William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures was essentially a vanity project for the production of films starring Marion Davies. That films like Marianne are far more than vanity projects is largely owing to Davies’s talents as a comic performer.
Marianne is a sound remake of a silent film, also starring Davies, that had been made only a few months earlier. Apart from her brief appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 , it was Davies’s talking debut and, whatever the merits of the film, it is a small triumph for her personally. She overcame the stammer which had made her fearful of speaking on screen. More than that, she uses a French accent, sings, and shares screen time with a pig. She even demonstrates her skills as a mimic, impersonating Maurice Chevalier and Sarah Bernhardt.
The film itself is overlong at approaching two hours, but technically more proficient than many contemporaneous talkies. It is also the first Metro musical to combine a non-backstage setting with a bespoke songlist. (Hallelujah was intended by King Vidor to include only traditional songs and its two Irving Berlin numbers were included against his wishes.) Three songwriting partnerships contributed these songs: Ahlert and Turk (four numbers), Klages and Greer (two), and Freed and Brown (one).
Marianne is not an integrated musical in the sophisticated sense of the Freed unit’s output in the 1950s, but its musical numbers do arise naturally from the action. The title song, ‘Marianne,’ is performed three times. André sings it in French and the words specifically relate to his departure and his wish that Marianne remain faithful to him. Later, the words are spoken in English by Marianne herself, to explain why she cannot go with Stagg. Finally, Stagg sings to Marianne, saying “The words could be mine as well as his, couldn’t they?”. This is a sophisticated use of a song to develop the story.
Similarly, ‘Just You, Just Me’ has lyrics appropriate to Stagg’s final attempt to persuade Marianne to go with him. He sings the love song to her alone, but while surrounded by dancing couples singing a completely different song. Again, director Robert Z Leonard is employing a sophisticated technique for the period, utilizing sound rather than simply recording it and incorporating a song to move the story forward.
Elsewhere, Cliff Edwards and Benny Rubin make the first of their many appearances as vocal and comic support to a musical’s star players. Edwards subsequently had a chart hit with a recording of ‘Just You, Just Me’.
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