--- title: "One Hour with You" year: 1932 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/one-hour-with-you" fi1m_score: 77 critics_score: 80 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-19T21:57:19.010928+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T21:57:36.033715+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # One Hour with You (1932) Directed by Ernst Lubitsch · 1h 20m · MPA NR · Comedy, Romance **Fi1m score: 77** · Critics 80 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Everyone speaks in couplets, nobody keeps a vow, and Chevalier keeps turning round to check we are still on his side > Lubitsch’s rhyming musical farce about a Paris doctor, his wife and the friend who wants him is quick, sly and often funny. It is also so pleased with itself that it never lets anyone get hurt, which keeps it light and slightly weightless. ## Synopsis Paris, at night. The police commissioner (George Barbier) is clearing the parks of courting couples, and among those turned out is Dr Andre Bertier (Maurice Chevalier), who insists that the woman he is kissing on the bench, Colette (Jeanette MacDonald), is his wife. She is, and they are happy, which Andre tells us directly, turning to the camera. Then Colette’s old school friend Mitzi Olivier (Genevieve Tobin) arrives in town, shares a taxi with Andre in the rain and makes it plain she wants him. Her husband, Professor Olivier (Roland Young), wants rid of her and hires a private detective (Richard Carle) to catch her out. Colette’s admirer Adolph (Charles Ruggles) hangs about the house. Andre asks us what we would do. ## Review Ernst Lubitsch made *One Hour with You* in 1932, and it is a film about a happy marriage in which the husband spends eighty minutes deciding whether to wreck it. It is a musical, of a kind: the cast slip from speech into rhymed couplets into song and back without anyone remarking on it, and Maurice Chevalier stops the action every so often to address us directly. It is a remake of Lubitsch’s own silent *The Marriage Circle*, with the talk put back in. It is quick, it is clever, and it is often funny. We recommend it, with one caveat: it does not much care what happens to anyone in it, and by the end neither, quite, did we. The device is the thing. Chevalier plays Dr Andre Bertier, who loves his wife Colette (Jeanette MacDonald) and says so to the camera in the first five minutes, as if we were a friend he had bumped into in the park. When Colette’s friend Mitzi (Genevieve Tobin) climbs into his taxi and starts adjusting her stockings, he turns to us again to explain that he is, of course, not interested. Samson Raphaelson’s script gives these asides the rhythm of a man rehearsing an alibi. We laughed out loud at the first one, and again when Andre asked us what we would have done, and then noticed, a little uncomfortably, that we had been recruited. The film knows it. That is the best joke in it. Victor Milner shoots the Bertiers’ flat in soft white light so that MacDonald’s satin gowns and the bedroom walls seem to be made of the same stuff, and he makes the taxi a small dark box with rain running down the glass, which is where the film’s one real charge of danger lives. Travis Banton dresses Colette in pale, upright things and Mitzi in black that clings, so you know the whole plot from the wardrobe. William Shea cuts on the rhymes; a couplet finishes and the scene finishes with it. The music is credited to four names, Oscar Straus and W. Franke Harling among them, and the title song is sweet enough that you will have it for a day or two. Chevalier’s number about Mitzi, sung to himself, is the film in a minute. Chevalier is Chevalier. The lower lip, the shrug, the accent leaning on every second word: you either find it charming or you do not, and the film has no plan for anyone who does not. We mostly did. MacDonald is better than her part. Colette is written as the trusting wife, and MacDonald plays her as a woman who is trusting on purpose, because the alternative is tiresome; she sings well and she has a way of looking at Chevalier as though she has already priced him. Tobin’s Mitzi is the liveliest thing on screen, a predator who is enjoying herself. Charles Ruggles is touching and daft as Adolph, the friend who loves Colette and turns up to her party in the wrong costume. Roland Young, as the husband who would like his wife caught in the act so he can be free of her, underplays every line and steals every scene he is in. What does not work is the same thing that does. Lubitsch has arranged matters so that nobody can be wounded. Temptation is a game the whole cast is in on, and the second half resolves with a shrug we will not describe, except to say that it asks us to find something funny that we thought we had been asked to find serious. The rhymes clunk once or twice. Mademoiselle Martel (Josephine Dunn), the woman Colette suspects, is a plot function in a nice dress. And we came out admiring the mechanism more than we liked anyone it moved about. A friend of the director’s once said his pictures lacked feeling; this one is the exhibit. Set against his own work, this is a sketch beside a painting. *Trouble in Paradise*, made the same year, is the film to see if you want Lubitsch at his most exact, and [*The Love Parade*](https://film.one/film/the-love-parade) is the earlier Chevalier and MacDonald pairing that gave them more to do together. This is looser, ruder and shorter. Eighty minutes, at the end of an evening, with someone you are not currently suspecting of anything. If you are, watch something else. *Fi1m score 77, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 4 reviews in so far, the lean is warm. Most critics take to Lubitsch’s direction, the rapport between Chevalier and MacDonald, and the film’s habit of having its cast turn and speak straight to the audience, which is counted as a cheek rather than a fault. The script and songs draw steady praise, and MacDonald in particular is singled out. Time Out is the lone reservation, finding it likeable and clever but smug, and passing on Cukor’s remark that Lubitsch’s films lack feeling; the spread otherwise is narrow. ### Reviews we read (4) - **Los Angeles Times**, Bill Desowitz (90/100, inferred): Highlights the deepening rapport between Chevalier and MacDonald in this remake of The Marriage Circle. Singles out the erotic charge of a key scene and the film's witty, sophisticated handling of marital temptation. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-oct-01-ca-37923-story.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (**): Praises Lubitsch's bold direction and the film's unorthodox asides to the audience in a gay spirit. Highlights the excellent script, strong performances especially from MacDonald, and overall credit to the production. [Read](https://variety.com/1931/film/reviews/one-hour-with-you-1200410575/) - **The New York Times** (80/100, inferred): Calls the film an excellent production with Lubitsch and Chevalier at the top of their form. Notes the strong cast including MacDonald and praises the handling of the script and music. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1932/03/24/archives/m-chevalier-again.html) - **Time Out**, GA (60/100, inferred): The film is typical sophisticated, smug fluff from Lubitsch and screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, presented as a remake of The Marriage Circle with Chevalier as a philandering doctor. Songs, verse, snappy dialogue and asides to the audience make it likeable and clever, though Cukor noted that Lubitsch's pictures lacked feeling. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/one-hour-with-you) ## Details - **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Director:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Writer:** Samson Raphaelson - **Cinematography:** Victor Milner - **Editor:** William Shea - **Music:** Rudolph G. Kopp, John Leipold, W. Franke Harling, Oscar Straus - **Costume design:** Travis Banton - **Producer:** Ernst Lubitsch - **Cast:** Maurice Chevalier as Dr. Andre Bertier; Jeanette MacDonald as Colette Bertier; Genevieve Tobin as Mitzi Olivier; Charles Ruggles as Adolph; Roland Young as Professor Olivier; Josephine Dunn as Mademoiselle Martel; Richard Carle as Henri Dornier - Private Detective; Barbara Leonard as Mitzi's Maid - **Runtime:** 1h 20m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 23 March 1932 - **Genres:** Comedy, Romance ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: BE, ES, FR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Trouble in Paradise* (1932): Lubitsch the same year, sharper and colder, with thieves instead of doctors - *Love Me Tonight* (1932): Chevalier and MacDonald again, and Mamoulian lets the whole city sing - *The Marriage Circle* (1924): The silent original, and the joke is funnier without the couplets - *The Awful Truth* (1937), Fi1m 89: A marriage falling apart in public, and both halves are enjoying it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-awful-truth.md) - *Smiles of a Summer Night* (1955): Bergman does the bedroom farce with Swedish light and real bruises --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/one-hour-with-you