The Merry Widow (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is the third and by far the best cinema version of Franz Lehar's famed operetta. The first was a two-reel monstrosity in which the late Alma Rubens and Wallace Reid performed in 1912. In 1925 Erich von Stroheim directed Mae Murray and John Gilbert in the second. Cinemaddicts who have seen all three are likely to find the current version, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, as far superior to the second as the second was to the first. Only the most captious critics could find any fault with a picture which fairly entranced audiences with its oldtime music and glamour.
In the Lubitsch version, Captain Danilo (Maurice Chevalier) is dispatched from Marshovia to Paris to marry his country's richest widow (Jeanette MacDonald) lest she impoverish the royal treasury by marrying a foreigner. He goes to Maxim's for a farewell debauch, makes love to a cocotte who turns out to be the widow in disguise. Meeting her again at a diplomatic reception, he finds it impossible to convince her that his affection is sincere until he has been convicted of treason for failing in his mission.