Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

jacobs-greenwood Director Ernst Lubitsch's last collaboration with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald!It's an entertaining tale about a womanizing Count (Chevalier, of course) who is "ordered" to court a rich widow (MacDonald), that pays more than 50% of the taxes in the small country of Marshovia, so that she won't leave the country.When Chevalier's character is caught in the Queen's (Una Merkel) bedroom, the King (George Barbier) ignores it because of the importance of the mission.But the main comic element stems from the fact that Chevalier's character has fallen in love with Fifi, who unbeknownst to him is actually the widow Sonia (MacDonald) trying to find happiness in the Paris nightclub Maxime's, before he must undertake his mission.Excellent support provided by the always reliable Edward Everett Horton; Sterling Holloway also appears. Songs sung by both leads with lyrics by Lorenz Hart (of Rodgers & Hart, before Rodgers & Hammerstein).Cedric Gibbons shared one of his many Oscars with Frederic Hope (his only statuette) for Art Direction.

dimplet The film looks a little creaky starting out, but stick with it. The reason: Ernst Lubitsch, who provides just the right tongue-in-cheek humor that any good operetta needs. The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup had been released the year before, and Freedonia sounds like the next door neighbor to The Merry Widow's Marshovia -- both are bankrupt, backwards countries with rich widows. You half expect Groucho to show up to compete with Maurice Chevalier for Madame Sonia's hand. The Merry Widow occupies a pivotal place in the evolution of musicals, given its more classical operetta roots. There were some attempts to continue at least with this more classical style of singing. Irene Dunn tried using her beautiful, trained voice in Roberta - 1935, but it seemed out of place. Musicals already faced the challenge of plausibility of ordinary people breaking into song while going about their lives, without the extra issue of giving them classically trained voices. In this regard, Shirley Jones, with her wholesome good looks and sweet voice fit the bill perfectly. What obviously did survive from the Merry Widow vein was the mistaken identity plot device. We see this theme played to the hilt the next year in Top Hat, my favorite of the Fred Astaire -- Ginger Rogers musicals. This light, humorous story never gets old, no matter how many times I watch it. It is the perfect translation of the operetta mistaken identity theme, found in older works like Die Fledermaus or The Pirates of Penzance, into a modern, popular musical film format. It is interesting to compare Top Hat and The Merry Widow, which both convey a similar spirit and style, which many movies strive to reproduce, but few succeed.An amusing movie to follow this with is "Love in the Afternoon," in which a much older Chevalier plays a French private eye whose job it is to snoop on just the sort of playboys he plays in The Merry Widow. Trying to inject classical opera or operetta influences directly into Hollywood musicals was ultimately doomed to failure. But the goal of fully integrating story, singing and dancing was sound. The trick was to give it a modern, popular foundation. That was achieved with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, which generally had a stronger, more enduring story line, and closer integration of songs, than most Hollywood musicals. This was no coincidence, since Hammerstein had personal and family roots in classical opera. Another reason to watch The Merry Widow is the wonderful twists and turns to the mistaken identity plot. You get the feeling that lots of later movies tried to imitate the concept. But this was the original. It's a fun movie.

bkoganbing When Jeanette MacDonald left Paramount and signed with her new studio of MGM it was her wish that she not do any more films with Maurice Chevalier. Though the three films she did for that studio with him were very successful, the two of them did not get along at all. She thought he was a rake, he thought she was frigid.So imagine her chagrin when she learned that her first MGM film, The Merry Widow which has some great songs for a soprano she would be co-starred once again with Chevalier. He wasn't exactly thrilled either, it was known he was hoping to do the film with Grace Moore. But they both went back to work for Ernst Lubitsch who had guided them in The Love Parade and One Hour With You. Lubitsch got the best out of them, especially Jeanette. There are some who say her work at Paramount with him is far superior to anything she would do at MGM, even with Nelson Eddy.Jeanette's the richest woman in the tiny kingdom of Marshovia, her taxes bankroll the kingdom. But she's bored there and cynical about all the men courting her for her money. The king and queen of Marshovia, George Barbier and Una Merkel, want to keep her Marshovian money in Marshovia so they send the most romantic guy they know, captain of the guard Maurice Chevalier as Count Danilo who cuts quite a romantic figure and romantic swath among the ladies.Of course he falls in love, but he's still got a roving eye and in his own way Maurice is as cynical as Jeanette. It will take some doing to get these two together.The Merry Widow had its American premiere on Broadway in 1907 and ran for 416 performances. The basic numbers of the score that Franz Lehar wrote are retained. My favorite is one of the best operetta numbers ever written for a soprano, Vilia. Jeanette sings it beautifully as she does the famous Merry Widow Waltz. And who could sing about the joys of courting Girls Girls Girls while hanging out at Maxim's than Maurice Chevalier? Lubitsch does a grand job at getting some real comic moments out of Edward Everett Horton as the Marshovian Ambassador in Paris who together with Herman Bing. I do so love the scene where Bing is translating the diplomatic codes for Horton with the king's editorial comments.Chevalier and MacDonald never worked together again, but they certainly went out on a high note (no pun intended) with The Merry Widow.

fiat0903 No need to add to the many reviews finding this a delightful, well made film. It is every bit that. Yet, this film violates one of the principles of truth in filming. It is NOT the Lehar Merry Widow. At best it is a distant cousin. To be sure, the film uses some of the music, albeit in odd places. and uses the names of some of the characters.One of the plot elements of both the Lehar and the Lubitsch is the need for the tiny country to have the widow marry to keep her millions in the country's bank. The male lead is Danilo in both but in Lehar he is a playboy count. Here he is a bold captain. In Lehar, the leads were lovers in the past. Here they are newly met. And so it goes.From the standpoint of faithfulness to the Lehar work, a work which still enraptures, this film is a travesty. Yet, it is a delightful travesty. Too bad they did not give it a different name.