The Capital of Pre-Code Operettas : Paris at Paramount and MGM
Résumé
This chapter explores Ernst Lubitsch’s famous definition of “Paris Paramount” being “the most Parisian,” compared to MGM’s and the real capital of France. It analyses the early 1930s Hollywood operettas featuring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, partially located in Paris and involving French culture and customs. It shows that Paris is not so much the spectacular setting it would become in the 1950s, as a series of conventions and codes built in a cross-cultural dialogue between Europe and the USA. It thus allows to explore the ideological boundaries in Pre-Code musical comedies. The Lubitsch and Mamoulian musicals entwine several pre-existing aspects of Paris, thus building their own myth: the sentimental and romantic Paris from the popular international “Paris songs”; the place for sexual freedom inherited from theatrical traditions (the entertaining “Gay Paree” or the setting of French farces); and a city socially divided between working class and aristocracy. That composite myth of Paris is common to Paramount and MGM, but does not exclude the very nuances expressed in Lubitsch’s view.