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Naughty Marietta Movie Review

Naughty Marietta is a 1935 musical film directed by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. It’s a solid, underrated flick.

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“Now the nightmare is all over, ladies.

The next man who lays a finger on any of you will be…

your husband“

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It follows a princess who escapes a prearranged marriage, sails to New Orleans and is rescued by pirates. Yes, this is first and foremost a very adventurous movie that, had it not focused so extensively on romance and songs, it could have been even more adventurous. But still you have here a sailing adventure with some very charming sequences.

The romance is solid, if nothing particularly amazing. The overall plot is simple, but it works for this movie which ended up being very solid, endearing and at times even a lot of fun. I certainly find it very underrated as people today only focus on its dated elements, and the movie is too solid to be that easily brushed away as a bad film.

I am of course talking about the musical numbers. Being based on an operetta, the film consists entirely of opera songs in its soundtrack and, needless to say, they all sound very quaint, odd and quite archaic. The opera singing can be annoying, and it led to the movie being much more dated than it would have been with the regular music. It’s a shame as that led to it being the focus of ridicule nowadays, and it simply doesn’t deserve that treatment in my opinion.

Jeanette MacDonald is excellent in her role, very charming and believable. She sold all of her moments and is one of the film’s standouts. Nelson Eddy isn’t as good, but he is perfectly fine, and the relationship between the two is quite strong. Of the smaller roles, Elsa Lanchester and Frank Morgan both did a respectable job.

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Naughty Marietta looks good, and although sometimes it was obvious that its origins are the theater, for the most part it was cinematic enough and it looked fine. It won an Oscar for sound mixing and, I guess, deservedly so. But its nod for Best Picture is simply not deserved whatsoever. But at least it is much better than I expected it to have been.

Yes, Naughty Marietta is quite dated in its quaint opera numbers and in that regard it is never as timeless as it could have been with regular music. But still, it is a very solid flick which is adventurous, quite fun to follow and featuring two likable turns from Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. It did not deserve its Oscar nomination, but it’s an underrated film in its own right.

My Rating – 3.5