"Love Me Tonight" was a musical minted for the height of The Depression in the summer 1932. It's songs are by Rodgers and Hart, its stars are Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette McDonald, and Myrna Loy (for young 'ens who don't know: all were boffo box office in their day), and its director was Imperial Russia-via-Georgia born, Armenian-American Rouben Mamoulian. (A director as famous for what he didn't do as what he did, he was fired from the films Cleopatra, Porgy and Bess, and Laura. He did direct Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire, Dr Jekyll with Fredric March, as well as The Mark of Zorro and Blood and Sand.)
In the scene above you'll discover some the film's notable innovations in both music and film editing. Most remarkable is its complex and sophisticated music editing, presaging the digital age by nearly an eon. Looped rhythms, which are now so de rigueur in this age of Pro-Tools, may've gotten their debut here. This scene not only predates Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon by 41 years (drum looping first came of age in the Disco era), but also preceded Musique concrète by 10 to 15 years, at least. (And as far Hip hop is concerned, even its progenitors' great-grandfathers were yet to be zygotes.)
Credit to the blog where I discovered the film: http://connormartinsmith.blogspot.com/
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