in other words his penis, is exclaimed at one point by Lieutenant Maurice Chevalier to a young Claudette Colbert with their love affair heating up. The sexual innuendo both uttered and shown in this Ernst Lubitsch pre Production Code picture is constant and delicious, resulting in a delightfully fey and elaborate but short eighty minutes following an admittedly batty plot and some note-lucky singing of a few rather dull tunes. Eyebrow-raising lyrics though! It's relentlessly charming with no scenes of a sexual, swearing or violent nature or anything remotely disgusting either; it's all in the mind – which is also worth bearing in mind is as Frank Zappa once sang, the ugliest part of the body.Charlie Ruggles begins by telling his friend Chevalier he's in love with Colbert and then watching his friend swiftly woo and win her for successful and successive nights of passion and mornings of breakfast. Until the day Chevalier smiles at her while on duty but gets publicly misinterpreted instead as having smiled – and winked, meaning let's do it – at the King's plain daughter Miriam Hopkins. How it all turns out is slightly dissatisfying to me, but it was a difficult problem to resolve in a gentlemanly way without a Code to follow. Although I know that even with all the slyness on screen it would have the last thing on their minds in 1931 to portray, what a film it would have been if there had been a concluding Three-Way! The Paramount production values were enormous, the sets intricate and fascinating, the romantic atmosphere under the gleaming studio arc-lights palpable, the cast superb, the display of freshness of youth and optimism appealing and total, and the comparisons with Love Me Tonight, One Hour With You and even Trouble In Paradise justified. But imho it just wasn't as good as any of those masterpieces. There's a Lubitsch touch in here that can sum up the difference: at one point two pillows on a soon-to-be consummation of marriage bed are helpfully moved closer together but then one pillow is even more helpfully put on top of the other. Not offensive at all - but not very subtle either, and if coitus really was to follow the pillows would more than likely be in an awkward position. The Lubitsch Code of what all men want is sex then romance and what all women want is romance then sex was never more apparent than in this, and it depends upon your personal point of view whether you find that point of view charming, childish or irrelevant. And the suddenly worldly-wise Colbert nonchalantly waved at the suddenly renewed Hopkins over her shoulder without looking back and without a care so that made everything alright…All that said it's an utterly wonderful film which as I've put for some other perceived-to-be ancient films will still be watched and/or puzzled over in many generations time, while all of today's realistic and amoralistic efforts are long forgotten.

In this film, Maurice Chevalier plays Danny Zuko, Claudette Colbert plays Rizzo and Miriam Hopkins plays Sandy in a delightful musical comedy in which the square Sandy gets a sexy makeover from a bad-girl Pink Lady and wins the heart of the bad-boy smiling lieutenant of the Thunderbirds.OK, OK, it's not a perfect analogy, but watch the last few minutes in which Sandy, er, I mean Princess Anna, learns to dress sexy, smoke cigarettes seductively and dance - and tell me it's not, at root, the same story.The plot develops differently, of course. Prince Niki (a name like Zuko that follows the consonant-vowel-k-consonant format) is a prince and lieutenant, as opposed to the captain of a notorious gang. And it's Rizzo, er Franzi, (both names follow the r-vowel-z-vowel format) who gives Sandy (Princess Anna - if you say it fast, it sounds almost like Princesanndy) her makeover instead Franzi's pal Frenchy. Come to think of it, Claudette Colbert who plays Franzi is a real-life Frenchy, so perhaps the analogy is closer than I first thought.A great pre-code sexy musical comedy that may, just may, remind you of Grease.

Before I saw this film I read all the reviews on this site. And then I saw the movie...and I was wondering what all those other reviewers had been taking... The film lasts about 85 minutes, and that's too long by half. I always hated Chevalier's awful accent (half the time you're straining to try and make sense of what he's saying), but as a rule his lighthearted acting makes it bearable. Not here. Hopkins as the princess and Barbier as the king are worse than caricatures and there are some very xenophobic remarks here and there. But the worst is...Claudette's performance. I love, no I adore Claudette Colbert. She's by far my favourite actress of the first half of the 20th century (Michelle Pfeiffer took her crown in the latter part). But what she's showing us here, is shameful. She's overacting as if she's in a (talking) movie for the first time. For example when she's leaving Chevalier's apartment, and she's leaving the key. Her facial expressions are way too pathetic and remind me of the silent movies, when everything had to be over the top to convey the meaning. This is a movie to see once, then quickly forget about. 2 stars out of 10.

It must have been that the movie-going public loved seeing Maurice Chevalier in those tight uniforms, he seemed to be in them in most of those early talkies he made for American studios. Only now and again would Chevalier play something as prosaic as a tailor.He's a guardsman again in The Smiling Lieutenant. But with the Austrian Empire at peace all the men have a lot of idle time on their hands. Maurice is busy planning his latest campaign when a friend played by Charlie Ruggles asks him with that Chevalier charm to intercede for him with a female violinist in Claudette Colbert.Maurice does, but the sly rogue gets her for himself. And then he's put on duty to greet the visiting royal house of Flausenthurm which includes King George Barbier and Princess Miriam Hopkins.In one of those priceless Ernst Lubitsch moments, Chevalier while at attention spots Colbert across the street and throws a few knowing smiles and winks. But when the coach carrying Barbier and Hopkins passes, Hopkins intercepts one of those winks and considers it an uncalled for act upon a royal personage.In fact she likes what she sees and persuades Daddy to get the Emperor who's her uncle to part with Chevalier. Of course Maurice the old campaigner likes the idea of being married to the dowdy Hopkins if he's got Claudette on the side.I won't go any farther, but as you can see just by what I tell you The Smiling Lieutenant is a film made before the Code was put in place. In fact the naughtiness of films like these is what got Hollywood the Code. But it's what also makes it hold up very well for today's audience.No big song hits come from The Smiling Lieutenant, but Chevalier delivers what's there with his Gallic charm. Even Hopkins and Colbert grab a chorus or two with Maurice. Music is by Oscar Straus with English lyrics by Clifford Grey.This is before the Code so you have some freedom as to how this film will end, the parameters the Code put in place are no longer there. I should say however that Miriam Hopkins gets a makeover that Paul Venoit and his team would envy.