The Smiling Lieutenant
Tags: romantic

Plot synopsis:
In Vienna, Lieutenant Nikolaus "Niki" von Preyn (Maurice Chevalier) meets Franzi (Claudette Colbert), the leader of an all-female-orchestra. They soon fall in love with each other. While standing in formation before a parade honoring the visiting royal family of Flausenthurm, Niki takes the opportunity to wink at Franzi in the crowd. Unfortunately the gesture is intercepted by Anna, the Princess of Flausenthurm (Miriam Hopkins). The naive Princess assumes offense, leading the lieutenant to convince her that he slighted her because she is thought to be very beautiful. Besotted, the Princess demands she has to marry the lieutenant, or, she'll marry an American instead. The international incident is narrowly averted by having them get married.
The Lieutenant sneaks away from his bride to wander the streets of Flausenthurm to find his girlfriend. The princess learns of this and decides to confront Franzi. After the initial confrontation, Franzi sees that the princess is in fact deeply in love with the lieutenant, and decides to save the marriage by giving the princess a makeover, singing "Jazz up your lingerie!"
The results are a complete success as the Lieutenant follows his satin-clad, cigarette-puffing bride into the bedroom and closes the door – only to open it and give the audience a last song and a suggestive wink.

Review: There is more real sexuality between male and female in five minutes of a Lubitsch musical than in two and a half hours of any average film you're likely to see today.
A fabulous show-case for the talents of three new Paramount stars - Maurice Chevalier has never been better, Claudette Colbert is buoyant - and Miriam Hopkins is an absolute marvel as the innocent princess.
The film often recalls the lilting grace of Lubitsch's "The Love Parade" but it also looks ahead to the ironic romantic triangle of Lubitsch's lauded masterpiece "Trouble in Paradise".Here, Chavalier's Lieutenant Niki is torn between an aristocratic princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins) and a working class violinist Franzi (Claudette Colbert), the same way Herbert Marshall's Gaston in "Trouble in Paradise" must choose either Kay Francis's wealthy Madame Colete or his fellow thief, Miriam Hopkin's Lily.
But the film's charm or brilliance lies in its joyous musical numbers and songs, and its ironic immoral look at its characters.
There is, for instance, an irony and immorality in the lovely number "Jazz Up Your Lingerie", as Princess Anna tries to emulate Franzi in order to look sexy for Niki."The Smiling Lieutenant" remains Lubitsch's most underrated musical.
The results - THE SMILING LIEUTENANT.Director Ernst Lubitsch created a triumph in this scintillating pre-Code film which is as light and airy now as it was when first released.
The fact that this worked so beautifully with both his dialogue and the film music - (songs and background music, which serve to move the plot right along) - only one year after Hollywood fully embraced sound pictures shows the genius of the director's craft.Oozing Gallic charm, Maurice Chevalier lets his musical skills and highly facile face telegraph to the audience exactly what kind of an amorous rogue his character is.
Madly in love with the beautiful Claudette Colbert, but forced to wed the (slightly) frumpy Miriam Hopkins, he is highly amusing as he watches his romantic house of cards come crashing down.
The ladies also add greatly to the fun, with sleek Colbert advising pouty Hopkins in song to jazz up her lingerie if she wants to win Chevalier's attentions.
It took me several films before I finally appreciated Lubitsch and out of what I have seen, The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) has quickly surpassed the also excellent To Be or Not (1942) to Be as my favorite.
It has a delightful cast, especially Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins as the women who find themselves drawn to Maurice Chevalier's lusty lieutenant.
If the film has a flaw, then it's that some of the musical numbers are a touch forgettable, but Colbert's wonderful "Jazz Up Your Lingerie" more than makes up for that!
The Smiling Lieutenant was his first collaboration with screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, and while Lubitsch was no doubt the driving personality behind his famous "touch", it seems Raphaelson (who would have a hand in most of the director's subsequent hits) thought enough along the same lines to make the pictures he wrote by far the most "touched".
So while Lubitsch gives us visual clues such as the young lady using a secret knock to get into Maurice Chevalier's room, followed by a close-up of a light going on and off, it was probably Raphaelson who contributed some of that witty wordplay that adequately sets the tone.
My favourite example of this has to be Chevalier's reply to Miriam Hopkins asking if married people winked; "Oh they do, but not at each other!" And then there are Clifford Grey's lyrics, which playfully delve into some of the more inventive innuendo, most memorably in "Breakfast Table Love".Chevalier is the perfect star for this kind of understated ribaldry.
She is excellent here as the naïve and frumpy young princess, displaying her finest comedic sensibilities.The Smiling Lieutenant contains only five songs, far fewer than previous Lubitsch musicals.
Once more, thanks to TCM, we get the chance of watching this wonderful, charming, early talkie by the master of sophisticated comedy and innuendo, Ernst Lubitsch.This is an absolutely entertaining and absorbing tale of a carefree, debonair Viennese Lieutenant, who falls for a violin player, thus finding his perfect sexual counterpart, but because of circumstances, becoming married to a prudish, mousey, princess.Chevalier is the perfect "Smiling Lieutenant"  of the title, singing in great from with his heavy trademark, french-accent.
Miriam Hopkins is excellent as the princess, who falls madly in love with Chevalier, and who will do anything to have him!!Just as it happened with "Trouble in Paradise", I really hope that this gem, as well as "Design for Living", "Monte Carlo", "The Love Parade", "Love Me Tonight", "One Hour With You", will become available on DVD, in decent form, as they deserve, as primary examples, of the long gone Pre-Code Era!!!.
The casting is perfect: a flirtatious, mugging Chevalier; a young and nicely naughty Claudette Colbert; and most notably Miriam Hopkins effectively playing the extremes - a prim, virginal innocent who learns the ways of a vamp in order to hold her man.
This film will please anyone looking for an easy time at the movies thanks to Ernst Lubitsch..
It must have been that the movie-going public loved seeing Maurice Chevalier in those tight uniforms, he seemed to be in them in most of those early talkies he made for American studios.
Maurice is busy planning his latest campaign when a friend played by Charlie Ruggles asks him with that Chevalier charm to intercede for him with a female violinist in Claudette Colbert.Maurice does, but the sly rogue gets her for himself.
And then he's put on duty to greet the visiting royal house of Flausenthurm which includes King George Barbier and Princess Miriam Hopkins.In one of those priceless Ernst Lubitsch moments, Chevalier while at attention spots Colbert across the street and throws a few knowing smiles and winks.
Of course Maurice the old campaigner likes the idea of being married to the dowdy Hopkins if he's got Claudette on the side.I won't go any farther, but as you can see just by what I tell you The Smiling Lieutenant is a film made before the Code was put in place.
But it's what also makes it hold up very well for today's audience.No big song hits come from The Smiling Lieutenant, but Chevalier delivers what's there with his Gallic charm.
Chevalier is at his most delightfully awful in The Smiling Lieutenant, playing a philandering Viennese officer currently courting violinist Claudette Colbert.
Claudette Colbert teaches Miriam Hopkins about modern fashions in "Jazz Up Your Lingerie", easily the best number in the film and, in my mind, one of the weirdest and most entertaining in cinema history.
Popular Continental crooner Maurice Chevalier plays his typical role of a Viennese roué who steals the girl (an almost unrecognizably young Claudette Colbert appearing as a concert violinist) of his comrade-in-arms (Charles Ruggles, who unaccountably disappears from the film after the first few scenes!); standing guard at the ceremony of visiting royalty, he creates a diplomatic scandal for seemingly winking at the naïve princess (Miriam Hopkins) when in fact he had been making eyes at Colbert who was watching the parade from the sidelines!
As is customary for Lubitsch, what is left unsaid is about as important as what is spelled out and THE SMILING LIEUTENANT provides the director several instances wherein to indulge his subtle wit: the very opening sequence showing a tailor, who had called at Chevalier's to demand payment, leaving when the door is unanswered while a girl is ushered inside soon afterwards by the accomplice-butler; the sequence showing Ruggles trailing behind Chevalier and Colbert and carrying her violin case; Colbert's indoctrination of the stuffy Hopkins into what the modern woman wears and which music she plays, etc..
In old Vienna, lieutenant playboy Maurice Chevalier (as Nikolaus "Niki" von Preyn) woos cute violinist Claudette Colbert (as Franzi) into an affair.
When Mr. Chevalier makes flirty love-muffin faces at Ms. Colbert during a parade, relatively plain Miriam Hopkins (as Princess Anna) rides by in her carriage and catches him winking at her highness.
Royal father George Barbier (as King Adolf XV) expects Chevalier to atone for the affront by taking Ms. Hopkins' hand in marriage...This high-brow comedy-musical is very nicely produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
The musical highlight is "Jazz up Your Lingerie" as sung by Colbert and Hopkins; after all these years, that's still good advice.****** The Smiling Lieutenant (7/10/31) Ernst Lubitsch ~ Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins, George Barbier.
THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (Paramount, 1931), directed by Ernst Lubitsch, adapted from "The Waltz Dream" by Leopold Jacobson and Felix Dormann, is a real sort-after re-discovery early screen musical starring the legendary entertainer and Frenchman, Maurice Chevalier.
While successful upon its release and nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture, it was only, until in recent years that, unlike other Chevalier releases during his Paramount period (1929-1933), particularly those opposite his most popular co-star, Jeanette MacDonald, including THE LOVE PARADE (1929), ONE HOUR WITH YOU (1932) and LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932), THE SMILING LIEUTENANT never surfaced on commercial or public television.
Upon arising from his sleep following an unseen fling with a young blonde, Niki is approached by his fellow officer friend named Max (Charles Ruggles), a married man (which really doesn't matter to him) who is madly in love with Franzi (Claudette Colbert), a female violinist and leader of an all girls band working at a Beer Garden Cafe.
Some time later, Niki and his regiment receive orders to attend the arrival of the visiting King Adolph (George Barbier) and his daughter, Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins) from Flausenthurm.
With music and lyrics by Oscar Struss and Clifford Grey, songs include: "That's the Army" (sung by Maurice Chevalier); "Live for Today" (sung by Claudette Colbert); "Breakfast Table Love" (sung by Chevalier and Colbert); "Live for Today"/"I Like Him" (compiled in separate scenes as sung by Chevalier and Colbert, and Miriam Hopkins); "Jazz Up Your Lingerie" (sung by Colbert and Hopkins); and "That's the Army" (reprise sung by Chevalier).
In spite the songs being unmemorable, the two that come off best are "Live for Today," and the lively "Jazz Up Your Lingerie." What's more interesting is not only some of the risqué lyrics ("With every bit of liver I start to quiver"), but finding Colbert (telling Hopkins: "Be a good girl") and Hopkins (responding, "I won't!") in rare form singing.
In Chevalier tradition, as in THE LOVE PARADE and ONE HOUR WITH YOU, his singing solos are sung directly towards the camera.According to sources, THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, which had been previously filmed in Germany as EIN WALZERTRAUM (1925) with Mady Christians and Willy Fritzch, also included a French language version filmed simultaneously with this production, each featuring the main leads of Chevalier, Colbert and Hopkins.For a 1931 release, THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, except for several violin solos performed by Colbert, includes extensive use of underscoring, indicating that early talkies such as this did not actually play without some sort of underscoring to set the mood or pace.
I think I've seen my fill of Ernst Lubitsch's early movies starring Maurice Chevalier.I discovered Lubitsch's later films -- "Ninotchka," "The Shop Around the Corner," "To Be or Not to Be" -- first, and instantly fell in love with them.
His early musicals are all right, I suppose, if you're in the mood for them, but they're missing the trace of sweet melancholy that make his later films so unique.But mostly, I've discovered that I just dislike Maurice Chevalier.
In "The Smiling Lieutenant," he's nearly always on screen, but one of the only times he's not, during a musical number in which Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins sing about spicing up Hopkins' wardrobe of lingerie, ends up being the highlight of the film.Grade: C.
I love Lubitsch, I worship the golden age and I am a great fan of the early talkies and the jazz age, but this film has been a sad disappointment to me.
This is the fourth and final film directed by Ernst Lubitsch that starred Maurice Chevalier.
Since he is such a great lover, she instantly falls for him and they "do it" in a scene that is surprisingly frank for the times.A bit later, Chevalier is at a parade for visiting King Adolf (no relation with the nasty tempered nut-case of WWII fame) and his daughter (Miriam Hopkins).
In this film, Maurice Chevalier plays Danny Zuko, Claudette Colbert plays Rizzo and Miriam Hopkins plays Sandy in a delightful musical comedy in which the square Sandy gets a sexy makeover from a bad-girl Pink Lady and wins the heart of the bad-boy smiling lieutenant of the Thunderbirds.OK, OK, it's not a perfect analogy, but watch the last few minutes in which Sandy, er, I mean Princess Anna, learns to dress sexy, smoke cigarettes seductively and dance - and tell me it's not, at root, the same story.The plot develops differently, of course.
Come to think of it, Claudette Colbert who plays Franzi is a real-life Frenchy, so perhaps the analogy is closer than I first thought.A great pre-code sexy musical comedy that may, just may, remind you of Grease..
But this factoid is of interest in that, 3 years later, MGM would try the same thing, once again with M Chevalier directed by Ernst Lubitsch, on another of the major hits of the Viennese musical stage during the first decade of the 20th century, and that time the result would be a smash success: The Merry Widow.
(Replacing Miriam Hopkins with Jeannette McDonald helped a lot, as did Lehar's music, which is a lot better that Straus's.) This movie didn't do much for me - neither does A Waltzdream, frankly - but it's interesting to see a first attempt at something MGM, Lubitsch, and Chevalier would soon do so much better..
But then Niki, called to duty as the captain of the guard while the King and Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins) of Flausenthurm are welcomed into Vienna with a grand procession, smiles and winks at Franzi from across the cobblestone streetjust as the king and princess pass by in their open coach.
The smiling Lieutenant begins as a sweet,funny and old fashioned operetta and finishes as one of the most daring,surprising and irresistible musicals of all time.I'ts Lubitsch at his best:a sort of Ninotchka of his musical period.The story is simple: a seductive lieutenant is in love with a musician,Franzi.When he smiled to her during the passage of a little country's princess,the princess interpret wrongly his intention and decide to marry him.Some months later,unhappy husband of a unhappy wife he find Franzi again...But spoilers herein and here is the most brilliant point of the script:Chevalier doesn't end with Franzi but his own wife after the musician gave her some "lessons" of seduction.The actors are all quite good:Maurice Chevalier is as charming and funny as always.Claudette Colbert great in one of her earlier performance.And she shows a barely known talent for singing.But I think the first prize comes to the Miriam Hopkins,in the princess's part she is just magnificent.She's as convincing as the cute and old falhsioned dove as the femme fatale.I've already seen a bit of his comic talent in "Trouble in Paradise" in which she does an exhilarating naive secretary .She's even better there.
Charlie Ruggles does a nice although too short demonstration of his comic talent.There's not so much song in it but they're all great.The lieutenant "Ra-Ta-Ta-Ta'" acts as a pleasant leitmotiv."Breakfast is time for love" has the soft charm of One Hour With You.But my favorite stays "Jazz Up Your Lingerie"Certainly one of the greatest number of all time!.
Claudette Colbert and a little bit of pre-Code naughtiness makes this one good.
The plot has a somewhat dippy Maurice Chevalier marrying a Princess (Miriam Hopkins) to avoid an international incident, thus breaking his lover's (Colbert's) heart.
The movie is pre-Code which made scenes like that possible, as well as allude to unmarried sex between Colbert and Chevalier, and Hopkins's desire to consummate her marriage.
In this fictional European country (with a funny name that the country folk can't even pronounce!), the king's daughter (Miriam Hopkins) falls in love with the King's bodyguard (Chevalier), unaware that he is very much in love with the violin player (Claudette Colbert) of a popular girl's orchestra.
Hopkins transforms from an impish brat into sexy vamp, getting rid of those Princess Leia like rolls on the side of her head when Colbert (in her second film with Chevalier) is charmingly alluring.
104: The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - released 8/1/1931, viewed 7/2/08.DOUG: For his follow-up to the dreary Monte Carlo, Lubitsch gathered three of his most reliable muses, Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, and Claudette Colbert, all in one movie.
Colbert plays Franzi, Niki's spunky violinist girlfriend, and Miriam Hopkins plays the princess, endearingly sexually repressed and prone to crying spells.
Especially charming are the scenes between Franzi and Anna, particularly the racy musical number "Jazz up your Lingerie." (That can't be Code approved.) As in the best Lubitsch fare, everyone's that unique brand of crazy that's endearingly charming and sexy and funny.
Right along with Trouble in Paradise, this is one of Lubitsch's best, and one of the great Pre-code comedy-musicals.KEVIN: And now we flash back to the first meeting of Ernst Lubitsch with the beautiful bag of wonderfulness called Miriam Hopkins.
Lubitsch again teams with Maurice Chevalier (as the titular lieutenant), and also brings in Claudette Colbert, who's never looked lovelier as the titular lieutenant's initial love interest.
Plus, it leads us to the image of Miriam Hopkins that we would come to love in later films.
in other words his penis, is exclaimed at one point by Lieutenant Maurice Chevalier to a young Claudette Colbert with their love affair heating up.
Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times selected The Smiling Lieutenant as one of the "Ten Best Films of 1931".
Many of the situations recall The Love Parade (1929) in which Maurice Chevalier starred for producer/director Lubitsch opposite Jeanette MacDonald.