1930s musical

I just saw this for the first time. It reminded me of a Merry Melodies cartoon at times. For example the lead vocals on several songs are sung by many different characters.

Likewise it must be one of the first movies to incorporate a soundtrack where the characters "move in time" to the music much like a cartoon.

It's not at all like the 1950s musicals (though those weren't identical either -there's a big difference between Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Silk Stockings).

This is more like an operetta from previous decades in its setting, etc. It involves high nobility, sexual situations and innuendo, mistaken identity, and wonderful reversals of traditional gender roles (e.g., it's a woman, not a man, riding furiously on horseback in a race against a train, and then leaping off the horse to stand bravely in the midst of the tracks with arm upraised, shouting STOP to the train -- in order to save her man from the train, for them to marry).

And the songs are fantastic - you know most of them. They were invented for this movie.

It's very very clever, very very funny - highly artificial, very imaginative.

It's a great movie -and shame on that bastard Breen for cutting it!PCA- Prudes,Cretins,and *beep*

1930s musicals were much different at the various studios. This one is a good example of the operetta European chic at Paramount, compared with the gritty working class realism at Warner, or the escapist romanticism at RKO.

Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul