Recitative and song, a style common to operettas, was introduced to film by René Clair but was perhaps given its finest movie outing in Love Me Tonight – Mamoulian manages at a single stroke to out-Lubitsch Lubitsch and out-Clair Clair.  The opening sequence in which the sounds of everyday life – leaves being brushed off a pavement, the picks of road-menders, alarm clocks sounding – all combine in a montage of sound, was unique to Mamoulian (although he had used it before, in 1929’s Applause):

‘Music unnoticed at first, has picked up all these sounds and woven them into a delicate rhythm to make a musical number that only Mamoulian could have conceived.’

Halliwell sums up Mamoulian’s eclectic career:

‘Over the years he made a number of films which vary in quality but at their best show a fluent command of the medium.’

Halliwell gave Chevalier this dedication, citing Love Me Tonight as his most representative work:

‘For his incomparable technique as a singing entertainer; and for cheering up two widely separate generations of the international audience.’

Year: 1932