Welcome to the first Oscar Film Journal entry of 2026! I did forty of these things in 2025 and hope to beat that record this year. Let's get started....
Today's subject is one of the earliest Best Picture nominees, from the third annual Oscars (1929/1930). Premiering in November 1929 and directed by Ernst Lubitsch in his first attempt at a talkie, the film is The Love Parade, a pre-Code musical starring Maurice Chevalier and a debuting Jeanette McDonald.
The Love Parade is about a military attaché to a foreign embassy stationed in Paris, who gets sent back to his own country of Sylvania (Wait, you mean the same fictional country later featured in Duck Soup??) as punishment for a slew of scandalous affairs, ordered to report to Queen Louise, herself a confirmed bachelorette. The pair of course hit it off right away; she is intrigued by his serial philandering and he in turn is fascinated by her disinterest in marriage. They have a torrid affair and agree to wed, with the understanding that he will become a Prince Consort, a figurehead with no real power or responsibilities. But almost immediately he's unable to come to grips with his newfound lack of purpose, and the relationship quickly falls apart.
Visually and technically this film is quite well-made, considering how poorly photographed many of the earliest talkies were (The clunky and over-sensitive sound equipment often hampered the camera's ability to move around the set in the early days of sound film). Unlike say Alibi or The Cocoanuts which were released only six or seven months earlier, The Love Parade doesn't suffer from muddy dialogue or the need to drench all the paper props to avoid crunching sounds. There's some nice cinematography here, coupled with a bit of atmospheric lighting, and some very lush, elaborate sets (a few of which reminded me of similar ones in Duck Soup and the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - I wonder if they were reused for those films).
The two leads are engaging enough; McDonald is very charismatic and her singing voice is quite powerful, while Chevalier conveys the role of the dashing gentleman about town whom the ladies can't resist. I did find his character pretty unlikable by the end though, once he rejects his new role as Louise's First Gentleman almost immediately and seems to have no qualms about ditching her as soon as it becomes convenient.
For the first two acts this movie seems to have kind of a feminist bent; the unmarried Queen who's fed up with her subordinates' obsession with her love life, the seemingly supportive male love interest, the stuffy diplomats who disapprove of a woman being the head of the household, so to speak. But then once the Chevalier character packs up his stuff, Louise breaks down in tears and offers to give up her throne to follow him back to Paris. He instead offers to stay with the new understanding that she will essentially abdicate her responsibilities to him. So in the end all the female empowerment goes out the window for a traditional, patriarchal fairy tale ending. Pretty disappointing turn of events as far as I'm concerned; you were so close to turning the romantic comedy on its ear.
For a 108-minute film the story has precious few actual beats. Granted there are numerous musical numbers, but none of them were show stealers, per se, and the comedic elements didn't really stand out either. What we're left with is a technically well-made film for its time, that doesn't offer much actual meat to sink one's teeth into.
It's a slight thumbs down for me.
I give The Love Parade **1/2 out of ****.
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