THE DEVIL BAT’S DAUGHTER (1946)

In the small town of Wardsley, a young woman is found in the street, unconscious. She had just come to town and a cab driver took her to the Carruthers house, which is empty after the death of Dr. Carruthers years ago. It turns out she is Nina, the doc's daughter. Years ago, Carruthers was accused of being a vampire, having bred gigantic bats which attacked and killed a number of townspeople before they turned on him. With Nina still unresponsive, Dr. Elliot gets Dr. Morris, a psychiatrist, to attend to her. Nina wakes up but becomes hysterical as she has visions of giant bats, and of turning into a bar along with her father. Morris's wife Ellen insists on Nina staying with them, and we soon discover that Ellen's marriage is on the rocks, with Morris having an affair with Myra, an old friend of Ellen's. Ted, Ellen's son from a previous marriage, arrives for a visit and mild romantic sparks begin between him and Nina. However, Nina's condition worsens and Ted's dog is found dead in Nina's room, with Nina insisting that she must have killed it while possessed by her evil father. As plans are made to institutionalize Nina, Ellen is found dead in her bedroom, with Nina passed out in the hallway. It seems obvious that Nina is the killer, but Ted doesn't think so and with help from Dr. Elliot, Ted visits the Carruthers house and finds evidence that points to someone else as the killer. Can Ted clear Nina's name, and maybe even her father's name as well?

In theory, this is a sequel to a 1940 B-horror film called THE DEVIL BAT which featured Bela Lugosi as Carruthers, though the connections don't quite work. In the original film, the doctor is indeed a madman (with no daughter in sight) murdering people with bats for revenge. But this movie concludes with Carruthers being exonerated—it's not explained in detail except that the killings were not his fault—so I guess PRC, the Poverty Row studio that made both movies, assumed that no one would remember the details of the first film. The screenwriter, Griffin Jay, pulled similar rewriting moves when he scripted some of the Mummy sequels for Universal. The earlier Lugosi film is straight up horror, but this, despite flirting with a spooky atmosphere, is really more a psychological thriller akin to GASLIGHT. Everything about the film screams B-movie (or B-minus movie): cheap production values, scattershot writing, and bottom of the barrel acting. The actors seem to have been hired for their blandness. Rosemary LaPlanche is pretty bad as Nina—she can handle the catatonia at the beginning, but any emotions are beyond her reach. There is zero chemistry between her and John James (Ted), who himself is just mildly better than LaPlanche. The other actors aren't even worth mentioning. At some point, poor LaPlanche actually has to say the cliche line, "What’s to become of me?" The fact that we don't care shows how weak this movie is. Pictured is LaPlante with Michael Hale. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN IN PANAMA (1940)

A group of travelers leave their ship, which is about to go through the Panama Canal, and instead take a sea plane that will get them to Panama City more quickly. It's 1940 and the U.S. wasn't officially in WWII yet, but the American naval fleet is about to pass through into the Pacific Ocean and the city is filled with spies. One of the passengers, Godley, visits Fu Yuen's hat shop, but Fu Yuen is actually Charlie Chan and Godley is a government agent asking for his help in tracking down a mysterious spy named Ryner who might be about to pull off a major act of sabotage. But Godley drops dead in the shop, victim of a poisoned cigarette that was planted on him by one of the sea plane passengers. Chan, with his son Jimmy, investigates. Among the suspects: Compton, an English novelist; Miss Finch, a maiden schoolteacher; Manolo, owner of a cabaret in the city; Dr. Grosser, an unfriendly research scientist; Cabot, an American engineer; and Kathi Lenesch, a woman with a mysterious past who is going to sing at Manolo's cabaret. Jimmy, who engages in his usual bumbling antics, actually discovers something potentially helpful: Grosser has a cage of rats that he has injected with bubonic plague; could that be part of a sabotage act? Or could it involve the liquid explosive that is discovered in a burial vault? This is one of several WWII Chan films in which Charlie worked for the government, using his detective skills to catch spies. This is a particularly strong entry in the series, packed with action scenes and a solid supporting cast which includes Lionel Atwill (Compton) who was equally at home as a villain or a red herring; the handsome and sturdy Kane Richmond (Cabot) who was usually a hero but not always; Jean Rogers (Kathi) who was best known as Dale Arden in the first two Flash Gordon serials; Mary Nash (Miss Finch) who was Katherine Hepburn's mother in The Philadelphia Story; and Jack La Rue (Manolo), frequent portrayer of gangsters. Victor Sen Yung (pictured) is quite appealing as Jimmy, coming off a little less bombastically than he sometimes does, and Sidney Toler is near the top of his game as Chan. Even though it's not quite a traditional mystery story, this would be a good place for Chan novice to start. [DVD]

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (1952)

This is the ur-text, so to speak, of my obsession with Thanksgiving fantasy films, that is, films that were run on local TV stations during Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas break. This one I think I saw on both holidays back in the 60s and early 70s. I hadn't seen it since sometime in the 80s when I had a bargain basement VHS tape of it. A re-viewing of something like this is always a dicey proposition as the magic that made me love it when I was young is usually hard to capture again—see my review of THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T. It’s an odd duck of a movie as it stars Abbott and Costello in a fairy tale retelling. One online critic put it well—it's basically a kiddie movie with A & C shoehorned in for an uncomfortable fit. The two were coming to the end of their long run as a comic team (Bud Abbott was in his 50s and Lou Costello was in his 40s and both had lost some of the energy of their earlier films) though they would make seven more movies in the next four years before calling it quits. It opens with Lou playing an out-of-work fellow who happens to walk into an employment office as a request for a babysitter comes in. Lou and Bud, who calls himself Lou's agent, have a brief run-in with a big beefy cop before they arrive at the home of a precocious 8-year-old named Donald as his adult sister Eloise (Shaye Cogan) and her boyfriend Arthur (James Alexander) leave to attend a play rehearsal. Lou reads to Donald from a storybook of Jack and the Beanstalk, but when words like "terrorize" and "ferocious" prove too much for Lou, the kid takes over. Lou falls asleep and dreams the story with himself as Jack, Bud as a butcher named Dinkelpuss, the tall cop as the giant, Eloise as a princess, and Arthur as a prince. From there, the story is familiar. Jack sells a cow to Dinkelpuss for magic beans which sprout gigantic stalks. Jack climbs them in order to save the prince and princess who have been kidnapped by the giant. Dinkelpuss follows, greedily after a hen that lays golden eggs. The giant has a talking harp named Patrick and a tall housekeeper named Polly (the receptionist from the employment agency) and after some action scenes and a couple of songs, Jack slays the giant (he falls from the beanstalk and plummets through the earth all the way to China), the prince and princess decide to marry, and Lou wakes up when Donald beans him with a vase. The beginning and end are in sepia tone and the middle in color, but because this film is in the public domain, there are many murky prints of this out there. I saw a nicely restored Blu-ray print on YouTube which is certainly better looking than this movie was on TV back in the 1960s. The songs are unmemorable, and the only fun musical bit is a dance in which the very tall Polly (Dorothy Ford) keeps smacking Jack around with her extended arms. You can see the germ of a fun idea here, but the direction is bland, and even Lou Costello seems like he’s running at 75%. Strictly a novelty view. Pictured are Jack and his beloved cow with rouge and lipstick on. [YouTube]

THE SINGING PRINCESS (1952/1967)

The title character in this animated feature set in Baghdad is Princess Zelia. As she has now reached marrying age, her father the Caliph has sent a messenger out to three nearby lands asking for any interested princes to come to Baghdad to be looked over as husband prospects. But the evil Jafar plots with his magician buddy Burk to stop the search. Burk uses a magic cloak made of the wings of bats and owls to fly to the messenger's canoe and turn him to stone before he can reach the other lands. Meanwhile, Zelia wanders through the land with Amin, her young companion and musician, and sings and dances out of enjoyment. Jafar asks for her hand, but three government ministers (Tanko, Zirco and Zizibe) advise her against it. Burk conjures up a magic ring that, when placed on Zelia’s finger, will cause her to fall in love with Jafar. Amin's pet magpie Calina steals the ring and the ministers plot to give the ring to the ugliest woman they can find, but Amin is kidnapped by Bork who kills the magpie. Amin manages to rip off a part of Burk's cloak to use for himself to escape. Zelia comes to realize that she loves Amin and eventually, Aladdin's lamp, complete with genie, enters the narrative to help good be rewarded and evil be punished.

This one hour film, mostly forgotten by pop culture today, is interesting for a few reasons. First, there's the tangled distribution history. Made in Italy in 1949, it was written and directed by Anton Gino Domenighini, and according to IMDb this was his only film credit. Under the title La Rosa di Bagdad, it won a prize at a children's film festival and in 1952 was dubbed into English, with the voice of the princess provided by 17-year-old Julie Andrews (her first film credit), and released in England. In 1967, after Andrews had become an international star, it was released in the States as a weekend kiddie matinee feature with an ad trumpeting "the magical voice of Julie Andrews." It’s largely vanished from view since then, though it did get a DVD release in 2005. With this kind of pedigree, the movie wouldn't seem promising, but it's quite watchable. The animation has the look of early Disney or Max Fleischer films; it's not quite as colorful or detailed as later Disney films would be, but I think it still holds up. The world-building of this fantasyland version of Baghdad is minimal but fun: the magic bat-wing cloak, a place called the Valley of the Lost, the fact that Zirko is the Minister of Beautiful Things. It's also interesting to look at influences. There are scenes here reminiscent of Fantasia, particularly a nifty dance that three snakes perform in mid-air, and one that the magpie does as it steals the ring. It feels like it might have inspired the Jafar character in Disney's Aladdin, and his somewhat sinisterly effeminate tone isn't too far from that of Scar, the chief villain in The Lion King. Andrews' voice is fine, but if she's the only reason you're watching, you'll be disappointed as her role is overshadowed by the other characters. The operatic tone of Andrews' voice rendered most of her lyrics unintelligible, but the songs aren’t really important to the plot. Recommended to animation fans and as a novelty. [YouTube]

MOTHER HOLLY (1965) / FRAU HOLLE (1954)

A German town in a fairy tale past is, we are told by a narrator, old and tired, because there have been no children born there for years. The figure of Mother Holly gave the town a magic fountain—if anyone drinks from it and wishes to have a child, they will. But the demonic prankster Black Peter has polluted the fountain with trash and no one will drink from it. Statues of the kindly Mother Holly and the demonic prankster Black Peter stand in the town square, and one day Black Peter emerges from his statue to create havoc at the marketplace. (Mother Holly is absent, away in her "underground empire"). When two orphans, Freddie and Caroline, enter the town, he influences them to trash the market, destroying stalls and spoiling food. The kindly lad Hans gives all of his money to the townspeople to make up for their losses, but his upset mother sends him into exile for a year. We also meet a mother and her two daughters, the kind and hardworking stepdaughter Rose Marie and the foolish and lazy birth daughter Elsie Marie. As in the tale of Cinderella, the mother favors the vain Elise and mistreats Rose. Elsie is courted by the effete Prince Von Pants who, though supposedly rich, lives in a dilapidated castle and is as lazy as Elsie. Hans is in love with Rose, but when she drops a spindle in the fountain, she follows it and vanishes, so Hans heads out for his exile year.

Rose ends up in Mother Holly's underground empire which is basically a lovely aboveground field with houses and a garden. Freddie and Caroline end up here also, put on trial by other children for their bad behavior, but when they explain that Black Peter made them do it, they are exonerated. Rose spends a year with Mother Holly, willingly taking on chores and becoming a friend to the children. The year passes. In the town, Hans has returned and has something like an engineer's degree, and he oversees work on the town fountain. Rose leaves Mother Holly's land, transformed by a thick golden shower (dirty minds, begone!; pictured at right) and dressed most regally in a golden gown. Elsie, egged on by her mother, jumps into the fountain and lives in Mother Holly's land for a time, but is lazy and when she leaves, she is rained upon by mud or oil or excrement. The children all come to the town where they are accepted into the homes of the villagers, Black Peter is banished into his stature, and Rose and Hans get married.

It's difficult to find accurate information about this movie online, but I did some research to discover that this was filmed in Germany and released in 1954. In 1965, the producer K. Gordon Murray bought the English language rights to the movie and had it dubbed into English. Instead of giving it a kiddie matinee release as he did with other similar acquisitions, he sold it as part of a package of kids movies for television broadcast. IMDb gives a 1961 release date for the movie, but that was apparently for a German reissue. It may have wound up in American theaters years later, but I couldn't confirm that. The basic plot involving the sisters is based directly on a Grimm Brothers folktale. In Europe, Black Peter is usually associated with St. Nicholas; how he wound up here is uncertain. Watching this as an adult is a bizarre experience, with unclear character motivations (who knows why Mother Holly, pictured at left, does what she does, why Hans feels the need to give all his money to the townspeople), unclear plot points (why couldn't the villagers have cleaned up the fountain during those earlier years, where did the orphans come from, can’t the villagers have sex), and unclear moral lessons, aside from hard work being rewarded. Though completely shot on outdoor locations, the whole thing does have an artificial feel to it which is a plus for a fairy tale movie. Much of the story is told less in dialogue than in narration by a rather overbearing narrator, so the acting is hard to judge. This is similar to those weird Russian folktale movies of the 60s like The Day the Earth Froze that Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured occasionally. It's interesting but probably not for kids. [YouTube]

THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (1961)

We are told that Simon Hart lived in a time of "great hope for human progress," which seems to be the late 19th century, with its airships and steamships and submarines. Hart is working as an assistant to Professor Roch who is dabbling in the invention of a new explosive which turns out to be atomic in nature. Roch is doing it purely for the challenge, not at all concerned about "practical applications," but some villainous pirates in the service of Count Artigas arrive at Roch's seaside house, very interested in its applications. Disguised as shipwreck survivors, they kidnap Roch and Hart and take them away on a huge submarine from which the pirates destroy ships at sea to plunder their goods. They take on Jana, a survivor from the latest ship attacked, and head to their hidden city Back Cup, located under a volcanic island. In a boy's adventure pulp plot, only loosely based on Jules Verne, Hart tries to stop Artigas from using Roch's invention to conquer the world. This Czech film directed by Karel Zeman was released in the States three years after its production in an English dub with the Jules Verne title, aimed at children's matinee showings. It probably disappointed many of its viewers back then, but now it is mostly appreciated as a unique and beautiful work of film art.

Often described as animated, the film actually uses a mix of traditional animation, stop-motion animation, patently artificial sets, special photographic effects, and live action. The film's texture looks like Victorian woodcuts or steel engraved illustrations which would have illustrated Verne's works in their original editions. Virtually every frame of the movie has thin, sometimes barely visible, horizontal lines running across the screen in imitation of engraved illustrations. Matte shots are used prolifically for backgrounds, and animation is mixed with live actors to create a magical world. The story which plays out in this world is secondary to the fabulous visuals—trumpeted as being done in Mysti-Motion in the American ads—and kids should not have been the focus audience for the American promotion of this movie. The Verne connection is real—it's based on a little known novel called Facing the Flag—but probably disappointing to viewers expecting a traditional action movie like MASTER OF THE WORLD. There is a reference in the opening narration to the Verne character Robur, featured in MASTER, and the submarine will conjure up memories of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. But in some ways, all that is a smokescreen for the experimental film style of Zeman. It seems clear that Terry Gilliam was influenced by Zeman when he created the animated sequences for Monty Python. I could spend another paragraph describing many of the visual marvels to be found here, but you should just see it for yourself. Though a bit misleading, the American title is better than the literal translation of the Czech title, Invention for Destruction. It's also been released as The Deadly Invention. [Criterion Channel]

SABU AND THE MAGIC RING (1957)

In this B-movie Arabian Nights fantasy, Sabu is a lowly stable boy in Samarkand who takes care of the caliph's elephant. When a large yellow diamond is discovered missing from the elephant's headdress, Sabu scrounges the ground until he discovers a shiny ring. Ready to toss it away, he accidentally rubs it against his vest and a genie named Ubal appears (actually, he insists he's an ifrit, a demon, saying "I eat genies for breakfast" though he never acts demonically) to grant his wishes, though he warns Sabu that he is a slave to the ring, not the person, so if Sabu would lose the ring, Ubal would not longer serve him. Sabu discovers that his boss Kimal and the prime minister Mazufa have stolen the elephant's diamond and sold it to finance a revolt against the caliph, and that they are now looking for the magic ring. He gives it to his girlfriend Zumila for safe keeping, but that means when Mazufa captures Sabu, he can't call on Ubal for help. At one point, a goose swallows the ring and Sabu tries to keep it out of the clutches of the bad guys until it lays an egg with the ring in it. With the help of the genie, Sabu and Zumila stop an assassination plot against the caliph and restore stability to the kingdom. I remember this from my youth when it was run on Saturday afternoons or at Thanksgiving, and I’d searched for it off and on for years, so I was pleased that it popped up. It was shot as a TV pilot and wasn't picked up, so it's got a shoddy low-budget look. Most of the scenes take place in a stable and a marketplace, and the magical effects are pretty much limited to the genie appearing and disappearing. For a one hour movie, it's a bit sluggish, though things move at a better pace in the last half. Sabu again plays a character named Sabu and, again, he gives it his all. William Marshall (later Blacula and Pee-Wee Herman's King of Cartoons) makes a good genie, looking imposing and wise though not perhaps as threatening as he might be. The two bad guys, Peter Mamakos as Mazufa and John Doucette as Kimal, are pretty good. Daria Massey is an uninspiring heroine. Though it was shot and released in color, the only print I could find is in black and white, which robs it of whatever interesting visual elements it might have had. Kids today would be bored silly by this, and boomers looking to relive a pleasant memory will be disappointed. Pictured are Marshall, Sabu, and Massey. [YouTube]

THE EMPEROR'S NIGHTINGALE (1951)

A little boy, living in a big house and being raised by his old aunts because his father is always traveling, would seem to want for nothing, but he is lonely, with only his toys for company, and he has to follow too many rules. He sees a little girl outside playing but can't join her because he has to stay within the gates of his property. On his tenth birthday, his father sends him a music box with a mechanical nightingale on it, but the boy falls ill and the doctor says he has no remedy for the sickness of too many rules. That night, he dreams of a child emperor in China who, like him, lives a life surrounded by artificial things and too many rules. His life is run by routine, literally by a large mechanical figure named Clang, the Ruler of Routine. He plays with glass swans on a mirror lake and a "philharmonic fish" statue that makes music. On his birthday, a sailor in a hot air balloon visits and gives him the gift of a picture book featuring images of China's natural world which the Emperor has never seen. He is particularly taken with a picture of a nightingale. He tries to find out how to see one. The court astronomer is too busy counting the stars, but a young kitchen maid knows where to find one, and leads some courtiers, who feel disoriented out in the natural world, to get one. The nightingale sings for the boy who is enchanted. He keeps the bird in an ornate cage and listens to his song, but soon even that pleasure becomes routine. On the Emperor's next birthday, the sailor sends him a golden mechanical nightingale which captives the Emperor and his court, and the real bird, now ignored, flies away. The golden bird's song is artificial, like everything else in the Emperor's world, and soon the boy grows sick and Death comes to call, preparing to take the boy. The real nightingale finally returns and sings a song at the Emperor's window, bringing him back to health and banishing Death. The child orders the shattering of routine in his kingdom. When the real-life boy awakens from his dream, he too shatters his guardians' rules, jumps over the tall fence around his property, and joins the little girl to play.

It's Thanksgiving week so it's time to review fantasy and adventure movies of the kind that my local TV stations used to play during the Thanksgiving weekend when kids were home from school in front of the television. This is a Czechoslovakian stop-motion puppet animation film from director Jiri Trnka. Originally produced in 1949, this version, released in the U.S in 1951, features narration by Boris Karloff. Though based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen with a running time of just over an hour, it's probably not ideal viewing for children, now or back then. The animation is nicely done and the sets are gorgeous, and Karloff's narration, as with his later How the Grinch Stole Christmas, is very effective. But the pace of the film is incredibly slow and I imagine children checking out before the half-hour mark. Near the end of the film, there is a ten-minute passage with no narration that, though both lovely and creepy (featuring Death stalking the Emperor), put me to sleep. The full musical score by Vaclav Trojan is, like the narration, very effective, and a suite of his music from the film has been performed and recorded. The frame story of the lonely boy is in live action, with the animated dream world consisting mostly of things from the boy's room. The themes of nature versus artifice, rules versus freedom, companionship versus friendship, are clear, perhaps too much so. The colorful film has been restored for DVD, but the YouTube version of this print is way too murky and dark to really be enjoyed, with much loss of image detail. I even suspect that the YouTube print doesn't get all the colors right. But unless I can find the DVD, this viewing will have to suffice. [YouTube]

THE MALE ANIMAL (1942)

It's homecoming weekend at Midwestern University and English professor Henry Fonda is unsettled for two reasons. First, a student of his who is a campus newspaper columnist (Herbert Anderson) has just published the fact that Fonda plans to read to his class on Monday a letter by notorious anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Fonda is doing it as part of a lesson on rhetoric, and Anderson's article backs him up, but the school is not happy about it—there's a Red scare on campus and Anderson calls the administration fascists—and head trustee Eugene Pallette is threatening to fire Fonda if he goes through with the reading, even though he is about to be offered a full professorship. But Fonda is perhaps more upset by the weekend visit of former football star Jack Carson, an old flame of his wife's (Olivia de Havilland). He's coming because Midwestern is playing their chief rival Michigan, and he arrives in town bearing flowers for de Havilland for her birthday, a fact which Fonda has forgotten. Carson then announces that he is leaving his wife, a fact that makes Fonda certain that Carson is going to work on snagging de Havilland for himself. In a mirroring situation that combines the two concerns, Joan Leslie, de Havilland's younger sister, is torn between Don DeFore, a beefy jock, and Anderson, a skinny glasses-wearing intellectual. Fonda is still determined to read the letter, but he is less certain about fighting for his wife, preparing instead to let her go if she wants to. That night, Fonda and Anderson get drunk and Fonda goes on a rant about how he should behave like a "male animal," like a wolf or sea lion or tiger, or even a penguin, and fight for his position. Ultimately, he doesn't have to physically fight, as it's his principled stand on reading Vanzetti (which has to be done in an auditorium because of the interest it's generated) that clears everything up.

Based on a hit play co-authored by James Thurber, this is an odd duck of a movie, a political drama about freedom of speech which gets hijacked by a screwball romantic comedy. Or maybe it's vice versa. Either way, it's a somewhat uncomfortable fit but it does remain entertaining on its way to a rushed Capraesque ending. It took me a while to like Fonda and de Havilland, both seeming a bit lightweight in academic surroundings. But this isn't Harvard, it's Midwestern, which is a lightly disguised Ohio State University (hinted at by the Michigan rivalry, the Big Red Team football nickname, and a reference to a romantic getaway at an inn in Granville—which I've actually been to). Fonda eventually grows into the part, de Havilland less so. Jack Carson is his usual jovial doofus self, and Joan Leslie, not yet 20 in real life, is quite good. I was quite charmed by Herbert Anderson who underplays the nerd role nicely; he would be best known years later as the father in the Dennis the Menace sitcom. The whole Red Scare aspect would have made it impossible for this to get made a few years later, and the issues of academic freedom brought up are once again, unfortunately, relevant. Near the end, Fonda says, "You can't suppress ideas in this country because you don't like them; nobody can—yet." The Trump administration is proving that "yet" may be right now. Watch this movie while you can. Pictured are Fonda, de Havilland, and Carson [TCM]

MOONLIGHT SONATA (1937)

In a forest in Sweden, we see Eric (Charles Farrell) trying to tell Ingrid (Barbara Greene) how much he loves her. She replies that, though they've known each other for some time, she has never felt that way about him. At midnight, she'll turn eighteen and he plans to propose to her, but she says, "Please don’t rush me," and is clearly unenthusiastic about his plan. Suddenly, a small plane makes an emergency landing nearby. The two passengers are Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a famous concert pianist (as he was in real life) and Mario de la Costa (Eric Portman), a stage magician and hypnotist. Eric and Ingrid take them to the large country home of Ingrid's grandmother, Baroness Lindenborg to stay until the plane is fixed. Paderewski is charming and friendly, and is pleased to hear of a special connection he has to the family: Ingrid's parents became engaged after hearing the pianist play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata at a concert. Mario is less pleased as he is in a hurry to get to Paris, but manages to turn on the charm for Ingrid, who will come into some money on her birthday. The next day, Eric presses his case again but realizes that naive Ingrid is falling for Mario, and they argue. Eric finds out that Mario is married, though supposedly estranged from his wife, and the Baroness fears that Mario is a fortune hunter. Ingrid remains in thrall to Mario until the Baroness offers Mario money to leave the house. Does Eric still have a chance with Ingrid? Maybe if Paderewski can work some magic again by playing the Moonlight Sonata.

This 90-minute movie is an average romantic melodrama with one difference: the first twenty minutes of the film is a concert by Paderewski where he plays works by Chopin and Liszt, followed by the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. The music is interrupted when a small child chases a ball up to the stage, but the pianist is not upset because he knows the little girl. [Spoiler!] She's the daughter of Eric and Ingrid, and the rest of the movie is a flashback to how they got together. I admit to eventually skimming through the concert scene (even though I like pieces he plays) to get to the story, but the story has its own problems. Eric is apparently employed by the Baroness and lives at the house. We don't know how long his crush has gone on, but it seems surprising that he would suddenly spring his feelings on her just before he proposes marriage. Greene is the age of her character (18) but Farrell is 37 and, though still nice looking, looks too old to be mooning after this kid. It seems the Baroness has not actively discouraged his interest in her granddaughter, but aside from the fact that he's handsome and pleasant, we're not given much reason to think that he'd be a good husband. Farrell and Greene don't have much chemistry, and frankly Greene and Portman (pictured above) do, though we know from the get-go that there is something unsavory about him—while Paderewski handles the plane situation with grace, Mario is cranky and unpleasant until he figures out that Ingrid could make a nice meal ticket. Portman does the best acting, though Marie Tempest is fine as the Baroness. Paderewski is not an actor, and struggles through his lines. He does get to play piano again in a scene in which the Baroness takes him to a school to play for the kids. People who watch this for the allure of the music will probably be bored by the soapy drama, and people who want the romance will be bored with the music. [YouTube]