There's a lot to say about William A. Seiter's Kiss Me Again, and not too much of it good -- although it is interesting, for reasons that would have eluded the makers in 1931. If this movie didn't kill the early-talkie-era musical (until the genre was rescued by 42nd Street), it was the kind of movie that helped put it on life-support -- Seiter's adaptation of Victor Herbert's musical Mlle. Modiste is a completely unimaginative filmmaking exercise that creaks where it should run smoothly, and that goes double for the actual musical numbers. It's not completely Seiter's fault, as the filmmaking technology of 1930 didn't allow directors to do too much more than put their actors in front of a camera and do their best to project, speak etc. -- but even allowing for those limitations, this is pretty static stuff. The principal basis for recommending the movie to anyone in the twenty-first century is the chance to see an almost unrecognizably youthful (yet still not really "young") Walter Pidgeon in the leading role, and Edward Everett Horton as his Lothario-like best friend -- both officers in the French army who are trying to juggle their romantic entanglements while staying on the good side of their commanding general (Albert Gran), the father of one of the two women on whom they have their sights; and the chance to see a equally young Frank McHugh at work, in a suitably comedic role. Horton seems subdued but actually fairly convincing as the conquest-based ladies' man, a far cry from the parts with which he would make his reputation in the decade to come. Surviving prints seem to be passable, and perhaps the picture looked a lot better in its own time, but this is truly an artifact of its time and solely of interest today on that basis.
by Bruce Eder
review
