Maytime (1937)

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maytime (1937)

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Maytime (1937)

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Rating:
Date: 2008-04-09
This one will make you shed a tear or two
Most of Nelson and Jeanette films will make you sing and smile and once
in a while make you shed a tear. I always wanted to know why my mom
cried looking at their movies years ago when i sat on her lap while they
played on tv in the early sixties. Now that im older, and have just seen
this movie, i also shed a tear for this delightfull tale of love.

Rating:
Date: 2008-02-26
Maytime
I have loved mac/eddy for over 50 years. Each time I fall in love with them all over again. Every movie they made was unique. I found Maytime to be beautiful.The story was beautiful and sad. As in another of there movies the Bitter with the sweet.I wish the youth of today could watch the true artist of yesterday.Never will our world experience two more perfect talents.My only regret is I missed them in person.I promise you watch one and all eight will be part of your collection.

Rating:
Date: 2007-12-12
Memorable Maytime!
Maytime has all the elements of the great movie musical; it has a wonderful score, star-crossed lovers, an antagonist, and a believable love story at its core. This is the Nelson Eddy matinee idol that my mom snuck out of school to see. He is bright, witty, talented, fun, and self-effacing but loving with all his being. Jeanette is exactly who she should be; talented, beautiful, charismatic but capable of great emotion and love for Nelson. John Barrymore as her manager/husband makes us cringe as he jealously manipulates all aspects of Jeanette's life including her personal life. The climax upsets me to this day! But the ending has also never left me. No matter how many times I watch it, I cannot help but cry at the end. This is a movie one can watch at any age or stage in her life...and enjoy a good cry.

Rating:
Date: 2007-11-21
Did this film inspire James Cameron's Titanic?
This film was one of Irving Thalberg's personal projects. He had planned to make it a color film, but then he died of a heart attack in 1936 and the footage that had been shot was scrapped. A year later the project was resurrected resulting in the film we have today. It features the great voices of Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, lavish production values, some great examples of McDonald's singing in her prime, and one of the last great roles the legendary John Barrymore ever had. Although the movie is 70 years old, I'll just warn you that what could pass for spoilers are in the rest of the review.

I have the VHS tape, but I also saw it on TCM the other night as part of their guest programmers' month. During the film's introduction, the guest host said something that forced me to look at this film in a new light. She said "it's a lot like Titanic". You know, she was right. In many ways if you delete the music, make the site of the entire movie a doomed ship, and make John Barrymore a worse shot, you have James Cameron's Titanic. It makes me wonder how much he was influenced by this movie when he made his own film.

Where the films part ways is that this film more accurately portrays the attitudes of the times in which it was set than Titanic did. The love story is very moving and the music just adds to its poignancy. Also, John Barrymore turns in a perfect supporting performance as Jeanette's patron turned husband who realizes his wife doesn't love him but doesn't realize why until he sees Eddy and McDonald onstage together during a performance. Barrymore says few lines in this film, but his mannerisms and facial expressions say it all. If the ending of the movie doesn't tug at your heart, I don't know what will. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Date: 2007-09-06
Lavish operetta is a "must" for MacDonald/Eddy fans...
"Lavish" must have been a word expressly invented for MGM musicals of the '30s, '40s and '50s. There is no other word to describe how richly produced this film is for the singing sweethearts. In fact, the visual splendor is so glorious in B&W that you can't help thinking how much more glorious the whole thing would have been in the kind of Technicolor MGM bestowed the following year on SWEETHEARTS.

Not only lavish production-wise, but populated with so many singing extras and townspeople that you have to wonder what today's movie fans think of this sort of extravaganza produced in broad operetta style.

The story is heavy on romantic sentiment, scented with cherry blossoms during the early scenes and pretty looking snowflakes for the finale when the melodrama turns up the dramatics and the dreamy love affair is smashed by a fatal shot. Jeanette and Nelson may not have lingered for a farewell kiss, except that they do in the afterlife ending. For the finale, the cherry blossoms are falling again and it's all so Happy Valentine in conception that you can't help wondering how this is going over today except for the die-hard Jeannete and Nelson fans.

For those fans, this must be one of the most heavenly of all their films together. They sing everything from "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" to operatic duos and the haunting "Will You Remember?", both in what seems like splendid voice. Jeanette is particularly lovely to look at while she sings "Les Filles de Cadiz" in a spectacular white ballgown that would be the envy of Marie Antoinette.

Jeanette gives a fine performance, carrying the film from the start with her turn as an old lady recalling her romance with a young operatic baritone. John Barrymore is on hand as her would-be lover, although one is never quite sure when he's reading his lines off a cue card over her shoulder. He was then at a critical stage of his personal demons and sad decline.

For MacDonald/Eddy fans this is a pure delight. Others beware.