Moi et l'impératrice (1933) review - A silly, dusty musical about a lost garter

If you have a soft spot for dusty, pre-war French musicals where people break into song over laundry, then yes, Moi et l'impératrice is worth 80 minutes of your life. 👑

But if you hate shrill operettas or plots that hinge entirely on a piece of underwear, please run away immediately.

The whole thing starts because a garter falls off. Seriously, that is the entire inciting incident.

A Duke finds it and suddenly he is convinced he is in love with the Empress.

It is the kind of movie where everyone speaks in a slightly too-loud theatrical voice because the microphones in 1933 were probably the size of breadboxes.

Lilian Harvey is the main draw here, and she is... well, she is a lot.

She has this habit of widening her eyes so much you think they might pop right out of her head and roll across the set.

It is cute for about ten minutes, then it gets slightly exhausting. 😅

But then you get a very young Charles Boyer, before he became the ultimate Hollywood lover.

He looks incredibly handsome but also kind of confused, like he stepped onto the wrong soundstage and just decided to roll with it.

There is a scene in a garden where Boyer is trying to look deeply poetic, but there is a horse in the background that keeps trying to eat his sleeve.

I swear the director just didn't care enough to do another take.

That is the charm of these early talkies, though.

They have this raw, slightly messy energy that you never see anymore.

It feels less like a polished piece of cinema and more like a high-budget school play where some of the actors are secretly drunk.

Compared to American comedies of the same year, like the completely wild Diplomaniacs, this French operetta feels much more polite.

Polite, but deeply weird if you actually think about the logistics of the plot.

Like, how does a garter just fall off like that while she is riding?

Gravity in 1930s movies worked differently, I guess.

The songs are catchy enough, though they all sound a bit like they were recorded inside a tin can.

One tune kept repeating in my head for hours after the credits rolled, which was actually quite annoying.

Anyway, if you want something light, harmless, and slightly ridiculous, give it a spin.

Just don't expect anything deep. It is literally a movie about a sock suspender.