Like René Clair in France, Rouben Mamoulian in Hollywood was a master of"selective" sound. In his first sound film, Applause (1929), he freedthe camera from its sound booth, and used off-screen and even overlappingdialogue. He introduced two-channel recording and mixing of sound. If somecritics today consider Love Me Tonight to be "the first genuinely creativeAmerican musical," this is largely due to the freedom with which Mamoulianexperimented with both sound and visuals. In this splendid fantasy, carping womenactually bark, a sleepy household moves in slow motion, and Rodgers' and Hart'ssongs (including "Isn't It Romantic" and "Mimi") areflawlessly integrated into the plot progression. Lyrics are used to move the plotforward, music captures the movement of the camera and editing, and shots andsounds together take on a musical beat. The script abounds in pre-ProductionCode, saucy double entendres. Maurice Chevalier stars as a Parisian tailor who istaken for a baron when he enters the mansion where Princess Jeanette MacDonald iswasting away ("no," corrects her doctor, "but wasted, yes"),and Countess Myrna Loy suffers, more verbally, from the same ailment ("can'twe ever get a footman under forty in this place?"). Mamoulian came naturallyto his first film musical; his Broadway production of Porgy, with its"symphony of noises," was a huge success in 1927.