I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Bitter Sweet is not up there with New Moon and especially Maytime(out of their collaborations), but it is not their worst, that would be- though from a personal perspective it wasn't as bad as heard- I Married An Angel. Bitter Sweet does have things wrong, the story is silly, at times draggy and also a little choppy, the Baron's wife is an annoying character and is played even worse and Nelson Eddy's acting is rather stiff, he also has as much conviction as an Austrian as John Wayne did as Genghis Kahn in The Conqueror. It's not as if his acting is like that in all his films, it was great in The Chocolate Soldier for instance where he does show some gift for comedy. Bitter Sweet looks incredible though, out of Eddy-MacDonald's outings it is one of their best-looking. The costumes and sets are very sumptuous, the set for Zigeuner stands out. The Technicolor photography is the very meaning of exquisite. Fabulous also are the songs, Noel Coward's first score and one of his greatest too, I'll See You Again and Zigeuner are the best of the bunch. The dialogue is snappy and sweet, with some appropriate seediness for the baron, the choreography does have energy and W.S. Wise's direction while not landmark-standard is perfect for the type of film Bitter Sweet is, charming and solid with a light touch. There is a good supporting cast, George Sanders is wonderfully smarmy and lecherous in another one of his caddish roles, Hermann Bing is very funny and Ian Hunter shines at being distinguished. Jeanette MacDonald is as beautiful and charming as ever, and her performance carries Bitter Sweet very nicely, she was always better in the acting stakes than Eddy. Though Eddy was the better singer, it is difficult to ever find fault in Eddy's rich, warm baritone singing and while personally it isn't a problem MacDonald's somewhat thin-toned at times, trilly soprano is an acquired taste. Both she and Eddy sing absolutely beautifully throughout, together and individually, and their chemistry is convincing. All in all, still much to enjoy but not one of their best. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Even though Jeanette MacDonald gets to make light fun of her sometimes shrill singing voice (where her lyrics are sometimes impossible to understand) and has a brief can-can musical number (showing off a rarely seen ability to dance), the movie surrounding those moments is colorless, even though it was grandly photographed in color. All the color does is show off her flaming red hair, which in the final is covered by a hat that looks like a pepperoni pizza with extra mozzarella. The fact that this is set in 1890's London and Vienna rather than Italy makes her choice of millinery attire somewhat odd.In London, she is a singer being coached by operetta composer Nelson Eddy, obviously in love with him even though she is engaged to marry the stuffy Edward Ashley. She suddenly decides to break off her engagement to Ashley and runs off to Vienna where as a street singer, she is broke enough to trade singing lessons from a grocer whose untalented daughter sings like the chicken she is making the exchange for. She is noticed by the lecherous Baron George Sanders who arranges for her to get a job at a casino while Eddy tries to sell his unproduced operetta. Ashley arrives in Vienna as Sanders is making unwelcome advances to her with his new wife, a babbling female with a horrendous speech impediment, obviously added just to make her already annoying character seem even more annoying. When a drunken Sanders goes too far in his pursuit of the married MacDonald, Eddy steps in, setting up for a similar finale that we had already seen them do in "Maytime" and would be done better in MacDonald's remake of "Smilin' Through".The ending probably had ladies weeping in 1940 but is so predictable. Sanders' character so unlikable that it makes him difficult to watch. He was best playing villains who were so urbane and sophisticated that their suave villainy was just one characteristic to their multi-layered personalities. The stars struggle with many bits made to be comical (which essentially stop the plot for shtick) but somehow the results are as empty as Sanders' baron's heart. Practically every character actor of eastern European decent (Herman Bing, Felix Bressart) pop in to predictable effect. W.S. Van Dyke, after such a unique career highlighted by mostly non-musicals, seemed an odd choice for this air-filled soufflé, so the result is even less than mixed.

A previous reviewer reported the well known story about how upset Noel Coward was at this version of his work that he refused to allow Hollywood to do another adaptation of any of his works. Hollywood in fact never did.Of course you'd have to have something to compare it to and I hope that TCM manages to find the 1933 version that Anna Neagle and Fernand Gravey did for the British cinema.On its own Bitter Sweet is a mixture of the previous MacDonald/Eddy triumph Maytime with a good hunk of Anna Karenina thrown into the mix. Jeanette MacDonald on an impulse runs off with her music teacher Nelson Eddy to gay old Vienna where they live on love and starve a good deal of the time. In doing the elopement she jilts her fiancé, proper and stuffy Edward Ashley who's an up and coming man in their Foreign Office.I'm sure Noel Coward didn't complain about what Jeanette and Nelson did vocally with his songs because they're sung beautifully. Jeanette is barely passable for British and Nelson is about as Viennese as John Wayne. MGM knew that and surrounded them with the German colony of Hollywood, Sig Rumann, Curt Bois, Felix Bressart, and Herman Bing. And George Sanders is his usual caddish self as the Baron Von Trannisch who's got a lustful eye for Jeanette.Noel Coward's plays are comedies of manners with some satirical jibes at British society. His music is universal, but his wit is for the British Isles. I doubt he could have written a western. My guess is that that was what Coward objected to in this film.Still Jeanette and Nelson fans will like it and until someone at TCM finds the Anna Neagle version that's all we're likely to see.

Noel Coward, who wrote both the words and the music of the original 1929 operetta, called this movie "a nauseating hotchpotch of vulgarity, false values, seedy dialogue, stale sentiment, vile performances, and abominable direction." He found it so offensive that he never again allowed Hollywood to have anything to do with his musicals, and put a clause in his will to that effect.I entirely agree with his evaluation. No one who has had the chance to see the brilliant and heartbreaking original play can look on this bastard tinsel and frou-frou offspring without feeling first incredulity, then disgust, and finally a deep personal hatred for everyone involved in the nasty thing.By the way, the connection between this movie and "Maytime" is complicated. You see, some Hollywood suit didn't like the original show, "Maytime", but wanted to use the title, and so they ripped off the plot of "Bitter Sweet" and combined it with lots of songs that aren't from either "Maytime" or "Bitter Sweet", apart from just one actual "Maytime" song, and called the result "Maytime". (Eddy and MacDonald's movie called "The Chocolate Soldier", similarly, is the plot of the play, "The Guardsman", mixed with some of the songs from "The Chocolate Soldier", but none of the plot.) So when they decided to make "Bitter Sweet", they kept the same basic plot, but dumbed it down, creating this abortion.