The script of this movie was evidently written by someone who, late one night, heard a very amateurish provincial theater company do a third-rate Noël Coward play on the radio and decided that was the essence of sophistication. He then sat down and wrote this terrible script about love among the superficial and useless upper classes.
How it came to the attention of Alexander Korda, one of the great British movie producers, I do not know. I can only guess he thought it might be a way of introducing the great Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli to English audiences. So, a small part was written into this script for a very fat and not at all attractive tenor who cannot speak English at all and cannot act in any language. It is painful to watch him try to negotiate English in his few scenes, and there is absolutely NO chemistry between him and the woman he becomes involved with to take care of his young son.
In short, this is one mess of a movie.
It does have one saving grace, however. Every now and then - not often, but every now and then - the very overweight and not attractive Italian tenor, instead of trying to speak English, opens his mouth and sings. In those few moments, the angels in heaven stop doing whatever they were doing and look down, because they realize that they still have a great deal to learn about singing. We listen as well, for the same reason.
And then, after a few minutes, he stops singing and we go back to the worthless script.
If you can find some way of jumping from number to number without having to watch the drivel in between, do so. Then you can imagine you are in heaven with those angels listening.
But make sure not to waste you time on the non-singing majority of this real loser.
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The only mildly interesting scene in this movie starts 13 minutes before the end. About to give a concert, the tenor learns that his wife is going to leave him. You would think that Gigli, one of whose great roles was Canio in Pagliacci, would know how to play this even if he could barely speak English. He tries, but he really just can't act.
Then he goes on stage and sings, marvelously, two numbers. Then he rushes home to find his son - but not his wife - and his son asks him to sing a lullaby. The angels, by now tired of watching Gigli sing better than they can, come down and inhabit his body, or at least his vocal chords, and he sings "Dorme" with a beauty of tone that would indeed make the angels cry - out of envy.
Then the plot takes over and the movie ends in predictable bathos.
How it came to the attention of Alexander Korda, one of the great British movie producers, I do not know. I can only guess he thought it might be a way of introducing the great Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli to English audiences. So, a small part was written into this script for a very fat and not at all attractive tenor who cannot speak English at all and cannot act in any language. It is painful to watch him try to negotiate English in his few scenes, and there is absolutely NO chemistry between him and the woman he becomes involved with to take care of his young son.
In short, this is one mess of a movie.
It does have one saving grace, however. Every now and then - not often, but every now and then - the very overweight and not attractive Italian tenor, instead of trying to speak English, opens his mouth and sings. In those few moments, the angels in heaven stop doing whatever they were doing and look down, because they realize that they still have a great deal to learn about singing. We listen as well, for the same reason.
And then, after a few minutes, he stops singing and we go back to the worthless script.
If you can find some way of jumping from number to number without having to watch the drivel in between, do so. Then you can imagine you are in heaven with those angels listening.
But make sure not to waste you time on the non-singing majority of this real loser.
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The only mildly interesting scene in this movie starts 13 minutes before the end. About to give a concert, the tenor learns that his wife is going to leave him. You would think that Gigli, one of whose great roles was Canio in Pagliacci, would know how to play this even if he could barely speak English. He tries, but he really just can't act.
Then he goes on stage and sings, marvelously, two numbers. Then he rushes home to find his son - but not his wife - and his son asks him to sing a lullaby. The angels, by now tired of watching Gigli sing better than they can, come down and inhabit his body, or at least his vocal chords, and he sings "Dorme" with a beauty of tone that would indeed make the angels cry - out of envy.
Then the plot takes over and the movie ends in predictable bathos.