Review of Love Me Tonight (1932) by Blake B — 11 Nov 2004

The movies The General done by Buster Keaton, Love Me Tonight done by Rouben Mamoulian, and Rebel Without a Cause done by Nicholas Ray all have a common theme. These movies all show what it takes to be able to achieve love. The characters go through some outrageous events to be able to show their love for the woman in the films. The actors go through anything from heroics to just singing to the woman, but no matter what they achieve their goal.

In The General Buster Keaton?s character is a train engineer operating during the Civil War era. He has two true loves and one is Annabelle and the other is his train, The General. His first sign of love is giving a gift from the heart to Annabelle, which is a picture of him and his train. This picture shows great admiration because it has the background and foreground in focus, showing importance of the subject. He also has kids escort him to Annabelle?s and tries to discard them by shoving them out the door so they could be alone. Annabelle wants a real man though, a man who wears a uniform serving his country. Johnny, Buster Keaton, tries to enlist in the military but fails because they will not accept engineers. She doesn?t give him a chance to explain and then ignores him. Later in the film his beloved General is stolen and along with it, Annabelle. Johnny chases after his train not knowing that Annabelle is in there. He finally catches up to the army men who stole his train, and is hiding under a table in a house. He then sees Annabelle through a peephole, which the camera uses a point of view shot for the effect. Johnny then rescues Annabelle and through many different comedic performances he gets his train back too. He ends up stuffing Annabelle into a sack and throwing her on the train and then takes his train back. While doing all of this, the Union Army is chasing after him and he warns the Confederates that they are after him and the Confederates go stop the Union. When he gets back he is made into an officer for his heroic deeds. This causes Annabelle to get what she wants, a man in uniform, and allows Johnny to get what he wants, to kiss Ann and enlist. He performed all this by doing heroic deeds and also accidental reasons. He never meant to rescue Ann in the first place; until he found out she was on that train. You are able to tell the couple belong because he meet her at the very beginning and she kind of pushes him away because he isn?t enlisted. You then see them being drawn together again when she thinks that she came all this way to rescue her, when it was actually the train he came for. So again they didn?t find love, love found them on accident.

Love Me Tonight was a musical that showed a fantasy tale love between two characters. Maurice who was a tailor had many different characteristics than Jeanette did. He was present and lived in the city, working class, needed money, had a car, and did popular singing. Jeanette was nobility, country woman, aristocrat, recreational, had a trust fund, rode horses, and did operatic singing. The fairy tale romance showed that happiness depends on acts and not by birth right. The movie did a well job showing the two connecting with each other through music that connected space and time, called a sound bridge. Maurice?s song ?Isn?t it Romantic? started to be sung by him in at his work and then his friend Emile heard it and sung it in the cab, the songwriter heard it in the cab and sung it to the soldiers, the soldiers then sung it to the gypsy boy, and the boy sung in front of Jeannette, and then ended up being her singing it by herself. This is how you knew the two were meant to be together in the movie. Another way you know the two are meant to meet in the movie is when Maurice and Jeanette accidentally run into each other on the street when Maurice?s car is broken down. He then tries to woo her with his Pepe Lapu player tactics. When Maurice came to the castle and disguised himself as being royalty, Jeanette even liked him more. The entire time she played hard to get, and was getting jealous when other females would pay attention to Maurice. They finally discuss their true feeling for each other and kiss. Jeanette then tells Maurice, ?No matter who or what you are, I will love you the same.? That night they show each other?s love by singing a duet together in their dreams, the screen then splits and shows the connection between the two of them. Later, he tells her he was a tailor and she gets upset and then afterwards realizes how dumb she was for letting a man like him go. She chases him down while he is in a train, and she jumps in front of the train to try to stop it. This shows a low angle of her and shows the power she has, and how much she truly loves him. She ends up getting her prince and lives happily ever after.

The film Rebel Without a Cause was the grandfather of teen dramas. The characters were all connected through how they were rebellious. The color that signified rebellious was the color red. This is how you find out that Jim and Judy are meant to be by seeing she was wearing a red dress while everyone else in the room was wearing plain grayish colors. When she left her make up kit back at the police station Jim also picked up and that brought another connection. The three main characters all have problems, Jim wants to know what he has to do to become a man, Judy wants some one to love her, and Plato wants the love of a family. Judy flaunted her stuff in front of Jim many times, and I believe he had clue that she liked him. She kept on looking for love in the wrong places, first her dad and then the town bully. Jim was confused by this and asked his whipped father what it takes to be a man. Jim?s father never answered him so he went and showed off and lowered himself to Buzz?s level. Jim finally realizes it?s not a bad man that makes you a man, its being yourself. During this time, Jim befriends a boy by the name of Plato. Plato looks at Jim as a father figure, and you can tell this by when Plato and Judy are talking. Plato tells Judy that Jim is going to take him fishing and do all these other fatherly things with him. Towards the end Judy and Jim go off to Plato?s secret mansion. This mansion is like Peter Pan?s Neverland, where the kids will never have to grow up. While Jim and Judy are alone, Judy tells Jim that he is a real man because how he has been so kind to Plato and has looked out for him. She then realizes that she didn?t find love, but love found her. Plato tragically dies because the police shoot him, but all he ever wanted was a mother and father. He looked too Jim and Judy to be those two, but then he felt abandoned by them also. The color red went from the toy monkey to Jim and Judy, and from those two it went to Plato, as he was the rebel without a cause. After he was killed, Judy and Jim rejoined society and that is why it is a melodramatic movie.

These three movies showed great examples of the way love can be shown. The movies went from a silent comedy to a melodrama, but all three were able to give us great ideas of how love is achieved in film. It could be through heroic deeds, singing a duet, through actions, sincerity, and even on accident.

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