Rose Marie (1936)
An incognito opera singer falls for a policeman who has been assigned to track down her fugitive brother.
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W.S. Van Dyke’s musical romance about an opera singer who seeks out a fugitive brother in the Canadian wilderness. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy and James Stewart.

The story concerns diva-like Canadian opera star Marie de Flor (Jeanette MacDonald) who runs to the big city undercover to manage a family crisis: her no-decent brother John Flower (James Stewart) has gotten away from jail and is entrenched in a cabin in the North Woods of Ontario. On encountering Sergeant Bruce (Nelson Eddy), the Canadian Mountie who has been designated to track down the fugitive convict, she falls for the good-looking cop.

Jeanette MacDonald gives a good performance in her role as the opera star who is entertaining throughout, particularly with the…

Even as a lifelong musical aficionado, I've somehow largely managed to avoid most 1930s movie musicals because I had some notion that I didn't like them for whatever reason. Perhaps it's because my musical theatre instructor in college dismissed them as creaky relics with bad acting. But while I can see some of what would make him feel that way about them, I have to disagree with him, in general. It turns out that I adore them, especially the operettas. Oh, I'll admit that operetta is pretty creaky by today's standards, but I'm hardly interested in today's standards, because they are wrongheaded in many ways. How could you not love something so lushly romantic? The music is intoxicating, and the…

Reginald Owen was the reason I watched this; as part of my July 2022 list of films featuring my fav supporting players

A slow-going start, but once the opening Romeo & Juliet stage performance is over Reginald Owen appears as Jeanette MacDonald's manager and things get going. Owen was a very capable supporting player (and occasionally held his own as a lead, as in the very finely made 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. He also made the Preston Sturges film The Good Fairy (1935) a delight with his pivotal role performance. He had enough charisma and talent to make even small roles memorable.

He plays a bit of a nervous nellie in this version of Rose Marie (the 1954 version…

With the rise of the production code, Jeanette MacDonald moved to MGM, where they switched the way she was marketed to audiences, ending her wonderful partnership with Maurice Chevalier in favor of a more chaste pairing with Nelson Eddy. While both leads have tremendous vocal power, MacDonald is such a better actor than Eddy that their films never quite work for me, as they often feel unbalanced and overly safe. Rose Marie, at least, is one of the best I’ve seen from the screen duo.

With this film, Eddy is still very stiff as an actor, MacDonald accentuates everything that I dislike about her vocal delivery, and there isn’t nearly enough James Stewart to go around, but Rose Marie is…