Ernst Lubitsch's first musical is a milestone of the early sound film. Theodore Huff calls it “the first truly cinematic screen musical in America,” and Siegfried Kracauer points to it as an “object lesson in the fine art of planting lyrics inconspicuously” - Lubitsch manages to keep some of the fluidity of his silent films by using such devices as off-screen speech or conversations which take place silently behind a window. The Love Parade is at once charming - the charm arising from the fact that Lubitsch revels in the artificiality of the musical form rather than trying to disguise it - and satirical, with a witty plot and a host of patented “Lubitsch touches.” The story is a kind of Lysistrata in reverse, with overtones of “The Taming of the Shrew.” Maurice Chevalier marries Jeanette MacDonald (this is her film debut), ruler of a feminist queendom, and discovers his true position when the wedding ceremony pronounces them “Wife and Man.” Valet Lupino Lane and maid Lillian Roth provide an amusing commentary on their masters' affairs.