to marry by her cabinet (it will look good and perhaps convince other countries to give them loans). Chevalier isn't the marrying kind, but the queen is all kinds of beautiful, so he relents. Unfortunately, his new position holds no power whatsoever - he's a mere figurehead - and it upsets his male pride. This is an absolutely charming film. Chevalier and MacDonald are both hilarious, as are all the other characters (their servants, played by Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth, who have a romance of their own, are particularly wonderful), the European royalty settings are gorgeous to look at and the songs are great. The only minor problem is that occasionally, given the primitive recording techniques, some of the dialogue and songs can be difficult to understand. Still, a masterpiece.

Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald hooked up for the first of their four pairings in this early sound Ernst Lubitsch musical. It's a silly affair as most musicals of the day were but this being pre-code director Lubitsch takes every opportunity to invoke sexual innuendo and keep Ms. McDonald in diaphanous negligees.Much to the disappointment of her ministers Queen Louise of Sylvania is resigned to the fact she will never find a suitable husband. Enter Count Renard who may not be suitable for affairs of state but irresistible in affairs of love. They marry and the free range rogue is quickly fenced in an ordered to act properly with his new title and responsibilities by Louise who pulls rank on him. Renaud soon begins to chafe at the trappings of royalty and what he sees as amounting to role reversal and decides to walk. Such a scandal could rock Sylvania to its foundation. A desperate Louise attempts to balance both issues without offending chauvinist Renaud's already wounded manhood.Inane as place and premise may be Lubitsh keeps things racy throughout while taking satiric pokes at societal hypocrisy and royal obsequiousness. He magnifies and compares the royal duo's predicament of maintaining decorum and propriety while the help, energetically and acrobatically performed by Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth, in unabashed declaration announce it's great to be a commoner.The set design and the cinematography by Victor Milner gives the film a 14 carat opulence and Mo and Mac look dashing and ravishing most of the time in uniform and gown which allows this fairy tale of a musical to play itself out whimsically and seductively courtesy of Lubitsch's deft touch.

Ernst Lubitsch was at his wits end in trying to find a leading lady for his first talking picture which was going to star Maurice Chevalier, the discovery of the year. He needed someone who was young, could sing and dance, look regal enough to be a Queen but ravishing enough to wear a skimpy nightgown. He had almost decided on Bebe Daniels but then saw a screen test of a former chorus girl who had been bought to Hollywood as a discovery of Richard Dix - Jeanette MacDonald. Her work consisted of a couple of second rate Broadway shows but with Lubitsch to guide her, she was perfection!!!With champagne bottles, the Eiffel Tower and dancing showgirls as a montage, the scene is set in Paris as dashing playboy Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier) has a narrow escape from the husband of his latest mistress - "She's terribly jealous" Chevalier says, in a typical audience aside. He and his loyal valet (Lupino Lane) bid adieu to Paris "Paris, Still Stay the Same", as the song is carried on by his score of female admirers - even the dogs have a chorus!!!Meanwhile in Sylvania, beautiful Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald) is awakened from her sleep - "Why am I always awakened from my dreams?" - sweet lady-in-waiting (Virginia Bruce) asks "What did my lady dream?" That is Jeanette's cue to sing the beautiful "Dream Lover". The song takes her from her opulent bed to her bath!!! The most pressing concern for the country is the Queen's matrimonial state - she, for one, is sick of it!!! The Castle Band is forever playing the Wedding March!! The problem is the groom would only be a Prince Consort and not a King - and no red blooded male wants to take it on!!Alfred goes back to his home in Sylvania and when Louise meets him she is not impressed - until she reads the accounts of all his scandalous affairs - together they sing "Anything to Please the Queen". At dinner that night Alfred sings of his "Love Parade" of women, but that she has the charms of them all, rolled into one - "the eyes of Dauphine, smile of Josephine"!! The next scene is the marriage and Louise is absolutely gorgeous in one of the longest trains ever, but the ceremony is causing Alfred second thoughts - he wants his manhood back!!! Marriage proves tough for Alfred - Louise has her engagements during the day, she arranges tennis and bridge for Alfred, plus an afternoon nap "to keep up his strength"!! His valet is finding life more harmonious with Lulu (lively Lillian Roth) - they do a comic song and dance to "Let's Be Common" - one of the highlights of this wonderful movie. Alfred is so frustrated - he even sings a song about it - "Nobody's Using Now". In his spare time he has drawn up a budget to help the troubled country stay solvent but because he is only a Prince Consort his plans are not considered. When he is told that Sylvania is going ahead with a loan but it all depends on his behaviour during a night at the ballet - he takes a stand!! He walks into the performance late and amid cheers and claps manages to upstage Louise. Now the roles are reversed and Louise has a humiliating night as Alfred at last gets his manhood back!!This is a dazzling film from the first scene of Lupino Lane deftly swishing a tablecloth out from under a set table as he sings "Champagne". The songs could almost tell the story on their own, each song was essential to the plot - unlike the Operetta tradition of the time which had characters bursting into song for no reason. There was also fluid camera movement ie when Victor Milmer sweeps his camera over the elaborate wedding and ballet sequences. Lupino Lane and Lillian Roth make a riotous "common" couple and compliment the more regal pair. Among the "Lubitsch touches" - an American tour group are driven through the beautiful Sylvania and are clearly not interested - however when they hear that the income is over $100,000,000 a year - they are all agog!! Silent comedian Ben Turpin also makes a cameo appearance as a crosseyed messenger - supposedly unlucky for Alfred!!!Highly, Highly Recommended.

There isn't much to this early Ruritanian musical, adapted from some sort of stage play to feature the singing of Maurice Chevalier, the rakish count Alfred Renard, and Jeanette MacDonald as Queen Louise of Sylvania. In the early sections the count is a cheerfully cynical Don Juan, and in the end Petruchio. That is, he is a libertine in Paris and gets sent home, where he marries the queen, but soon tires of being second and uses coolness and distance to teach her a lesson. The refeminization of the dominant woman—that is, stripping her of her power, leaving her simpering—is rather unpleasant. MacDonald is earnest but unconvincing as a queen, largely because of her relaxed posture and her accent, though she sings like a good stage monarch. She and Chevalier do have the good grace to be self-parodic—he's at his best explaining, with a charming grin, why he is the only one in the movie with a French accent. There's a charming second couple, the count's valet (Lupino Lane) and the maid Lulu (Lillian Roth), who parallel the queen's courtship of the count with their own rather cruder antics. Also nice is to hear the rumbling voice of the great character actor Eugene Palette, who plays a lamentably small part, but plays it well.