With a remake of a lesser-known Ernst Lubitsch picture opening in cinemas this week and the Eurovision Song Contest set to be the highlight of the weekend's television schedule, this week's DVD column compares a couple of Lubitsch's finest musicals with three by his only serious rival as an early talkie stylist, Rouben Mamoulian.

Drawing comparisons with Strauss, Mozart and Hans Christian Andersen, Jean Cocteau dubbed The Love Parade (1929) `a Lubitsch miracle'. Yet, Ernst Lubitsch had only embarked upon his sound debut after the rare failure of the 1929 silent, Eternal Love. He distrusted talkies, as they limited camera fluidity and made the dramatic content too literal. But his pictures had always possessed an innate musicality and he readily saw the advantages of setting entire scenes to the rhythm of a score. Thus, he sought ways to translate the wit, elegance and innuendo of the `Lubitsch Touch' into dialogue, music and contrapuntal sound and, in so doing, he not only subverted several stage conventions, but also established many staples of the screen's newest genre.

Having abandoned his amorous existence in Paris to return to Sylvania and agree to marry Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald), Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier) quickly tires of his role as a powerless spouse and is only dissuaded from divorce - much to the lovestruck relief of his valet, Jacques (Lupino Lane), and her maid, Lulu (Lillian Roth) - by the proud monarch's realisation that her regal and romantic ambitions can only be achieved through mutuality.

In the opening sequence, Jacques lays a table and then pulls the cloth from beneath the meticulous settings - and that's exactly what Lubitsch does here with the operetta format, as he sets up an escapist Ruritanian scenario, with its Deco designs and fairytale costumes, and then introduces a disgruntled hero, whose roguish presence brings a hint of ignobility to a rarefied artform. Moreover, in adapting Leon Xanrof and Jules Chancel's 1919 play, The Prince Consort, Guy Bolton and Ernest Vadja revised the typical operetta structure by both reversing the gender roles of the romantic leads and removing the external source of opposition to their union by locating it within their own relationship.

By, thus, consistently uniting and dividing the lovers until they learned to compromise, Lubitsch not only brought a new adult sophistication to the musical comedy, but he also initiated a musi-romcomic tradition that would persist for the next 30 years. The further genius of The Love Parade lay in its unlikely union of operetta and revue. In operetta, the music took precedence over the lyrics and the songs were used primarily to heighten mood and emotion. In a revue, however, the numbers were performed with the express intention of amusing or affecting. So, by blending the two styles, Lubitsch made the lyrics advance both the storyline and character development, while also bringing a satirical edge to a format renowned for its conformism and sentimentality.

Lubitsch also integrated the songs into the action rather than squeezing them into contrived diegetic pauses, and, thus, installed the couple and the duet as the central focuses of the Hollywood musical. Moreover, he managed to restore some movement to the motion picture, by utilising a tracking shot during the wedding sequence, which was choreographed throughout to the beat of a metronome, so that every gesture and expression precisely fitted the accompanying rhythm. There were also flashes of the customary Lubitsch drollery, most notably during `Paris, Stay the Same', which sees Chevalier taking leave of his Parisian belles, while Lane salutes his French maids and the dog bids adieu to his manicured poodles. A similarly inspired use of off-screen space occurs during the dinner sequence, in which everything we need to know about the unseen Alfred and Louise's demeanour is conveyed by their anxious, eavesdropping courtiers.

Lubitsch even found novel ways to open up sequences - and avoid editorial problems - by shooting the footage he was going to intercut on neighbouring soundstages linked by a single orchestra, so that he could crosscut on exact notes. The result was an exquisite, innovative and irresistible concoction that the critics lauded and the Academy feted with six Oscar nominations. However, so few cinemas were wired for sound that most audiences saw it in a shorter silent version, although French patrons got to see their own variation, Parade d'Amour.

Musicals might have got bigger, more spectacular and more technically innovative, but the plotline, characterisation, visuals and score were never better integrated into such a seamlessly magical whole than in Rouben Mamoulian's effervescent delight, Love Me Tonight (1932). Inspired by the Leopold Marchand and Paul Armont play, The Tailor in the Chateau, the story of a Parisian tradesman whose pursuit of an unpaid debt results in romance is whisper thin. But the deft performances of Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and an exceptional ensemble, the glorious Rodgers and Hart score and Mamoulian's audiovisual ingenuity combine to give this musical fantasy a screwball charm that was only later matched by the dance variations on its themes starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Although he began his film career with the musical drama, Applause (1929), Mamoulian had since made City Streets (1931) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1932) and didn't want to do another musical. But Paramount was keen to prove that the musical film could be every bit as valid and sophisticated as the Broadway show and, thus, it extended Mamoulian an invitation to beat the great Ernst Lubitsch at his own game. Moreover, the front office agreed that each of the nine distinctively staged numbers could be factored into the screenplay, so that they not only advanced the plot and developed the characters, but also subverted musical convention by forming bridges between the dialogue and the lyrics that were as subtly rhythmic as the movement of the cast, camera and cutting.

The scale of Mamoulian's achievement is evident from the first 16 minutes, which effortlessly establish the key themes of town/country, night/day, rich/poor, old/new and two hearts becoming one. Mamoulian drew on his 1927 Theatre Guild production of Porgy for the opening `symphony of noises' sequence, in which he used the sound of pavement sweeping, boot making, cobblestone tapping and church bell ringing to find an audio equivalent of the `city symphony' montages pioneered by the likes of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga-Vertov. This René Clairian survey of the cityscape segues into Chevalier's `The Song of Paree', which itself melds into `How Are You?', as he promenades to his shop. Having attended to a couple of customers, Maurice then breaks into `Isn't It Romantic?', which is subsequently carried into the street by a vicomte, who proceeds to pass it along to a cabby, a composer, some soldiers and a gypsy violinist before it's completed by Princess Jeanette in her country chateau.

In this one sequence, Mamoulian not only captured the time, place and mood of the entire picture, but he also united Maurice and Jeanette in the audience's mind and transported them on a musical journey from chanson to operetta via a Tin Pan Alley ditty, a march and some gypsy folk. The action at the chateau is every bit as adept, with Mamoulian referencing a range of fairytales, Chevalier and MacDonald's previous teamings and the classic German costumer, Der Kongress Tanzt (1931). He also plays mischievous games with both the film speed and the sound effects and revels in the risqué dialogue, much of it involving Myrna Loy's man-eating countess.

But the music remains the animating force, whether it's MacDonald singing `Lover' to her horse, Maurice serenading Jeanette with `Mimi' or their titular duet ending with a saucy split screen depicting their heads on neighbouring pillows. Moreover, Mamoulian uses mirror songs to unify the action, with `Maurice Enters the Castle' reprising `How Are You?' and his disguise as a baron being exposed in another passed-along tune, `The Son of a Gun Is Nothing But a Tailor', which culminates in a top shot that anticipates Busby Berkeley, as the footmen scurry off in star formation to spread the gossip. Even the happy ending confounds expectations, with Mamoulian out-montaging Eisenstein as Jeanette reverses the romantic roles by charging after the departing Maurice's train on her trusty steed. Initiating the musical tradition of having one character leave behind the everyday to enter a neverland, Love Me Tonight did only moderate business and was overlooked by the Academy. But it has since been acknowledged as a musical masterclass.

When Franz Lehár's operetta Der Lustige Witwe opened in Vienna in 1905, it caused a sensation. With a libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein, that was based on a French play by Henri Meilhac, it rapidly become an international success and within months of the British and American premieres, in 1907, the Swedish Nordisk company produced the first of 10 screen adaptations. In 1925, MGM acquired the rights for Erich von Stroheim, who starred John Gilbert and Mae Murray in The Merry Widow, a silent reworking that subjected the slender storyline of a disgraced prince's bid to seduce a wealthy widow in order to prevent her from removing her fortune from the Mitteleuropean kingdom of Marshovia to a Freudian reinterpretation that unexpectedly helped it turn a $758,000 profit.

However, production chief Irving G. Thalberg, who detested Von Stroheim, was keen to remake the picture. But attempts to mount sound productions in 1929, 1930 and 1932 (with Jeanette MacDonald and Roman Novarro) all foundered, largely because the studio lacked a stable of musical talent capable of doing The Merry Widow justice. Then, in 1934, Thalberg persuaded Maurice Chevalier against returning to France in order to headline Sidney Franklin's adaptation of Lehár's masterpiece, alongside Joan Crawford, who had been chosen over Lily Pons and Vivienne Segal. However, Chevalier preferred to team with Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Moore and was most piqued when MGM not only denied his request - having sampled her temperament during the making of A Lady's Morals and New Moon in 1930 - but also paired him with frequent collaborators Ernst Lubitsch and Jeanette MacDonald, neither of whom he could abide. Yet while Chevalier and MacDonald complained about the reunion, she recognised his wit and charm and he admired the vulnerability and vivacity that he inspired in her.

Lubitsch, however, was less concerned with casting than with demonstrating that music was audible romance. Consequently, he set about making a continental sophistication that proved to be the least MGM musical in the studio's history. Disregarding art director Cedric Gibbons's disquiet about the opulence of the sets and Front Office concerns that a frothy romance was being transformed into a satire on the risibility of sex, Lubitsch further exploited his contract's unprecedented levels of latitude by hiring Lorenz Hart and Gus Kahn to produce new lyrics that emphasised the lovers' growing attachment.

Moreover, he also anticipated Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers by using dance as an emotional barometer. Danilo and Sonia only realise their feelings while cheek to cheek in the private dining-room at Maxim's. But a comedy of errors (which became another Fred`n'Ginger staple) conspires to keep them apart until the same `Merry Widow Waltz' reunites them at the Embassy Ball, where they seal their passion in a glorious progress that irradiates every room they enter, including a mirrored corridor. Thus, for the first time, Lubitsch employed music as a metaphor for love rather than lust and he even shifted the gender emphasis by having Chevalier succumb to MacDonald rather than have her pursuing him.

But the Hays Office was appalled by the way in which `filth' had been introduced into such a respectable artform and it insisted on 13 cuts being made to tone down Danilo's pleasure at his sexual prowess. In all, three minutes of footage was excised from the US release, although they were restored in 1962. Despite the success of the French-language version, La Veuve Joyeuse (which retained Chevalier and MacDonald), the film's failure outside the major American cities and the ensuing loss of $113,000 on the $1,605,000 budget persuaded MGM to rethink its approach to the genre. With screwball comedies and Busby Berkeley musicals concentrating on the middle and lower classes rather than the upper echelons, the days of the `naughty' operetta were numbered. Lubitsch abandoned the musical altogether, while Chevalier left Hollywood in 1935, not to return for another 25 years. MacDonald went on to become the studio's biggest singing star in partnership with Nelson Eddy. But she never again exhibited such spirit or sensuality. [668 words] Hoping to repeat the success of Show Boat (1936), Paramount reunited Irene Dunne with songwriters Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein for High, Wide and Handsome (1937), a musical reconstruction of the mid-19th-century struggle between the sodbusters and the railroaders for control of the Pennsylvania oilfields. Hammerstein originally conceived the project as a musical comedy. But, coming off the stage version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935), director Rouben Mamoulian was determined to couch everyday provincial reality in folk musical terms and, thus, revised the screenplay and insisted on shooting on location in Chino, California to enhance the sense of period authenticity. The picture would cost $2 million and prove to be a box-office disappointment. But, as critic Richard Roud has suggested, its blend of social statement and showbiz escapism was `an extraordinary fusion of Brecht and Broadway' and it wound up being less a reprise of Show Boat than a rehearsal for Oklahoma!, with which Mamoulian and Hammerstein would transform the American musical six years later.

Mamoulian was accused by some of spoiling a costume entertainment by being too serious about its socio-economic issues and by others of ruining a pugnacious Western by dotting it with romance and operetta. Yet, he succeeded in combining the best elements of both genres and utilised a blend of studio stylisation and outdoor actuality to give the film a unique hybrid vitality. Others still criticised the restrained staging of the musical numbers. But these are perfectly suited to 1850s performance styles, with Dorothy Lamour's torch song, `The Things I Want', and her table-top saloon duet with Dunne (`Allegheny Al') feeling as credible as Dunne's execution of the title song and her circus ring reprise of `Can I Forget You?', which she first sang in the moonlit orchard and which now persuades her to return to Randolph Scott to rally his bid to lay a pipeline across hostile terrain in defiance of rail tycoon Alan Hale and his henchmen, Charles Bickford and Akim Tamiroff. Moreover, the songs are neatly integrated into the storyline and are used to establish the relationship between the real and the romanticised, most notably in the medicine show opening and the sequence in which the livestock accompany Dunne's `symphony of life', as she feeds them in Scott's farmyard.

The connection between labour, landscape and community is fortified by the pipe-laying sequences, which are worthy of John Ford and Howard Hawks, in their respective depiction of the furtherance of America's frontier fate and the camaraderie of professional men engaged in honest toil. Indeed, this is very much a tale of the land, with Scott personifying its settled dependability in contrast to Dunne's restless energy, which manifests itself in the eruption of oil that follows her nuptial rendition of the elegiac ballad, `The Folks Who Live on the Hill'. The pipeline, therefore, becomes a symbol of transportation and irrigation that will enervate both the economy and the community. Yet Mamoulian also gives it a sexual purpose, as Scott is impotent before Dunne and her circus family arrive to ensure both the final erection and the first triumphant gush of oil at the refinery. But rather than employing cheap phallic imagery, Mamoulian uses the couple's economic and erotic consummation to show how the romance of soil and soul fulfills America's Manifest Destiny.

Recalling Frank Capra's contemporary fables in its exposure of hypocrisy and greed, High, Wide and Handsome also echoes the New Deal message of the Berkeley backstager by demonstrating that morality and amusement are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, Dunne's vigour and resolve inspires the farmers to unite in a common enterprise rather than trying to subsist in isolation. But, post-Depression audiences were tired of such exhortations and the picture slipped into undeserved obscurity, even though its central idea of a cherished lifestyle coming under threat would become a recurrent theme of folk musicals from Meet Me in St Louis (1944) to The Sound of Music (1965).

One of the musical's forgotten masterpieces, Summer Holiday (1948) was a sly satire on the ongoing investigation into Hollywood Communism by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Yet, it was also part of the Americana boom that followed Meet Me in St Louis (1944). Arthur Freed had long been keen to work with Rouben Mamoulian. So, when plans for Jumbo and The Belle of New York stalled, he suggested that he might like to musicalise Eugene O'Neill's Broadway success, Ah, Wilderness!

Although a great admirer of the play, Mamoulian was initially unconvinced that the doings of the Miller family in Danville, Connecticut in 1906 were the stuff of screen musicals. However, he soon realised that he could enhance the emotional impact of the original text by integrating songs to do the work of the dialogue. Moreover, a `musical play' would be able to tell the story `in richer, more colourful and more imaginative terms, without sacrificing any of its true values'. Indeed, such an approach could impart `more beauty and excitement than was there before'.

As the feature was to be filmed on the old Andy Hardy set, it was fitting that 27 year-old Mickey Rooney was cast as Richard Miller, the teenager with radical inclinations and an inquisitive zest for life. But MGM was also keen to reassert a certain sexual innocence to counter headlines about Rooney's marital misadventures and it hoped that the project would smooth his transition to adult roles, much as Meet Me in St Louis had done for his onetime co-star, Judy Garland.

Ironically, considering Summer Holiday's subtext, the shoot was consistently disrupted by a dispute between the Teamsters and the stagehands' union, IATSE. Consequently, Mamoulian fell behind schedule and the situation was compounded by the complexity of several sequences. Yet, while it took two weeks to rehearse, the glorious opening number - in which Mamoulian exploits Walter Huston's rendition of `Our Home Town' to capture a sense of place through its architecture, atmosphere and principal inhabitants - was a masterclass in scene-setting that lead seamlessly into Rooney's delightful soda shop date with sweetheart, Gloria De Haven. Requiring 12 days to shoot in the stifling heat of a Pasadena park, the Independence Day picnic proved equally impeccable, with its dazzling use of tableaux, montage, dissolves, pans and top shots.

However, the most intricate scene to execute was Richard's bar-room encounter with the vampish Belle (Marilyn Maxwell). A triumph of visual ingenuity, its subtle shifts in costume, colour and décor required eight days to accommodate the 89 different camera and lighting cues. Yet the manner in which Belle's dress and demeanour change as Richard becomes increasingly inebriated epitomises Mamoulian's audiovisual genius. Moreover, the use of different shades of red, as Belle's reputation as a scarlet woman becomes clear, contrasts strikingly with the predominating palette of yellows, beiges and greens that Mamoulian borrowed from the Americana paintings of Grant Wood, Thomas Benton and John Curry. Yet the Front Office resented Mamoulian's artistic autonomy and exacted its revenge by removing three songs - Huston's first rendition of `Spring Is Everywhere', De Haven's solo, `I Wish I Had a Braver Heart', and the reportedly exquisite `Omer and the Princess', which had been designed by costumer Walter Plunkett in the style of a Persian print.

Moreover, the studio shelved the picture for some 18 months and, when it was eventually released, the critics chimed in with the in-house verdict that it was short on pizzazz and long on period kitsch. Consequently, it lost $1,460,000 and decimated Mamoulian's reputation, and he only returned West a decade later for Silk Stockings. But Summer Holiday was anything but a hokey piece of sentimental pictorialism. It was more concerned with the transition from youth than freezing a moment in time and, thus showed the impatiently rebellious Richard consistently debunking idyllic notions. However, some of Mamoulian's more sentient contemporaries recognised the picture's iconoclasm and followed its lead away from the genre's more conventional formats.