La donna fatale

Don't watch this film unless you like opera. I knew there would be some but was shocked and disappointed as to how much Mary Ellis got to sing. At one point, she travels to France as a performer in a smoky nightclub - a sort of film noir setting. She tells us that she is now a smoky nightclub balladeer and we wonder how she will sound singing in a different style. It has got to be better than what we've heard so far. Come the moment and she takes the stage and ........starts singing opera.....! How is that a smoky ballad!! And how unrealistic. That is definitely not what the patrons of this nightclub come to listen to. It's totally out of place.

Towards the end of the film, the audience wakes up a little as we try to guess who the baddie is. There is a killer on the loose who seems to be bumping off anyone who gets romantically close to Ellis. However, the film sort of meanders nowhere for quite some time and we are forced to suffer through some wooden acting from Walter Pidgeon (David) and the excruciatingly awful Norman Foster (Phillip). John Halliday (Martan) has a funny scene when he pops in to visit Ellis and finds Pidgeon waiving a gun around. He scores the film a point for his dialogue delivery. The other good thing that happens in this film is what happens to Norman Foster.

Don't watch this unless you like opera, high pitched warbling of tunes that don't seem to go anywhere and lyrics that are completely unintelligible. There are some people out there who enjoy this sort of thing.

Opera singer Marion Stuart (Mary Ellis) is about to make her starring debut in New York when she's questioned about the death of a friend in Texas. She flops and flees to Brazil where she works under an assumed name in the chorus. She gets another chance to star in an opera but she's implicated in another murder. This time she flees to Paris where she sings in a nightclub as Maleveo, Siren of Song. But bad luck continues to pursue her.

She's also stalked by a rich young man (Norman Foster) and his disapproving brother (Walter Pidgeon) as she careens from job to job. The older brother believes she is guilty until....

Ellis is terrific as the plagued singer, and Pidgeon is solid as the reluctant leading man. Co-stars include John Halliday as the arts patron, Edgar Kennedy as the manager, Ruth Donnelly as his wife, Guy Bates Post as Glinka, and Frank Puglia as Felipe.

This is one of three 1930s films Mary Ellis starred in at Paramount. She also starred in 2 British films in the 1930s but was more successful on Broadway and the operatic stage.