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Friday, Aug 14, 1987
One Hour With You
"(One Hour With You is) a musical remake of Lubitsch's 1924 The Marriage Circle. It reprises a teasing comedy of manners in which two sensual, worldly wise Parisians subject their deliriously happy marriage to temptation. Beginning with Chevalier's introductory explanations to the camera on why he and his wife are flirting on a park bench, the short, chamberlike movie audaciously experiments with overlapping lines and with intimate, recitative song interludes that replace the big production numbers of most musicals. The result is a joyous, participatory experience that invites the viewer to serve as a referee for a witty battle of the boudoir. George Cukor is officially listed as the dialogue director during a year when a director's credit would have meant much more to him than to the Paramount eminence Lubitsch. Without plunging into period memoirs over who did what and to whom, one can safely say that One Hour With You marks a discernible break stylistically (but not thematically) with both previous and subsequent Lubitsch films. Cukor...seems to have superimposed on a Lubitsch project an essentially theatrical mise-en-scene that is lighter on the witty cut but heavier on the lyrically long take and sweeping camera movement." Andrew Sarris, Tom Allen, Village Voice Our tinted print is a recent UCLA Film Archives Restoration.
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